Month: September 2024

“Bayou Boys for the Win!”

Diana had the MRI of her back on Tuesday evening.   I followed that by joining the guys for trivia night at Dat Dog.  What do you know?  We won!

I contributed on a few questions – the very first one was, “Where was curling invented?”, easy – Scotland.  The guys were leaning towards Canada – geez!  We completely failed on this halftime question, lucking into one of the four opportunities:

We needed a Swiftie on our team.  She takes over New Orleans for three nights in late October.

The final question was worth up to twenty points – you have to decide how much to gamble based on the competition – we were only a few points ahead and so went all in with twenty.  The answer was a single number, made up by adding the number of major tournaments that Jack Nicklaus won, to the number of the king to whom Marie Antoinette was married, to the number of Oscars won by the original Wizard of Oz.  We came within one of the correct answer for the overall win!  Having a few different age groups represented on our team certainly helps.  I need to make the effort to attend more often as I always have a great time.

Ian McNulty, our local food writer, got my attention with his review of a brand new local restaurant, Aguasanta:

https://www.nola.com/entertainment_life/eat-drink/aquasanta-opens-in-new-orleans-with-elevated-mexican-food/article_1e1f6bd4-6fc2-11ef-ae20-23f0cd916917.html

I made a reservation for Friday and invited Denny and Anne to join us.  We started with a visit to the Old Alker distillery, right next door to the restaurant.

The restaurant is very modern and welcoming.  Service was good and the food was nicely different and creative.

The stand out dish was the birria style lamb shank, perfectly cooked:

My second favourite was the suckling pig terrine – different flavour and a great sauce:

And then the crab rice arancini.  What a yummy meal – and very well done by a brand new place.

Diana noticed that the Saturday afternoon concert series at the Kingpin started up again this week, after taking a break for the height of summer.  Jon Papa Gros kicked things off with a really enjoyable set.  Kenny and Kara joined for part of it – celebrating Kara’s birthday.

The weather was perfect for an outdoor afternoon free concert.  Typical of what we love about this city.

 

 

 

Diana invited Kara to brunch on Sunday to celebrate her birthday weekend.

I had suggested Café Amelie in the French Quarter and Diana liked the idea.  I provided a Kuber (Keith Uber) to and from the restaurant and took advantage of the close proximity of the New Orleans Athletic Club to hang out and get some exercise between drop-off and pickup.  The restaurant had moved a couple of doors down from what I remembered – the girls thought the smaller patio was actually better and had a very tasty meal.

Kara adores the band the Old 97s and we may join her and several others to watch them tonight at Tipitina’s – just depends on how sleepy we are at show time.  I’ll report out next week.

Finn and Holly just sent some pictures from their lunch at Shiawase in Allen – this is a sushi place that Finn and I used to enjoy.  Look at the Romeo and Juliet roll:

He also shared this “melon monster” from employee appreciation day:

I took a break from “The Patron Saint of Liars” by Anne Patchett, which I don’t love yet but plan to return to soon.

 

 

 

 

I switched over to “Tell me Everything” by Elizabeth Strout, which I love.  It features all the regular characters from her previous novels, and I really enjoy the way it takes time to revisit the characters with nothing crazy happening.   I’m not quite a third of the way through and things are starting to get interesting.  I highly recommend all of her books.

 

Let’s start off with something from local hero, Anders Osborne:

Alex introduced me to this band and I love them:

I have a feeling many more of their tracks will make it into these posts.

Coexist peacefully, with kindness and patience for all!

 

 

 

 

“She Said Yes!”

Finn and Holly got engaged on the beach in Galveston, TX on Monday.  They look so happy and had a great meal to celebrate their engagement and Holly’s birthday.

I’m so happy these two found each other.

I was tracking Hurricane Francine and hoping it wasn’t going to disrupt their plans.  They were fortunate as it changed paths to come directly over New Orleans.  Our new generator was online and ready to respond to any power outages – we were much luckier than most and didn’t have any issues.

The winds and flooding weren’t too bad at all in our area.  Thankfully a mild first hurricane experience.

 

We hosted an expanded Krewe for the Cowboys and Saints game on Sunday.  Everyone brought delicious snacks and had a good time.  Jeff and Merry Lee brought their “babies”, Jazz and Cali.

My lucky Cowboys jacket did not serve a good purpose, with the game quickly turning into a blowout for the Saints.  You can imagine how much fun it is to be the only Cowboys fan in a house full of Saints fans with a huge lead.

 

All I could do was spend some time with the only non rabid Saints fan – she wouldn’t declare as a Cowboys fan either (a problem!)

I really did enjoy having a house full of good friends – that didn’t happen in McKinney.

An engagement, a hurricane and a football party at the house – that’s quite a week!

My book this week, “My Last Innocent Year” by Daisy Alpert Florin, was a recommendation from Fred.  It is beautifully written, and has some big themes, just not what I expected from Fred – he just keeps us guessing.  Here’s the online summary:

“It’s 1998 and Isabel Rosen, the only daughter of a Lower East Side appetizing store owner, has one semester left at Wilder College, a prestigious school in New Hampshire. Desperate to shed her working-class roots and still mourning the death of her mother four years earlier, Isabel has always felt like an outsider at Wilder but now, in her final semester, she believes she has found her place―until a nonconsensual sexual encounter with one of the only other Jewish students on campus leaves her reeling.

Enter R. H. Connelly, a once-famous poet and Isabel’s writing professor, a man with secrets of his own. Connelly makes Isabel feel seen, beautiful, talented: the woman she longs to become. His belief in her ignites a belief in herself, and the two begin an affair that shakes the foundation of who Isabel thinks she is, for better and worse. As the lives of the adults around her slowly come apart, Isabel discovers that the line between youth and adulthood is less defined than she thought.

A coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, Daisy Alpert Florin’s My Last Innocent Year is a timely and wise portrait of a young woman learning to trust her voice and move toward independence while recognizing the beauty and grit of where she came from.”

Here’s something interesting and different from Ikebe Shakedown:

Here’s what Discogs says about the band:

Ikebe Shakedown plays with elements of cinematic soul, Afro-funk, deep disco, and boogaloo in all the right ways. The group has forged its unique sound together over four years, developing a mighty horn section anchored by tight, deep-pocketed grooves

David Gilmour has a new album out that sounds really good:

Coexist peacefully, with kindness and patience for all!

“Football’s back!”

We joined the New Orleans Athletic Club on Monday.  We toured a few weeks ago and finally took the plunge (pun intended.)  This club is located downtown on the edge of the French Quarter and began in 1872.  You can read all about the interesting history here:

https://neworleansathleticclub.com/about/history

The character and the lovely pool were big selling points for me.  As well as the reading library and bar.  I’m looking forward to becoming a regular.  Here are some pictures inside:

The club has a lot of classes each week and I think we’re going to really enjoy it.

The US Open tournament provided some very good entertainment this week – some of the highest quality tennis that I’ve seen in a while.  I was pleased to see Steve Gleason in attendance:

We watched the kickoff to the football season at Dos Jefes cigar and jazz bar.  It was so nice to listen to the Mark Coleman band, with the very talented John Fohl sitting in, while watching the Kansas City Chiefs eke out a win over Baltimore.

I treated McD to Happy Hour at the Bower on Friday afternoon.  They really have great snacks on the special menu.  Here Diana is demonstrating how to eat spaghetti for Steve – he cut his up with a knife and fork on our San Diego trip:

We went for our visit to the NOAC on Saturday morning.  I enjoyed a swim (before being ousted by the water aerobics ladies – got to pay attention to the schedule).  I treated Diana to brunch at Elizabeth’s in the Bywater area after our visit.  This is an excellent brunch restaurant – we loved our “pig candy” (praline bacon) and Florentine benedict with fried oysters.

 

After brunch, we met the boys at Cooter Brown’s for a little bit of college football watching.

Both the Cowboys and Saints had convincing wins to kickoff their campaigns – making for a pleasant Sunday all around.

I’m skipping the book and music sections for this post as I try to get caught up again.

Coexist peacefully, with kindness and patience for all!