setups blastular sedentary

 A man has his distinctive personal scent which his wife, his children and his dog can recognize. A crowd has a generalized stink. The public is odorless.

W.H. Auden

Baybee Squirrels have amazingly big feets!

It's getting harder an harder to keep this up, I keep finding things I 'need' to do before I allow myself the indulgence of a blog entry.  But I got a few things to tell you today so I am writing while my Huevos Rancheros get cooked.  All I had in the refrigerator was a batch of eggs, a couple of poblanos and some moldy cheese so there ya go.

First off, There was an unbelievable lightening storm going on at the end of the week.  I watched it move along the horizon for 15 minutes before it occurred to me to go get my camera.  Out of practice!  Anyway I grabbed it and went up to the second floor balcony where I could get it over the trees.  It went on for over an hour-  I can barely take that much drama!  But here is a short snippet of it as it was headed out to sea and wearing itself out- only 30 seconds so you don't need to go refill your coffee:

This was the night before we went to New Orleans or I would have shown you before this, sorry but I hadn't packed yet and we needed to be at the airport by 6 AM.  I was not ready.

Indeed, my first views were not encouraging

OK, now a chapter about New Orleans.  OMG, the restaurants were fantastic, every single one was such good food, even the more old-style waiters-in-tuxedos places which seem to be a bit out of touch everywhere, but I have to say I so enjoyed seeing that kind of service again.  Even the fancy places in Boston have gotten much less formal.  So we hit a good portion of the old ones, but our top pick was Clancy's which ws 1/2 hour out of the city and a month ao had to give us a 9 PM reservation.  And it was so worth i in spite o the NO fancy pretty horsey crowd-  the 6 top next to us were outdoing each other on their adventures betting $60,000 on a friggin horse and the day they made friends with Jimmy Buffet on the golf course, or at the track or who can remember all the braggadocio?  But I'll tell you it was the second most interesting thing going on, and very loudly!

When we got there, there was a fancy black limo 10 seater bus parked at the front door with a uniformed driver hanging around.  We kind of figured it was some town council dinner meeting or something, but the van was still there as we left and were waiting for our cab to arrive.  the hostess stepped outside and held the door open and a bunch of well groomed over-age rockers, in well tailored brown leather jackets and $200 haircuts, came bounding out.  I said to the hostess that it must be a rock band.  She averted her eyes and said HMMmmmmm and lit her cigarette as the last guy came through the door.  As soon as they got in the bus she relaxed some and I asked WHO?  Seems it was the whole Bon Jovi entourage.  SO, I am bragging to everyone who will listen that we had dinner with Bon Jovi!  Unfortunately he was eating on the main floor and we were upstairs in the wine room...  I missed my chance o play the tambourine like I was forced todo in 1970 on Boston Common- thought for sure they would recognize me from that debut.  Oh well.

Hey, in New Orleans they BAKE their oysters!  I have never had baked oysters and still prefer the slimy raws guys but these were the biggest oysters I'd ever seen, right out of the Gulf they promised!

This was the smallest one, I had saved it for TY but then decided I wanted it more.

This may have had something to do with it-  a Sanzerak (sp?)

Next day TY went to the WWII Museum but didn't like all the interactive 4D exhibits much.  He said there was little he could touch or get close to, and instead loves the WWII museum back in Natick and that's his benchmark.  There you get personal tours from the owner, have to make a reservation to go, and can really get involved. 

Right next door is the Contemporary Art Museum and it's in a warehouse that has been totally stripped down and the interior installed as a mini Guggenheim, a circular format with the original warehouse beams above and the brick walls as the end of the view over the white spirals.  They were having only 2 exhibits there so I got through pretty fast and headed for the bookstore/coffee shop and had a bit of a rest watching the people coming and going, and there wherever few of those.  I watched these guys for a very long time checking their internets and quizzing the poor 15 year old behind the cash register.  Seems they wanted a BOOK about one o the artists exhibiting, Sarah Marshall, and there were none.  


So they sat there and plotted how to get a book, arguing with each other, getting quite snippy, and frustrated.  But they kept drinking coffee and eating pastry so could be ignored for their marital tiff.  I fully support gay marriage but in my head all I can see is WHY?  WHY would anybody ever get married in this day and age (yeah, I know I did- but that was 45 years ago when the 'day' and the 'age' were different!)  Actually the trip to NOLA was planned as an anniversary trip, so I don't have a leg to stand on with this argument, just don't think this is the route I'd take if I could start all over again.  

Moving on-  Didn't get near the Cafe du Monde-  we went one morning and the double and triple lines waiting to get near were 3 blocks long.  


Now maybe Id wait in this line if I could get a glazed cruller, but never got my beignet, not a big problem for me since I did this trip as a carb free experiment.  s we were assessing the line we were standing on stone steps, looked down and the whole stairway was covered in powdered sugar.
It showed much better in real life.

So, time to fly home, we left the hotel (we stayed at the Ace and pretended to be hipsters all weekend-  hard to do at our age.) and got to the airport an hour before boarding so I went to look for snacks-  the only thing I found without massive carbs were a big bag of Chicharones (fried pork skin if you're not grossed out by such things) which have-count 'em- NO carbs   I stuffed it into my carryall where it nestled up against the magazine I also bought.  What a clash or worlds, eh?

The trip home was awful-  it took over 11 hours from the time we left the hotel in downtown NewOrleans to driving into our garage at home.  I was exhausted, and had so much to do to get ready for our Easter family coming in tonight.  I will leave you with one last shot, too close I know, but my new nickname I was assigned by United:

So, I won't be Sandy anymore, just call me SAND RAT.

All my apologies for being bad blogger, SandRat!