My weekend in the NOLA

This weekend was nice.  Saturday, it rained and a cool front blew through.  Spent the day studying and the evening with my brother, his wife and their two kids.  Love those two little boys, but the oldest definitely has his bad days and makes for perfect birth control sometimes.  I enjoy my time that I have with my brother and sister.  

Sunday was a gorgeous day.  Hubby and I spent it out and about.  Went to the French Quarter, saw the Navy ships that were in to commemorate the bicentennial start of the War of 1812 and finished off with a late lunch at Dragos.  Charbroiled oysters, fried ravioli and cocktails were consumed.  

I have not been on a Navy ship in years.  They were in town when I was a kid.  My maternal grandfather was in the Navy and was in WW2.  In fact, he was on the USS North Carolina (simply amazing story/ship).  So, seeing the USS Wasp was neat as well as the other countries Naval ships who came to New Orleans for Navy Week.  They departed today (at 11am).  

Well, for now, I am counting down the days until I am on vacation to the coast of somewhere beautiful with my husband.  

I love Chris Rose and his quote here sums it up (for Mardi Gras that is).

"To encapsulate the notion of Mardi Gras as nothing more than a big drunk is to take the simple and stupid way out, and I, for one, am getting tired of staying stuck on simple and stupid.

Mardi Gras is not a parade. Mardi Gras is not girls flashing on French Quarter balconies. Mardi Gras is not an alcoholic binge.

Mardi Gras is bars and restaurants changing out all the CD's in their jukeboxes to Professor Longhair and the Neville Brothers, and it is annual front-porch crawfish boils hours before the parades so your stomach and attitude reach a state of grace, and it is returning to the same street corner, year after year, and standing next to the same people, year after year--people whose names you may or may not even know but you've watched their kids grow up in this public tableau and when they're not there, you wonder: Where are those guys this year?

It is dressing your dog in a stupid costume and cheering when the marching bands go crazy and clapping and saluting the military bands when they crisply snap to.

Now that part, more than ever.

It's mad piano professors converging on our city from all over the world and banging the 88's until dawn and laughing at the hairy-shouldered men in dresses too tight and stalking the Indians under Claiborne overpass and thrilling the years you find them and lamenting the years you don't and promising yourself you will next year.

It's wearing frightful color combination in public and rolling your eyes at the guy in your office who--like clockwork, year after year--denies that he got the baby in the king cake and now someone else has to pony up the ten bucks for the next one.

Mardi Gras is the love of life. It is the harmonic convergence of our food, our music, our creativity, our eccentricity, our neighborhoods, and our joy of living. All at once."

— Chris Rose (1 Dead in Attic)