Author: Susan Percy

There were other Braves fans at Shea Stadium on the very cold Monday night in late April we had chosen to watch our guys take on the Mets - but not many of them. And those who were there were not making much noise.

The reliable old No. 2 bus operated by the pre-MARTA Atlanta Transit System rumbled from Decatur, via Ponce de Leon Avenue and Peachtree Street, to downtown Atlanta in about 20 minutes.

At a place I once worked, some of the guys used to throw a football around the office from time to time, ostensibly as a way of relieving tension or relaxing a little in the midst of a hectic workday.

The most dramatic and immediate effect on the nest that emptied when our daughter went off to college a few years ago was the quiet. Everything stopped.

There's a lot to find puzzling in the ongoing controversy in Cobb County over the evolution disclaimer stickers that a federal judge has declared unconstitutional - in violation of both the Georgia and the U.S. Constitutions.

The internal click that comes when I push open the back door and walk into the house after a few hours or a few days away takes me by surprise every time, even though I've heard it in the half-dozen or so places I've called home throughout my adult life.

How many times have you wanted to suggest to top corporate folks that they should occasionally try calling their own places of business, unannounced, just like any regular customer?

The nearly 250,000 students who attend Georgia's public colleges and universities dodged a powerful bullet a few weeks ago when the Board of Regents wisely decided not to push for a mid-year tuition hike as a way of dealing with a $65-million budget shortfall.

The first voice-mail message of the morning was from a woman I've never met who delivered a lengthy tirade against journalism and journalists, including the fact that she has "long felt that journalists will print whatever they want to print . . . and they don't particularly care whether the story is accurate."

Just about the time you think you're safe, here it comes to beat you over the head one more time.

The birthday we were celebrating was not a landmark "0" year, just one of those in-betweens you pretty much take in stride. One woman brought photos from her son's wedding the previous month.

Blossom has a new home, but the six baby ducks who used to swim in the pond behind our office building are MIA.

Boston has a lot going for it: 400-plus years of history; a comprehensive and well-funded public transit system; a vibrant downtown; an all-but-completed $14-billion-plus construction project called the Big Dig; and a whole neighborhood full of great Italian restaurants.

The low point in my personal history of on-the-job organization came at a previous magazine gig, back in the dark ages before digital photography.

Last fall, when a high school student from Fulton County was expelled for a piece of creative writing a teacher read in a journal that had been confiscated from the young woman, there were legitimate questions asked about First Amendment rights, privacy and school safety.

We counted five this morning: five bright, shiny yellow bulldozers clearing away the remnants of a nice little patch of woods across the pond our offices overlook in Gwinnett County.

A little shiver ran down my spine when I read a Peach State Poll conducted by the University of Georgia's Carl Vinson Institute of Government that indicates "Georgians generally support mixing religion and government."

There are a lot of people in the world -- editors and writers among them -- who spend a big chunk of their time pursuing information.

She pulled into an empty parking garage in Midtown a little after 7 one Friday morning, shoved her purse under some file folders on the floor of the passenger side, got out of the car, locked it and, with key ring in hand, went up to the second floor of the adjacent building.

I've never quite found a way to explain the appeal of college football to people who have to have such things explained to them in the first place.

Remember those annoying yellow and black "Baby On Board" signs that seemed to adorn half the cars on the road a few years ago?

On an evening flight out of Atlanta a few years ago, takeoff was delayed when a passenger became ill.

When the eager young public relations person left a voicemail asking if there might be an opportunity for "editorial exposure," she was not seeking an opportunity to flash the magazine's offices.

The last battleground in the ongoing war for gender equality is — and will continue to be — the office thermostat.

It was a spirited but civil exchange between the two nice ladies asking for a refund and the wily old mechanic refusing their request.

Conventional wisdom says you don't leave a good job without having a better one lined up. And you sure don't do it in the middle of a recession - unless you come to believe you have no choice.

On that television staple of my childhood, "The Ed Sullivan Show," there seemed to be an endless supply of acts featuring old vaudeville guys who kept a series of plates spinning on the ends of long sticks.

We lived in Atlanta's Inman Park during the height of the "Presidential Parkway" protests in the early 1980s.

Once, at another job, in another state, a co-worker who was struggling to meet a deadline asked if I could "send that little black girl over" to help in his office.

No doubt your mother raised you, as mine did me, to be polite, courteous and considerate, and to observe a few basic, but non-negotiable, rules of etiquette.

At a national magazine conference, an early-morning session featured an odd-couple pairing of speakers. The first was well-tanned and well-tailored with impeccably blown-dry hair; he was a marketing guru. The other was less polished, maybe even a little scruffy-looking; he was an editor.

When the Atlanta paper broke the story of the flap over a controversial issue of a student newspaper in a DeKalb County high school - students wrote stories critical of the new county school superintendent, and administrators responded by recalling copies not distributed - I reacted like the former high-school newspaper adviser that I am.

In the foreword to J.B. Fuqua's memoir, Fuqua, Tom Johnson writes that his friend's monumental accomplishments are "all the more amazing because he has battled severe depression for over fifty years.

Perhaps you know the screamer, the nag, the wimp, the coach, the despot, the pal or the mom?

Many years ago in the newsroom of the small paper I worked for, I was interviewing the local parks and recreation director about his upcoming budget requests.

The telephones in our office haven't worked right for more than a week. The phone company is looking into it.