All posts tagged with "new-orleans"

If you can believe it, it's been a couple of years since we spent all day at a festival. Last Spring, we were away, and then this year has either been too expensive for the amount of time we could spend there (Hogs) or seemed too lame (everything in Baton Rouge).

We don't pass too many October without spending a week or two in New Orleans. We welcomed our dear friend Camilla this past weekend for a long day of being tourists. For the nightcap, Camilla and Ko went to the Taylor Swift concert in the Superdome. After picking our girl up at the airport, we dropped off gear at the house where we stayed in the Bywater. We changed and went to brunch in Mid-City (Katie's, yum) and then spent a few hours wandering around the French Quarter.

Some folks have been wondering how the new boat did during her first New Orleans hurricane. Short answer: just fine. She looks exactly like I left her before the storm. But storm-time New Orleans lakefront is interesting enough. Here's a story in pictures. And one little video at the end.

At the time of this post, we're in the middle of our Atlantic crossing. There's a lot of time for music and books, so that might be what I'm posting about for a little while.

Through most of my adult years, we've done destination Thanksgiving. It coincides with our wedding anniversary, so we've had a mix of family trips and friend meetups. We've never had friends come here -- where it's pleasant, but several times we've frozen our asses off at their homes or at some neutral location.

We spent the week of Easter on the sailboat. Almost entirely, we were tied up at Pontchartrain Landing on the lakeshore. It's an almost unknown RV Park and Marina, and not at all a bad place to hole up for a week.

My out of state friends might be lead to believe that Mardi Gras is a long weekend in February. In fact, it goes on and on forever. Technically, Carnival starts on Kings Day (January 6) every year, and runs to a date that is chosen with some relation to Easter, which we all know comes from a ritual that the Pope does featuring chicken blood and full moons. I went to public school, so that's about all I know on how Easter gets scheduled.

In preschool a couple of weeks ago, Kolya's class made gingerbread men. When they went out to play, the teachers hid them, and they told the kids that the cookies came to life, ran around the classroom, and dared the kids to find them. The kids looked all over, inside and out, and they couldn't find the runaway gingers.

On the Friday night after the bonfire festival, Mrs. theskinnyonbenny and I drove down to New Orleans for a night on the town. We had a dinner reservation at Emeril's, where I had eaten a good -- but not mind-shatteringly delicious -- meal a couple of years ago. The food was doubly as good this time. Maybe not mind-shatteringly delicious, but it was really, really damned good. So I guess Emeril has gotten back to what put him on the map: making food.

Last weekend, we got to New Orleans on Saturday afternoon. Mrs. theskinnyonbenny and I sat in a bar talking to the tourists from Baltimore and keeping an eye on the football games while we waited for our friends to arrive. We walked around the French Quarter in the evening, and once it was dark, went on one of those haunted house walking tours.

On Sunday, we went to the Voodoo Fest (or, officially, I think it's the "Voodoo Music Experience") in city park. I may tell you what I thought about the festival itself later in the week, but more importantly, I need to tell you about where we went afterwards.

The best office/work related party that I've ever been to -- and one of the 10-15 best parties of any kind that I've been to -- was an APPRO Users' Conference party at the House of Blues in New Orleans. This was probably somewhere around 6-8 years ago, but I think anyone who was there will confirm that it was a mighty powerful throwdown.

I went to Voodoo Fest this past Saturday. There was beautiful weather, and it was good to be outside hearing live music. Let's jump right in with a review of the headliners' performance:

Last week, I had the chance to attend a very unusual double header. It started with game 4 of the Hornets-Heat playoff series. Tip off at 7:00 in New Orleans arena, followed by the LSU-Tulane baseball game next door in the Superdome. he basketball game was great. We had seats on the 10th row in the corner.

Yesterday was the final day of the Mardi Gras season, and as some of my regular readers might guess, I like to catch a parade or two during the month. I admit right now that I had a crappier parade-going schedule this year than most. We had pretty consistent cold rain in February, except for the final weekend, when we were in Las Vegas.

It started with an email last Wednesday from Shelly. Yes, we went to see little people wrestling. It's as problematic as you're thinking it might be.