New Orleans

We had fun on our trip to new orleans. I left work early and we arrived in New Orleans around 3 PM. We checked in at the Royal Sonesta, a very nice hotel on Bourbon near Canal. I've stayed there before, but it was years ago. Usually, we stay with friends, or at a smaller hotel with cheaper prices, but Beth wanted to stay at the Sonesta and it was her birthday. We really don't have any friends left in new orleans since the storm. They've all moved away.
Anyway, the first night we ate at the Cafe Pontalba, one of my favorites even though it's a tourist area. I split a hot roast beef poboy with Beth and also a crab cake. The crab cake was not very good (although Susie and Beth seemed to enjoy it), but the poboy was very, very good. We then went and sat out by the pool. Later that evening we were going to walk around the Quarter and headed towards a back street b/c Bourbon was crowded. Beth and Susie refused to go any further when we saw the street was empty. I was annoyed, but the next day we did go down that street and there was a path of blood droplets that went way down the street. The whole quarter was weird, strangly empty the whole trip.
We ended up at the Pat O'Brien's piano bar, another tourist trap, but fun. We used to go to Pat O's when we were in college and either go to the piano bar or to the courtyard. The piano bar is always fun. There are two piano's and the pianists take requests written on napkins (with tip please). They sing all kinds of songs, Billy Joel, Elton John, etc. When we got there, it was late and they had just begun singing Itsy Bitsy Spider. The young (early 20's) folks in the audience were going wild over this song! We stayed till 2:30 AM, drinking hurricanes which were suprisingly strong.
The next day we went to Cafe Du Monde for beignets and cafe au lait, my favorites. Then went over for some shopping at the French Market. So much cheap crap, but so tempting to buy the stuff. I didn't buy anything. Next was Central Grocery and muffoletta's. If you don't know what that is, it's a large sandwich with italian meats and olive dressing. Legend says that muffs were created at Central Grocery. I've tried several times to get one, but they were always closed. I was successful this time and it was the best muff I've ever eaten.
We sat out at the pool at the hotel again Saturday afternoon, dodging the occassional rain shower. Eventually, it really began to rain and our plans for the evening were ruined. We ended up at the hotel bar listening to a wonderful singer, a black woman with hair red like a stop sign. She sang beautifully, Nina Simone songs and others.
My friends have a tradition of drinking flaming Dr. Peppers, so we were on the hunt for some. They consist of a shot of ameretto topped with Everclear or 151 Rum. The shot is lit and dropped into a half glass of beer. You are supposed to drink it real fast, and it tastes just like Dr. Pepper. No one would make us one b/c most places use plastic cups and others didn't want to do it b/c it might cause a fire. Whata load of crap! If the wood is so dry in your establishment, why do you allow smoking???
All in all it was a great trip. I need to plan more of these trips since N.O. is only an hour away.

Updates

Well, I went to Lafayette with photo album in hand to start the process of copying all of my college pics for my friends Rob and Jenn, who are from New Orleans and lost everything in the flood. They now live in St. Louis.
My friend Susie bought one of those copier/scanners that will copy pictures and so we all gathered our pics and copied quite a few of them. I did mine first since I was only going to be in Lafayette for the night. She bought a Cannon printer for about $130 and it worked pretty well. The scanner part didn't create very good copies of the pics, but the copy feature seemed to work fine. If you scan a pic, it saves the image and you can print out a copy. If you just copy it, it's like a regular copy machine, but spits out a picture.
Anyway, I didn't bring all of my pics to Lafayette b/c there are so many. When I got back to Baton Rouge, I decided to go buy myself a scanner/printer too. Susie seemed a little irritated when I told her I had bought one. She works for Fema and has been given some really good promotions and raises and has been spending money hand over fist. She bought not only the scanner, but a surround sound home theater, and a very nice wide screen TV. She also informed me she is buying a juke box. I'm happy for her. She is a very nice person, despite her inexplicable support for the Bush administration and Republicans in general. She always was known as a hippy chick, and a vote for Bush is not what a hippy would cast. But I digress.
I had found a $100 bill that I had saved from my birthday money, so I had some extra cash and could go buy a scanner/copier. Mine was only $90 and was HP. It works just as good as her Cannon, so it was a good purchase. Now I can copy all my photos at my leisure.
The Art Melt I mentioned in an earlier post was really great. I'm not really into art, but love free food and big gatherings of ppl, esp. good looking artists. There were some real interesting pieces of art; there were sculptures, paintings, audio/video, ballet performances, symphony performances and art car displays. They also had chicken salad, hummus, cheese cake, meat pies and seafood pies. Mmmmm! I met up with my friends and former co-workers, Suzanne, Pam and Chris. My best friend Barry was there too. He and I went and had a pitcher of beer at the Thirsty Tiger Bar in downtown Baton Rouge, after the Melt. It's the oldest bar in BR.
Well, I'd better stop writing now. Got class starting in a few. I am still in training at work. Gonna be a long road!

Been a while

Yes, it's easy to forget that I have this blog to update, so it has been a while since my last entry. Today I'm at work doing a training project assigned by our inhouse IBM guy. It is an attempt to write a REXX program from scratch. I'm usually kinda annoyed when this guy does our training because he doesn't bring it down to the elementary level, which is what I need as I'm a novice. So, I'm piling thru manuals trying to determine how to write this thing. It's really frustrating.
On a lighter note, we are going to eat at one of my favorite places today. It's a diner called Frostop, here in Baton Rouge. It was shown in the movie 'Everybody's All-American', with Dennis Quaid. They have really good hamburgers, po-boys and are famous for their home made rootbeer.
This weekend I'm going to attend the Baton Rouge Art Melt. It's an art show at the Shaw Center, with art for sale and, most importantly, free food. It's a pretty new event in the area and it'll be my first time to attend. Mom my attend with me and some of my friends from my old work place have also expressed an interest. I invited my friend Susie, but she had other plans. My friend Tim, who has had his life turned upside down recently, may attend also. Tim had his parents over to his house to visit. His dad was climbing the short staircase from Tim's garage into his house. His dad lost his footing and fell, hitting his head on the cement garage floor. He had to be rushed to the hospital with brain bleeding. Now he can't stand, he has no short term memory and has been described by Tim as having Alzheimers symptoms. He doesn't actually have the disease, but the hit on the head is causing the symptoms. So, and his sister and mother, have had to remain by his dads side 24/7. It has been a while and I think Tim needs a diversion, at least for a couple of hours.
Politically, looks like the middle east is on the verge of erupting into a bigger war. Israel is invading Lebanon and continuing their Gaza incursion. Can't say I blame them after being attacked themselves, but it's an unprecedented action and could lead, along with the Iraq debacle, to a larger problem for the US and the world. As much as I want a Democrat to win the presidency, it's going to be tough for whoever wins in 2008, with the mess that the Bush administration, and the RepubliCONS in congress have left. They really are an incompetent bunch. They can't do war; they can't fix the economy; the environment is a mess; they break the law at will; the smear war heroes. What a shame. They should be ashamed, but aren't. Hopefully, they'll be put in their place, out of office!