March 11, 2024 – Keith Robertson

“Super human Marco!”

Julie posted a note and videos about Marco’s participation in the “Tri for Marco” mini-triathlon at St. Francis school. The competition was renamed when Marco was battling cancer.

Look at what this super-human is doing eighteen months after all that surgery. So inspirational. Marco is so beloved at his school. He still thinks he’s running an Olympic distance triathlon in Hawaii in April, and I am not foolish enough to bet against him.

Here he is completing the final running portion. Notice all the lacrosse players stopping practice to applaud him:

Swimming away from the field easily:

We had some heavy rain earlier this week, which naturally led to street flooding across the city. Our friend, Lynn, was trying to move her neighbor’s car when she was splashed by a rude driver. Her neighbor captured the moment perfectly:

Lynn reports that she was saying “Hello!” Sure you were, Lynn.

I had training and fitting for my new hearing aids on Wednesday. I really like the gentleman that tested me, fitted me, and trained me up on operation. We have great music discussions at my appointments – he had made a visit to a used record store last weekend. The devices are pretty sophisticated, with ability to choose different situations – I’m looking forward to trying out the “Noisy Environment” and “Reverberant Room” settings. Loud restaurants and bars are where I have difficulty hearing everyone.

The directional tuning might be helpful in meeting rooms – we’ll see.

I certainly noticed an improvement in the full spectrum sound when listening to music. I’ve really been missing out on a lot of high frequency information. On the drive home, the low thud from the turn indicators changed to a much more traditional clicking noise.

We watched an episode from the new season of “Somebody Feed Phil” on Wednesday evening. This one was from Dubai and had my mouth watering at every stop. The mix of cultures in that city has led to some fantastic food options.

The positive energy and enthusiasm that Phil exudes is really second to none.

The NOLA Gold rugby match last weekend had me doing a bit of research. I was trying to remember the name “Andy Irvine” (star of so many Scottish international games that I attended at Murrayfield in Edinburgh) – it finally came out of my old brain. He was such an amazing player.

During the NOLA Gold match, I commented several times that #15, the right winger, was the best player on the field. I found out who he is and, of course, he’s from Edinburgh. He had great speed and vision of the field – naturally given the amount of time he’s spent playing sevens.

Diana and I had a “Zoo Date” on Friday. I dropped off and picked up McD from her hair appointment and we headed to the zoo afterwards. Rain was forecast and we thought we could enjoy the zoo in between downpours. Right as we arrived, the heavens opened, and all the school buses loaded up and left. We traded in our library card for “free” tickets and entered into the zoo. We encountered maybe eight folks during our tour of the zoo. The first area we came across was the flamingos. They are hilarious with the extending necks. Clearly, the flamingo with the longest neck is the king of the jungle.

We went to the primate area from there.

The orangutan and gorilla were quite entertaining – the gorilla was really making a mess of his area.

The gorilla was really making a mess of his area:

We both thought the black and white Colobus was lovely –

After the monkeys, our next stop was the Red River Hogs. They were quite lively in coming to see us, and we were amazed by their wispy ears:

Next were the rhinos – such massive beasts lumbering around in the rain:

Next were the leopards – very sleepy.

The elephants were mostly hanging out by their inside area, so no good photos.

We found ourselves over by Monkey Hill, the highest land in New Orleans, and the name of one of our favorite bars, just behind the zoo.

We were lucky to end up in the “Wings across the World” exhibit as the heavens opened again. We had the entire area to ourselves. Some of the birds were free range in the area, and others in enclosures. I loved the Toucans:

This guy is an aracari, but he looks a lot like a toucan:

I think my favorite bird was the hyacinth macaw – such a beautiful colour and quite feisty:

One of the free range birds was the Argus pheasants – a very interesting bird:

Our next shelter from the downpour was the reptile house. Neither of us were excited about entering, but the challenge of finding the snakes, frogs etc, hiding in their environments was fun.

The green anaconda wasn’t hard to find:

Here’s the reason we had trepidation about entering the reptile exhibit. The black and white rattlesnake:

The last thing I’ll give you from our zoo date is the Komodo dragon – very sleepy:

As we left the zoo, I captured these pictures of the Audubon that these places are named after:

Our date continued at the Parkview Inn and the Gilded Perch bar. Callie took great care of us – hard to imagine a 22 year old carrying on a better conversation with us than she did. The Inn is very lucky to have her. Here are some pictures of the peacock above the bar and the related Muses shoes::

We met Anne at Chaise Delachaise for Happy Hour – and what a great deal it is – mussels, sliders and frites half off, as well as all wines.

I loved our happy hour. Diana got the octopus, which was delicious. We’ll be back here soon.

We started Saturday with a run around Audubon park with Laura “the gazelle.” I chose to do my run/walk , while Diana did her best to keep up with Laura “you’re setting the pace,” Diana.

In the afternoon, we went to the Kingpin for the Panorama jazz band – they sounded like something you would hear from a French café – clarinet lead and singing. Here’s a video with local celebrity, Cooper Manning, and the band:

Sunday began with a very long walk down the streetcar tracks to the Ogans on Webster. Diana got in trouble on the way back. One of the streetcar drivers misunderstood her hand signals and whistled and wagged a finger at her. Hilarious. I’m still laughing.

Now, we’re settled in and watching the Oscars. Here’s my ballot. How did you do?

We’ll see how all the ballots tabulate in the morning.

I watched “The Holdovers” several times this week until getting to the end. I love this movie, and am picking Paul Giamatti as the Best Actor – a bit of an upset, I know.

I loved this quote from the movie, “We cannot sacrifice our integrity on the altars of their entitlement.”

I finished “Come and Get it” by Kiley Reid. This was a very good book with excellent dialog – I loved the “Ohmygoodness” and “Ah didn’t know that Ah thought that way”. Very much recommended.