Reading: Dumb stupid bar
exam outlines. Although I did learn
that a girl in Kansas can get married
when she's 12. With her parents' consent,
of course. Boys, however, must wait until
they are 14, poor things.
Overheard: In the gate at the
New Orleans airport:
"So what happens
when some guy on a plane pulls C-4 out of his ass?
Will we have random ass checks?"
Random ass checks. That slayed me.
Trying: To keep a few New Year's
Resolutions. #1 is to take better care
of my skin. I read somewhere that every time
you go to bed without washing your face your
skin ages three days. I should look a hundred
years old by now because I almost never wash
my face before I go to bed. I only do it when
I've worn foundation, which is almost never.
But I've started doing it every night, and
using toner and moisturizer and eye cream,
because I'm 30 and the wrinkles are just
waiting to spring on me like all my blasted
gray hair.
So here we go.
First of all, I really have no right to complain about travel delays
because practically everyone else has a worse story than mine, so
we'll just skip that part. All I'll tell you is that it's a bad idea
to fly Delta when it snows in Atlanta, it's kind of embarrassing to
have a security agent see how bad you are at packing,
and I honestly seriously have
no idea how anyone got anything done before the age of cellular
telephony.
Except I get did an unexpected bonus because
Kate's flight was delayed so often that she ended up leaving
Atlanta even later than I was supposed to, so she traipsed on over
to my gate and got on my flight, which was completely
hilarious, and I remembered how much more fun it is when you're
flying with someone.
Melissa had asked us to keep an eye out for her friend Erica, who
was supposed to be getting in around the same time, and sure enough
we discovered her in the lobby (well, I suppose you could call it a lobby)
of our very quaint, very cheap hotel as we were checking in. We
deposited our bags in our room and cabbed it to the very swanky, very
uncheap hotel where Melissa and Greg were staying, and found Melissa
and Colleen in the jazz bar. Hugs all around, and then, as Kate and
I had not had dinner, we went in search of food.
Food. Food, as you may well know, is an incredibly important part
of any girls' weekend, and New Orleans is the place to be if food
is important to you.
Well, it's probably better if seafood is important to you. If you
eat no seafood whatsoever, then all there really is in New Orleans
for you is Cafe du Monde, and let me just tell you, that is enough.
I did eat alligator sausage, though. I was kind of proud of that.
But wait, back to the story. So on Friday morning, Kate, Colleen, Erica
and I met up with Melissa and Greg at La Madeleine, a fantastic
bakery and breakfast place on Jackson Square.
We meandered from there down to the French Market, and kept in
touch with Dora via
cell phone. "We're outside the toy store at the corner
of Decatur and Dumaine," I said. "I'm here, I'm here, where are you?"
I heard her cry through the phone. I scanned the busy corner until I
saw a girl with beautiful long hair frantically
dodging through the intersection
without a care as to traffic lights or right-of-ways, yelling and waving
a cell phone.
Finally, finally, I meet Dora. We have been friends
for so long, it seems weird that we are only meeting for the first
time. She is, of course, every bit as lovely and goofy and funny
and fabulous as the person I have gotten to know through desperate
clockwatcher-type mid-afternoon e-mails and phone calls.
So, yay. We continue roaming the French Quarter, stopping in all
kinds of funky shops that sold things like chain-mail bikini underwear
and miniature Weight Watchers guides. We landed at the Acme Oyster
House for lunch, and I had one big-ass poupa. (Someone has a picture
of it, somewhere, so hopefully you'll get to see it.)
At some point we went to Cafe du Monde where we met
up with Corina and Wes, who
had just gotten in, and I ate three huge giant
beignets covered in pounds of powdered sugar and my god, but they
were delectable.
I believe after this we went back to the hotel to freshen up. Then
we went to dinner at Remoulade and ate some more things, and then,
people, then we hit Bourbon Street.
Okay. I actually remember quite a bit about Friday night, considering
that I had, oh, seventeen drinks. A Hurricane here, a
Hurricane there, a shot
here, a shot there. A shot that nearly sent Corina, Kate, and myself
to the moon, powered by our own breath.
See, someone asked the thick-necked bartender what a Cherry Bomb was.
The bartender informed us that it was a cherry soaked in grain alcohol.
Okay, say Corina, Kate, and myself, we'll have one of those.
(No thank you, says Dora. Dora is very, very smart.)
He then proceeds to scoop out a full shot of the grain the
cherries are soaking in before adding the cherry itself. On three,
say we three, and down goes the shot.
Good lord. The next thing I know, we are standing there coughing, choking,
our eyes welling up, curses flying out of our mouths. I never even got
to the cherry. Sayeth the bartender: You couldn't pay me to drink that
shit. Yeah. Thanks.
All right, so perhaps the memory does fade a bit after that. I do remember
ending up at Fat Tuesday's, one of these places with a million different
daiquiri flavors lining the wall, where I probably had
a Hurricane-flavored
one. (Those Hurricanes are good, you know.) We sat and talked and I
believe I went to the ladies' room at least every five minutes.
And I would just like to report that I woke up the next morning without
even a sliver of a hangover. I'm kind of proud of that.
Saturday started off at Cafe du Monde, where I had yet another three
beignets covered in powdered sugar and a giant hot chocolate. Sadly,
Dora had to leave us to go deal with scary homeowner issues, and
24 hours with her was just not enough.
We headed over to Mr. A. the psychic in Jackson Square, and before
I knew it, Meredith,
she formerly of Humidity and Hebephrenia, showed up to join us.
Meredith is the absolute epitome of easy-going, or else she's just
crazy; who else would traipse
through a cemetery in the pouring down rain with a bunch of wacky
journalers, and then blow off a previous engagement to continue to
hang out with us? Adaptable, certainly, but also a few screws loose,
which means she fit in quite well!
We went back to the hotel to warm up and dry out; fortunately, the
rain did let up, and then we all met up at Louisiana Pizza Kitchen
for dinner, with the exception of Corina and Wes, who went somewhere
else, fancy-pants food snobs that they are.
Maybe we were old, maybe we were broke, but we couldn't really handle
another evening of Bourbon Street debauchery, so after dinner we
recollected Corina and Wes and went to the jazz lounge at Greg &
Melissa's hotel, and it was very nice to just sit down and listen
to some really fantastic music.
The trip home was, fortunately, uneventful. Kate apparently continued
her streak of bad travel luck (Delta hates me, she says,
standing in the Philadelphia airport waiting for her luggage
at the same time I am standing in the Kansas City airport waiting for
mine, despite the fact that she left New Orleans seven hours before
me) but at least I didn't have to have my shoes x-rayed.
It was a whirlwind weekend, for sure, but I still feel I had an
amazing introduction to the famous/infamous/notorious Crescent City.
I smoked and drank but did not bare my chest in exchange for beads,
which I think is a nice healthy level of irresponsibility. I bought
a t-shirt and a boa and some postcards and a mug, so I didn't go
crazy on the souvenir end of things.
And last, but not least, I met two old friends.
That alone would have been worth it no matter what.
Watching: Broadcast News.
I love this movie, so much. "There were
complaining phone calls because you were
sweating?" "No! Nice ones, worried that I was
having a heart attack."
See, what normally happens is that I go and take a fabulous trip with
the girls and then I get so overwhelmed when I sit down to write about
it that I never get anything together at all, and that is just not
a good solution.
