“Mardi Gras Week Two – Marco, Julie, Vince and Lori”
The alarms woke me on Monday morning as usual. Diana getting up to go through her routines before 8am pickleball with Laurie. I used to love this song, not so much waking me from a deep sleep at 6:30am:
Monday was a catch up administrative day for me after all the weekend one Mardi Gras festivities. Property taxes, federal tax planning, shopping returns, publish the blog, and all kinds of other mundane stuff.
We had a pleasant walk in the park on Monday afternoon to enjoy the gorgeous weather.
Tuesday is pickleball clinic morning for Diana. She did not medal in the tournament this week, but Laurie got first place with her partner! On return home, I took Miss Daisy out to do some returns – Target in Metarie, UPS store, and then my own return at Ulta using a new service called “Happy Returns” – no label or packaging required.
I had some fraud on my credit card and had to get a replacement card – so annoying and time consuming. After dealing with that I headed out for trivia. for the first time in a while, I knew one of the gimme questions. Do you know the answer to either of these for Tuesday?
We did all right and didn’t place. Here’s the final question – very esoteric in my opinion. The only one I was confident on was the number of teeth:
I felt pretty confident with an answer of “46.” Here was the reality:
“54” – not so far from “46.” But the margin for error is only 5. I was put in the penalty box.
More alarms blared on Wednesday morning. This time for the weekly run with Laurie, followed by yoga. Can you believe it was 77 degrees in the afternoon. I took advantage of the early start to go around the corner and set up the parade spot for Druids and Alla on Wednesday evening. Here’s a video of some parade highlights:
Tim joked that our spot was in a “no horn zone.” It does seem like a lot of the marching bands stop playing right when they get to us. I made this short video to show that some do indeed play as they pass us.
I did catch this little Druids ball as it tried to bonk me on the head:
Chris Peet was the starting beacon for the Alla parade and asked Diana to get a video of his Love flag bringing up the rear of the parade:
Wednesday was a perfect parade night – not busy at all, not many kids, and great weather.
I was out early on Thursday morning to set up for the Muses parade. This is one of the most popular and people are very eager to set up their areas.
We didn’t stay for too much of Muses – it gets really busy and too much for us old folks. I did see Soledad O’Brien in the big shoe and the gorgeous butterfly and other illuminated things.
Vince and Lori arrived around lunchtime on Friday and I collected Marco and Julie from the airport later in the afternoon. It didn’t take Marco long to unpack his suitcase so that he could share his fancy new Mardi Gras shirts and purple pants.
The volume in the house seemed to increase quite a bit as Marco and Diana interacted. A quote from Marco: “I’m loud because I want to be heard. She’s loud because she can’t hear herself.”
We had been invited to Miss Susie’s fancy Friday evening party and attended that for a while as our guests found out what it was like to watch parades and try to catch throws.
I can’t believe that these flambeaux walkers would be allowed in any other city. They carry a propane gas cylinder on their backs.
We attended some of the early parades on Saturday and had lots of folks meet at our house for the Tucks parade.
Marco even got to ride the Love bike before Chris Peet played his role as parade tracking beacon.
Then it was time to enjoy a late Saint Valentine’s Day lunch at Shaya, spending my retirement gift certificate.
Those grilled shrimp skewers were excellent.
The costume shop across Magazine Street from Shaya was happy to see our group as several sequined sparkly jackets and capes were purchased.
We took Marco and Julie for a short French Quarter ramble on Sunday, ahead of all the craziness of Mardi Gras day.
Drew Brees (Superbowl winning quarterback for the Saints in 2010) was the big draw on the Bacchus parade later on Sunday.
Phew! We’re skipping the book and music sections this week – way too much competition for my attention.