New Orleans Day 2: We Have Connections
9/26/1

We had set the alarm for 10 in the morning so that we could leave for Aisai's sister's place by 11:15. The driving directions from conceirge.com indicated that it was going to take an hour and 45 minutes and we were supposed to be there at one.

Aisai was in the bathroom when I spotted the huge spider. "Come here, look at this. But don't freak out, OK?" I said. She asked if it was an alligator. I told her it was a huge spider. Then after she saw it, I tried to take a good picture of it. I don't think I succeeded but it sure wasn't because I didn't waste enough time or film on it.

Oh, and right now, as I'm writing this, It's the next day, and I've dragged the kitchen table onto the deck type thing above the water. The fish are jumping and I'm reminded of the song "Summertime" which has the lyrics "The fish are jumping and the cotton is high." Back in Huntsville, the cotton is actually near harvest. It looks like it's covered with snow in the fields. But music wise, I've got the CD player inside softly playing the Home For The Holidays soundtrack, then next up will be Ali Akbar Khan's Journey, then, if it takes me that long to write, Beethoven's 9th. But I'll probably bump that if I'm already finished writing.

Next after the spider, yesterday morning, was a dragonfly trying to get into the cabin. He was here, on the screened in section of the deck, so I shooed him out into the open.

But the best wildlife was the Bathroom Lizard, which Aisai and I have started calling Mr. Lizardo, since he keeps popping up. Yesterday, after I had caught the spider under a clear plastic cup and put him in a spaghetti pot with a lid, I caught the lizard in a similar cup and just left him sitting on that lid. Everyone would be set free at the same time. The spider was big enough to lift his cup, but the lizard clearly wasn't.

We had pop tarts for breakfast. We had woken up naturally at nine so at ten when the alarm went off we actually started getting ready. And rather than it being warm out, as Aisai's sister Longwinded always told us how much hotter Louisiana was than Alabama, it was actually very cool. And for some reason, it seems this cabin has no heater.

We left the cabin at 10:45 and decided to go by McDonald's and get some food on the way out of town. Westwego didn't look so scary in the daylight, but still had a lot of foot traffic. We're not used to foot traffic since Huntsville is more of a driving city. Plus, many of the buildings were designed to look very old and run down, when they actually weren't.

We had to go back to the cabin to get the gift certificates for Brad, Longwinded's husband. And let me just make this easier on myself, for those playing the home game, Longwinded's name is really Carol, and for the rest of this, I'll be calling her that.

On the way to Carol and Brad's, we were up on a big bridge called the Huey P. Long Bridge. Actually, we were up on it for longer than we wanted since they were doing construction. After a while, Aisai noticed that the Kronos was overheating again. It's been doing that if I run the AC and sit over hot pavement. The Kronos dealer said that I shouldn't worry about it unless it happens again when I mentioned it to them. Grrr. I think I need to take it to Performance Automotive of Madison, but...oh, I just don't know. In any case, hot engine, so I cut off the engine and we roll down the windows. I then notice that I wasn't the first person to do this. Some people are standing outside their car looking around. I pop out with the camera and take some pictures that I hope will come out well. Ha ha, adventure.

When we started getting close to their place, Aisai remembered that we forgot Mac's bag that he left at the house of Aisai's mom, his grandmother.

When Brad got home from his college at around two, we didn't really know where to go. They asked us where they wanted us to take them, but we told them we didn't have any idea. Brad drove us, meaning Aisai, their kids, Mac and Grace, Carol, and me, around showing us different places. We went to an old boat dock area on Lake Ponchatrain, then back over the Causeway to a SnoBall stand which has a flavor that no other SnoBall stand has, Ultra Strawberry.

Now, in Huntsville, we don't have permanent SnoCone, or Hawaiian Shave Ice, or whatever, stands. They show up, they shut down at the end of the season and usually if you see one at a location one year, there won't be one there the next year. But this SnoBall place had been open for 35 years. Brad grew up in the neighborhood, in fact. Carol bought sausages next door at Giovanni's, which is owned by Brad's uncle and his uncle's nephew.

The Ultra Strawberry was made of real strawberries and I also got "condensed cream" on mine. Ooh, it was good. The kids got normal strawberry, which rather than having the normal for the US micro-encapsulated food coloring, it colored their mouths red. Usually this is only done in third world countries where having a red mouth [or blue] is a sign that you can afford candy.

Rather than go back across the Causeway, Brad took us around the lake. It was pretty...

Gah, a dragonfly just flew in and buzzed my head. Meanwhile, Ali Akbar Khan is being very sedate and groovy and my Tamagotchi is fat and happy, now, back to the story:

The drive was pretty, but it further added to my loss of a sense of direction. I literally thought that east was west, and this was in the late afternoon.

We took the kids by Brad's mom's house and she was full of ideas of where we could go. On our way to eat at a place called Middendorf's [and I have to look up the meaning of that in German] we stopped by Ponchatoula and saw two fairly unlucky alligators which are kept in a big cage with a pool in the middle of the town square. The town was very quaint, so I took some more pictures. I commented as I was taking the pictures that no one would ever care what they were of.

I think I'm going to see how close I can get to that dragonfly. Just to look...

...Ha. Really close. I took two pictures and I hope they come out well. One was of the dragonfly, and the other, well, also of the dragonfly but I also put my finger in the picture. I should have trimmed my fingernails, but I didn't realize that I'd be doing parts modeling today.

Manchac was the name of the town that Middendorf's is in. Brad said that he was going to order the soft-shell crab, and that you can actually eat the shell. Foolishness, I said. I ordered exactly what he did and he was right. It was kind of tasty, but the legs didn't have much meat. Aisai and Carol both got some really thinly cut catfish fillets that had the most wonderfully light batter. I really wish that Aisai's mom could have had some. She would have really liked it. This place, for reference sake, is much better at catfish than even the great Top O' the River in Gadsden.

The sun is getting on my screen. Time to re-situate. There, now I'm facing a way that makes my table completely block the doorway, but hey, I'm king of this castle. Time to take a picture of the layout. I hope those will come out well. I never brag about the pictures I've taken until I see them. I think there is a wise saying about that. Or maybe chickens.

But eating a fried crab where you can eat the shell is like eating a giant spider. Other freakishness was that on the way out, a hummingbird moth was freaking out all over the place. It has gotten much cooler in the last few days and all the insects are dying. In fact, there are no mosquitoes. Aisai and I had been teasing Carol and Brad that they had been making up all the hot weather and mosquito stuff and now we know it's always cool and sunny down in Louisiana.

When we went to pick the kids up from Brad's mom's house, we got to meet the entire family. Brad's half-brother and half-sister were there as well as his step-dad. His brother is also a big Gran Turismo fan, and has nearly ever car from GT2 worth having. I also got to see Onimusha, which isn't really my kind of game, but I think I'll have to rent it. He let Brad borrow his memory card, since Brad has a PS2 but no memory card and he can finish Onimusha in one sitting. I hate games like that. But now that I know it's short, I'll rent it.

And Brad's mother loaded us down with a big bag of Mardi Gras beads. I didn't have the heart to tell her that I think Mardi Gras is shameful and I wanted nothing to do with it. But some of the beads are nice. She gave us some rare ones that you can only get at some elitist party. So we have a bag of really nice Mardi Gras beads.

When we got back to Carol and Brad's there was a little concern that Granny [Brad's grandmother] was still not home from her thing she went to. We talked in the yard some and then Aisai and I made the long drive home. It was after midnight when we got in. The drive was really hard because my contacts had begun to lose adhesion. That happens when I'm really tired and my eyes think the contacts are an irritant.

The music we listened to that day was "Introducing..." by DJ Shadow, "All You Can't Leave Behind" by U2, then Johnatha Brooke and the Story's "Plumb", and part of my Tears For Fears mix.