“Birthdays”
We skipped Bookerfest at the Maple Leaf this year and went to trivia instead. Denny was kind enough to bring a bunch of empanadas from Empanola over to Kenny’s for our Jeopardy warm up session. There weren’t many teams and so we split up to make two teams – I was on the Bayou Men with Mike, Kenny, and Mason. Bayou Boyz were Denny, Jack, Thom and Alex. The Bayou Men got third place whilst Bayou Boys didn’t place, and that’s all that matters. The final question? All about Pips, put these in order from highest to lowest:
Number of Pips on a standard dice
Age of Pip at the start of Great Expectations
Number of pips on the highest value domino
Number of members of Gladys Knight and the Pips
We got it all correct except for Pip’s age – Mike and I thought it was between 5 and 12, and the rest of the “men” thought it was between 12 and 21. Correct answer – 7.
I saw this funny minion on the way to my car from trivia. Finn enjoyed it when I shared with him.
This was in the Dirty Coast t-shirt shop when I exchanged my Booker shirt:
While we were straining our brains, Diana, Kara and Anne had oysters at Superior Seafood and then retired to the Chloe.
The girls are always so kind to celebrate their milestones.
I had lunch with Kenny, Ian and Mason at Mint to celebrate Kenny’s 60th on Wednesday. The Ogans plus Kelly and Fred gifted him a Jägermeister chiller and dispenser thing, so we sampled that after lunch:
There was a holiday package from Finn and Holly waiting when we got home. A fun penguin wearable blanket , beanie and some penguin earing studs:
Looks like I’ll be as warm as a penguin when we get our next dose of cold weather.
Diana started her birthday with some early morning pickleball with Laurie. I put her to work on a treasure hunt to find her gift when she got home – didn’t take too long. It’s in the middle.
Mum sent her this pretty bangle:
And she received these pretty peonies:
I took Diana to Evviva (used to be The Franklin) in the Marigny for her birthday dinner. We started with anchovy toast – delicious and not at all what you would expect it to taste like:
Merry Lee had been planning to surprise Diana after dinner but her flight was delayed and then she was able to catch an earlier one – so she joined us for dinner. Diana was quite surprised.
We shared some mussels, the girls split the pork special and I enjoyed squid ink pasta which apparently made my lips quite black.
Diana finished up with a special birthday mousse:
I give Evviva two big thumbs up – very casual with great food and service.
Back at the house, the ladies wasted no time getting into the Cristal:
Anne escaped from a Pelicans basketball game and showed up for the end of the bottle. Here’s something funny from 1997, when I first met Merry Lee:
Who are those characters?
I joined the guys at Bruno’s to watch Tulane and Ole Miss on Saturday afternoon. I had never been to this bar before, and apparently it’s been the site of a couple of stories for the krewe over the years, and has been in business since 1934. The place wasn’t too crazily busy since the game was being played in Mississippi and most of the Tulane kids were home for the holidays.
The “redemption” from the early season loss that was hoped for didn’t happen. Ole Miss had another convincing win.
Diana met me at halftime and we walked over to Friends jewelry store to pick up her Mom’s ring that was resized and had a new band added. She seems very happy with the result.
Happy Hour at Chais Delachaisse across from Friends was calling us. We enjoyed the usual half price wines, mussels, frites and sliders, with Merry Lee making another appearance. She joined us back home where we enjoyed an updated version of “The Miracle on 34th Street.”
How was Sunday football? Fortunately the Cowboys weren’t broadcast in New Orleans as they had a typical flashes of brilliance amongst horrible plays performance. The Saints, on the other had, did very well. Three wins in a row now. The rookie quarterback, Tyler Shough, had his first very promising game, and several other players (Cam Jordan, Taysom Hill) really stood out. It’s nice to see the media and the city starting to feel positively about the future for the Saints.
A couple of other interesting things that I came across this week. A fun JazzFest snow globe:
And a New Yorker cartoon that made me chuckle. The number of times I find myself in a room and wondering why I went there is definitely increasing:
A busy week resulted in me making hardly any progress on my current book. Maybe things will slow down in the coming week.
I shared the wonderful live album of Frank Sinatra at the Sands Hotel and Casino with Diana this week. This is with the Count Basie orchestra and is arranged and led by Quincy Jones. I love how effortless all of it sounds:
Some of the classic 80s production style that Quincy is known for – that slapping bass sound: