And Now It’s Back to Work

Yes, indeed, we made it home—we got in last night after 10 pm, and I’ve been scrambling ever since. Oy:  what a lot of catching up to do. And laundry. And cleaning up—it rained, and the grass grew, and pine needles leapt off the trees, and The EGE is out there sweeping and raking and getting ready to mow. Also killing ants and mosquitoes, who seem to believe they can take over the yard while we’re gone.

I don’t have a give-away this week—I have this idea that I’m going to work on, but it will take a while, and the next couple weeks may be crazy around here. I hope they are:  I’m hoping to do an assignment this week and then, next week—at long, long last—take apart the studio and paint. Yes! And rip up the ancient carpet and sand the cement floor and stain it. Scrap the ceiling and paint it. Re-do the shelving.

Not in that order, of course—but you get the idea. It’s going to be a shitload of work, let me tell you:  just getting the stuff OUT of here will take a couple of days, I’m thinking—and so I want to make sure I get it done before 1) The EGE starts subbing again (once school starts, they keep him busy constantly) and 2) the book comes out, which is just like—omigod!—two months. Maybe less—I need to find out an exact date, although I doubt anyone has that yet.

I do have some rants—boy, howdy!  Do you know that in the last two weeks I have seen I-don’t-know-how-many men peeing out of doors? Goodlordalmighty:  what IS it with y’all? I almost ran into this one guy—but wait:  that’s a whole ‘nother story, and it will have to wait.

Along with a bunch of other stuff, like a rant about two things:  the amount of money tax-payers spend on health care for people who 1) smoke and/or 2) are obese, combined with the amazing number of huge, waddling, chain-smoking tourists we saw everywhere. Holy crap. They don’t call us “The Fat Americans” for nothing. The Japanese tourists? The French? In fact, most of the ones who were speaking some language other than English? Pretty svelte. Well, not the ones speaking Spanish, but then they were probably just Fat Bi-Lingual Americans, so that didn’t count.

But all that will have to wait until there’s a break in here somewhere, so I thought I’d give you a few photos.  The EGE has lots more, but he doesn’t have time to get them to me yet, either. Check back, though—I’ll try be entertaining whenever I get a minute--

Cool old building in the French Quarter. I saw some people taking photos and wondered what they were seeing and moved over and looked up and, so, of course, had to take some of my own. Copy cat.

The Ever-Gorgeous Earl, carrying my big new bag (and how silly is that, to buy a bag that’s so big and heavy you have to whimper until someone else carries it for you? Oh, honeys, I bought a LOT of bags. It’s embarrassing even to mention.)

Some building that made me want to shimmy up and add two dots over the “e”

This really cool ceiling fan system in Deanie’s, our favorite seafood restaurant—we learned about it from Doreen Ketchens, who told us it’s where the locals eat. If you go, do NOT order the full combination platter. Good grief:  do NOT do that. We order the half platter and split it and STILL have food left over. The full platter would feed half a dozen normal people. Even The EGE’s brother, Putty, who Can Eat, as they say, couldn’t finish his  when he went, and he was still full the next day. Anyway:  there’s a pulley system so that the motor turns one fan, which then turns the next, and so on. Very cool.

The clock there is way cool, too. I stood up to take this shot, and a waiter said, “Hey! You can’t do that!” and I jumped, and he just  laughed and laughed.

I love these buildings across from our balcony. (They gave us an upgrade to a “junior suite,” which has the bedroom and bathroom upstairs and a much larger balcony than usual.)

A cool sculpture by the French Market across from the US Mint:

OK—check back later, and I’ll try to get some of The EGE’s photos posted. I hope~~