New Orleans in October - part 2

10/22/10

We woke up nice and early and headed out to find breakfast.



There was an awesome little diner right around the corner, and the food was magnificent!!!!!

After breakfast we walked to pick up our rental car. We'd decided to spend our second day in New Orleans driving around the area....checking out the old plantations and such.

On our way out of town, we drove by a few fun places.



St. Elizabeth's is a small (47,000 sq feet) house on Napoleon Street...owned my Ann Rice. It takes up an entire city block...and used to house an orphanage.

It's recently been sold, and is undergoing modifications....I think they are making it into condos. (sigh)







We also drove past the places the Boys resided while they lived in New Orleans.

Actually....New Orleans is where they met. How fun, huh???

After a little driving, we arrived at the San Francisco Plantation.


It was surrounded by a HUGE ugly chain link fence....and had signs about photography being prohibited everywhere outside. (We walked around the grounds until a lady came out "politely" told us to pay or else...then we left.)











From there we headed to the other side of the river....where the plantations were more remote, and not surrounded by chain link.

But first...we had to drive over this bridge.



Steve was driving.



He HATES bridges.



:-)

We drove past a few plantations, until I yelled "stop" in front of this one.....


Oak Alley

We got out of our car (on the other side of the highway)...climbed the river berm...and took a few minutes to stare in awe.

I've seen this place in books, on TV and in movies...but they just don't do it justice!!!



It was unanimous...we were going to pay the money to get the full tour. No way we could pass it up!!
















"Quick!! Pretend like you're having a casual conversation out on the veranda"


"OK! I got it, you can stop!"






"OK! look grown up and smile for the camera!"


well...they tried!!!!




One of the famous oaks was struck by lightning...it had finally fallen three months earlier.


When my hard drive crashed...the video that explains what Danny is doing in this picture was lost forever. A little "Gone with the Wind" reenactment . Classic!!!!



We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the house....but we could take some upstairs on the balcony.


This was our tour guide Thomas. He didn't seem like the most cheerful guy at first. But once the tour was done and I asked if I could take his picture, he INSISTED that I be in it. Then he spent the next hour answering all of our questions, and telling us MUCH more of the house's history. The fun stuff that wasn't on the tour. #1 best tour guide ever!!!!!

After we left Oak Alley, we had to stop at this tiny little brick building along side the road. Linda - how would you like to be transferred here????





After we left the small church....we had to stop again another mile or so down the road.



There are miles and miles and fields and fields of sugar cane wherever you look. I was looking for the perfect row...just like this...and we finally found one!!! I wanted our picture in the middle of the row.


Nice photo bomb, Steve!!!!!! LOL!!!!!!!!


I had no idea the plan was to become a totem pole.


The filled me in, and I joined the fun.


You should have seen the spider bites I got my taking this picture. My arm itches just thinking about it!!!!!


Our little off road trip was a little dusty. :-)

A little further down the road was a church. This church was the church the owners of Oak Alley attended. They insisted their slaves become part of the church, so they could be buried with them, and not in the slave mass graves.








Once we finally got back into the city, we turned our car back in.....and headed into the French Quarter for dinner.





Awesome, insane, wonderful Italian food. My mouth still waters at the thought of it!!


Mot apparently doesn't enjoy Cannoli.

After we left the restaurant, we wandered the Quarter a little more......


This is where the boys met.

......then headed back to the hotel for bed.



Good night New Orleans.

(to be cont)

New Orleans In October - part 1

OK...I couldn't wait until Monday...I'm posting the first part of our New Orleans trip today!!!!!!


10/20/10

So far, October had been a busy month. Springbook, the Des Moines Half Marathon.....and the third weekend was NEW ORLEANS!!!!!!!!!!

We left Thursday morning.....but started our vacation Wednesday night.

Where?

The Worm of course!!!!

Natalie was hosting a mezcal tasting. None of us are really mezcal fans, but we were still game to give it a try.







The food was marvelous.

But none of us have changed our minds about mezcal. :-)

10/21/10

Thursday morning the boys stopped to pick us up, and we headed to the airport.

Getting through security took a little longer than usual.

I was standing there, waiting for my camera bag to come through the xray machine.

Waiting...and waiting...and waiting.

Finally, the grouchy looking TSA lady came over and asked me "Is this your bag?"

I smiled, "Yep."

She frowned.

Uh oh.

"Is THIS yours too?"

I started laughing at what she held up and yelled over at Mot, who was coming through the metal detector "Honey!!! They found it!!!!!!"

Now that I think back, what I said probably didn't sound the best.

What I meant was "Honey, you know that pocket knife I lost two years ago...that we looked and looked and looked for? It was in my camera bag and they found it!!!!"

It was about then I realized that as quickly as they had found it, they were going to take it away.

NNNNooooooo!!!!!!

I asked the nice looking TSA man if we could have it, he said no (I had to ask).

So Mot took it, and was led back through security, ran up to the bookstore, found the most inappropriate greeting card he could, and mailed it home....then came running back down to security.

We all waited patiently.



:-)

The flight was late.....delayed for some sort of mechanical issue. But we eventually (with a layover in St. Louis) made it to New Orleans.


My first ever taxi ride. :-)

Our hotel was within walking distance of the French Quarter. Not a short walk, but a nice walk.

We arrived at the front desk, told them our names and got "the look" from the front desk attendant.

Uh oh.

It seems there was a problem with our reserved two-bedroom suite.

British Petroleum (BP) was still in town cleaning up a little mess they'd made earlier in the year (sigh)...and our hotel had over booked the suite.

We were told we had rooms at another hotel waiting for us.

Back into the taxi.

The second taxi guy was only driving a car, not a mini van...and his trunk was FULL of flats of soda, a guitar case, lots of garbage, and misc papers.

4 of us, all of our luggage, and every personal possession this guy owns had to fit.

(sigh)

Once we reached our second hotel (this one directly across the street from the French Quarter), we were handed our second round of bad news.

Apparently they had one room for us....not two.

A king size bed, and a pull out couch.

For the 4 of us.

For 4 days.

Every hotel in the city was booked (overbooked actually), and that was all there was.

Hmmmmm........

We unloaded our luggage in our ONE room, and immediately left. :-)

All four of us were starving so we stopped at the Gumbo Shop for a late lunch/early dinner.



From there we walked up and down Bourbon Street for a while....


...headed over to check out the river.....


...walked down some other misc streets in the Quarter.....


...stopped for a Hurricane dacquiri.....

....checked in at a few blues bars.....did a little window shopping.......and ultimately ended up at Fritzels European Jazz Club.

What a riot!!!!

I took a video that night, but am having technical difficulties and am unable to upload. But after doing some looking on YouTube, I found this video filmed the NIGHT WE WERE THERE!!!! I knew it existed...I watched the lady film it. It's of the piano player.....crazy good. Plus, the piano they were using had 4 or 5 keys that weren't operational, so I can only imagine what it would have sounded like on a fully functional instrument.

Every single person in the ensemble was insane!!! The piano player was a younger guy in a goofy hat...huge grin.....mad piano playing skills....and a great (and unique) voice.

The clarinet player was a typical clarinet player. Awesome skills....and an eccentric personality. Definitely the leader of the group.

The drum player didn't look like he went with the rest of the group....but boy could he play...and sing!!!!

The upright bass player was a cutey patutey.....who not only was a great musician...but a great performer.




This was taken just before Mot leaned back and knocked over the drink of the lady sitting there behind him. :-)

In his defense....they had 10 of us sitting around a table for 6. The place was more than packed.

After the show, we wandered around the Quarter some more.......





...then headed back to the hotel for bed.



I got very little sleep. All three of the boys are snorers. :-)

Good night New Orleans!!

(to be cont)

Bless Me Bloggers......For I Have Sinned.....

....it's been over one month since my last post.

And that one really doesn't even count.

My hard drive crashed. It crashed hard.

All pictures taken since I'd last backed it up......

....gone.

When was that, you ask??

October.

No wait...that's not the worst part.

October 2009.

(sigh)

So....pictures for one full year are gone.

Unless I want to pay this data retrieval company $600 to get them back for me.

Yeah, that's allot of money.

I think I'll pass.

Until I win the lottery, that is.

(or unless any of you out there are master data retrievers....or have one on retainer)

So......the good news is that I DO have pics from October 2010 to current on a flash drive.

So...starting Monday......I'm going to get you all up to date on what Mot and Nej have been up to for the last 4 months.

Hotel bed jumping, New Orleans, super heroes, turkey trots, snow storms.......

Stay tuned!!!

Houston, We Have a Problem

So...I've been a slacker the last month (OK, two months). I have a Halloween post to do, I have a Thanksgiving post to do, and I also have a trip to New Orleans to write about. Plus assorted other misc weekends thrown in there in between.

Now that I'm finally able to find the time to do compose....my computer has died.

My home computer is currently in surgery, in the trusty and skilled hands of my work IT hero, Paul.

He's a skilled surgeon....but the prognosis is not good.

"But Nej, you're obviously able to post from another computer, what's the hold up?"

All of my pictures are on my laptop. ALL. OF. MY. PICTURES.

And you all know how many pictures I take.

"Don't you back up your pictures? When's the last time you've done it. There can't be that many missing, right??"

(mumbling) I last backed it up this summer sometime...or maybe it was this spring.

Crap, I don't even remember when it was. :-)

Yes, yes...I know. How stupid could I be??? I've just been busy, and haven't thought about doing it. And now....well....I'm screwed.

I do, although, have a handy little flash drive at home, that MAY just have some of those missing pictures on it. (please keep your fingers crossed for me)

So....until I can get home and find out....I'm in mourning.

Actually, I'll still be in mourning if the pics ARE on a little flash drive....because there are many pictures I've taken between this summer and October.

(sigh)

Paul tells me to stop being so negative, and that not all hope is lost....but I'm asking all of my readers to please light a candle - heck, light a whole box of 'em if you can. (birthday candles in the junk drawer totally count!!)

As of the last report, the hard drive fixer upper program he's running will be complete in 3633 hours and 14 minutes.

(shaking my head)

Epic Fail

Did you know that if you roll a lime (while putting pressure on it) along your table or counter, you break up the insides and make it juicier?

My hands smelled fruity, and I had almost a cup of lime juice.

"Had" being the key word there.

One minute, I'm picking up the container holding the freshly squeezed juice...and the next second.....it's gone.

Well...not gone, exactly. I knew exactly where it had gone.

It covered the front of the oven, the front of the fridge, the front of the dishwasher.....it was dripping off the cabinet doors under the sink and the floor was a limey river.

Sam, our black lab puppy was sliding across the floor....paws covered with the green juice.

I'm not sure what happened. I don't know how it went from the counter to where it ended up. It all happened so fast.

I spent 30 minutes slopping it all up, wiping down every open surface.....but the kitchen still smelled of limes.

I got 3 more limes from the bowl and started over. (sigh)

This time, the juice made it to the pot on the stove.

I cooked the eggs and sugar and other ingredients until they were pudding like. I added the mixture to the room temperature 8 oz of cream cheese in the mixer bowl.

Oh crap!!!! 8 ounces??? I'm supposed to use 16 ounces.

I grabbed another 8 oz package from the fridge and added it to the contents of the bowl.

Oh crap!!! That second package wasn't room temperature.

It curdles slightly.

F%#&&@%$^&(*$

I took the contents out of the mixer and put them in the food processor to smooth back out. All is not lost.

Once all is mixed, I put it in the fridge to chill and I started making the crust.

No matter what I did, I couldn't make a graham cracker crust. How hard could it be? I'd done it a million times. But nothing I did worked. It was either too dry, or way too moist. I ended up with a sticky cement like mess.

What was my problem?????

It was about then I decided to go for a run. I needed a little stress relief, and I needed it stat!!!!

When I got back from my run, I put egg whites in the mixer and turned it on. Once the whites were forming stiff peaks, I dumped them into the chilled bowl of lime "pudding".

I stuck the spatula in the bowl and started folding in the whites.

Oh crap!!!! What the h&$@???? Half of the whites were still "snotty". Really, really snotty...and I'd just started mixing them in.

The whole process is toast.

I stood there, with my head on the cold granite counter top....fighting back tears of frustration.

I heard a noise, raised my head, and looked to my left.

Sam had her paws on the counter, and half of the crust was gone.

I quit.

Taming of the Shoes: In the Nude

Haven't done a taming of the shoes post in quite a while.

Guess I haven't gone shoe shopping in quite a while.

I must fix this...stat! :-)

Mostly Wordless Wednesday: Amuck, amuck, amuck!

"Amuck, amuck, amuck"

Name that movie! :-)

OK...here's a hint.......