“Xmas parade and Meads visit”
Diana was back out in California to be with her Mom this week until late Thursday. This is an amazing sunset picture.
I went for a walk in Audubon park on Monday and made a small diversion for brunch at Tartine. Diana had told me about going there with Kara and it sounded very good. The baked eggs in brioche was excellent and I look forward to returning soon. Every plate I saw going past looked tasty.
I suggested to Kenny and Kara that we might want to attend the free concert by John Boutte in St Louis cathedral. Kenny drove down, parked us at the fire house and then we had a drink at the Pirates Alley bar by the cathedral. We got there fifteen minutes before show time and were very surprised to find the place completely full – standing room only. One can go and see John Boutte at DBA during the week and have five to ten people join you – but a free concert draws thousands of folks?
The show was very good – including a version of Ave Maria where Boutte didn’t remember all the words the first time through. The band was very nuanced and accomplished. Video was not allowed in the cathedral and so here’s a taste of Boutte’s soulful voice from Jazzfest:
We had a drink at Fives bar after the show. This is a sister to the Columns and has excellent craft cocktails.
I took this picture of Kenny and Kara on the walk back to the fire house. The city has some lights to repair on the riverfront tree.
Diana was scheduled to fly home midday on Thursday. She let me know there was a tsunami warning in place as she was packing up. What? Yes – there was an offshore earthquake north of San Francisco and they were evacuating the kids from the schools down the hill from Clorinda’s house. The warning was lifted just before McD left for the airport.
Diana made it home safely late on Thursday night.
My friend Mike Mead was in town for the weekend – his wife had a girls trip for a cruise down the Danube (tough life), and Mike and his three boys decided a trip to New Orleans would be fun – they have not visited before.
I invited them to meet me for lunch at the Columns on Friday – we had a very entertaining time catching up and revisiting stories from our past. Mike’s son, Simon, is very into music and audio equipment. He asked me if there was any Japanese style jazz playing in town. What on earth is that? He described it some more and I called Denny for input. There was a show at Snug Harbor in the evening that totally met the requirements.
Mike reports that Simon loved it. And I get ahead of myself yet again. After the Columns lunch, I invited the crew back to the house to check out my Linn audio setup and listen to some music. We picked up Diana from her hair appointment on the way. A walking tour of the Garden District ensued. And then Diana was quite happy to host the group for oysters at Superior Seafood. I had a very nice time hanging out with the Mead boys.
I heard the next morning that the boys had played poker at Caesar’s casino by their hotel until 3:30am. Just nuts!
I talked Diana into going downtown for the Christmas parade on Saturday morning.
This was a two hour long parade – over thirty floats, at least ten marching bands, many marching krewes and balloon floats like Rudolph above. Diana got quite a haul of throws, including a riding Elvii scarf and a light up ornament necklace. Here’s one of the marching groups that put a smile on my face:
And of course I’m a fan of the balloon penguin:
Diana was excited to see Santa and his reindeer:
The Meads caught the parade outside their hotel:
I got tired of standing in place and so we walked down to Canal Street to see the end of it. “We’re almost at the Roosevelt hotel, why not go in and see the lights?” What a silly idea. There were oodles of families taking their Christmas card pictures – a complete zoo. Note to self – don’t do this after the parade next year.
We got home in time to freshen up for the Happy Hour that Kenny and Kara were hosting for his brother, Andrew, and his partner Todd. Kenny was an excellent host – he had cooked up some gumbo, muffulettas, potato salad and all kinds of other goodies. It was fun getting to know Andrew better – such a good sense of humor, and the same curious intelligence in his eyes that Kenny displays.
Diana and Kara were determined to go and listen to music, the rest of us quite happy to relax – so you can guess what we did. Yep, over to the Bayou bar at the Ponchatrain hotel to listen to music.
The music was really good and the good news is that we were able to walk home. We should frequent this place more often.
Sunday started with Diana getting her second shingles shot. We followed that up with a trip to the grocery store, and now the Christmas decorations are going up. Fun all around!
I received an interesting gift this week. It’s called Bartesian and is like a Keurig machine, but for cocktails. You fill up the big bottles with whiskey, vodka, gin and tequila and then insert the pods for various cocktails. We’re looking forward to trying it out for New Year’s Eve.
I watched “Churchill at War” on Netflix this week. Very interesting series that tracks his life and decisions before World War II – did he really have such a big opportunity to avert the rise of Hitler?
After the disappointment of “Bee Sting”, I moved on to Demon Copperfield by Barbara Kingsolver. This is a modern take on Dickens’ David Copperfield and is off to a good start. Much more to come.
I’m listening to a podcast, “The Wonder of Stevie”, that I love. It covers his five classic albums from the early seventies and is very well done.
I watched a short documentary, “Only Girl in the Orchestra”, about the first lady to play in the New York Philharmonic – so well done. It featured the second movement from Beethoven’s symphony number seven – amazing.
Finally, I found a new band this week called The Stews that I like very much:
Coexist peacefully, with kindness and patience for all!
Neffie and Shaun and kids arrived on Thursday night late, on their way to New York to support another kid dancing in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. They are nuts to drive!
I gave up on “The Bee Sting” this week. I just can’t deal with the complete lack of punctuation for hundreds of pages – no periods, commas, or quotation marks. Why? What’s the point the author is trying to make? I can parse it and read it, and I persevered for a while. But no more. This is the first book that I’ve given up on in several years. Disappointing. All of you reviewers that raved about this book need to rethink your opinions!