back home, again

Well, after nice relaxing weekend with SHG at G-Hopper's in New Orleans, I'm back home facing a seemingly monumental list of things to do around here, from cleaning to paying bills, from installing a new hard drive on my PC to replacing the dead telephone in the kitchen. It's broiling hot here, so much so that the fireants have decided it's too hot to find their own food and water and have come inside to share the dogs' food. Of course, a few stings on the tongue and the pups obliged. It's even so hot the palmetto bugs (read huge flying roaches, and not the kind you need a clip for) have begun to come inside and be devoured by the cats rather than be in the heat. SHG had a flashback.

We drove, and it's amazing how fast 360 miles goes with good conversation and no need for the radio. It was a really nice visit to NOLA, went to a party, went to a couple of bars, danced like the uncoordinated white boy I am for a while and managed to sweat most of the booze out of my system so that I could drink some more (flailing is hard work).

This weekend in NOLA was Essencefest, which though not my taste in music, looked like it was fun and popular. MO'NIQUE was supposed to be there but bowed out, so we missed that, and had she been there I would have been all over that, she's a trip! Anyway, I had my semi-annual experience of momentarily feeling like a minority, which is always a bit troubling. Driving through the Quarter with some harsh remakes of Limp Bizkit thudding along in the rolling english cottage was interesting: Essencefest-goers would look to see who was thudding in that LR, and then have a "ugh, white boys" look on their faces and move on.

Weather: It was SULTRY. Not hot per se, but SULTRY. And me all acclimated to cool-dry-air Calgary, well, I did not do well and wound up glistening the whole time. Many tourists were languishing in the street cars; I'm glad I got THAT out of my system in 1995. We needed to come back yesterday and thus unwittingly managed to avoid TS Cindy.

One additional interesting note from the trip: Many people we hung out with are oil-folks, and young. So young that they are just obsessed with the oil industry, their status within it, and all the details and drama that goes with it. To the point that it seems to simply define their lives, completely. I know I sort of went through that phase, but I am really glad that either I outgrew it or moved on. Or both.