“Carnival Time”
The clean up from our New Year’s Eve party didn’t take too long, and then we were off to Oyster Fest at Denny and Anne’s home. This is one of my favourite events of the year. Very casual, with all kinds of friends coming and going on the back patio and enjoying oysters prepared in so many ways. Denny had promised to simplify the number of offerings this year, but I didn’t see very much evidence of that. The hardest part is shucking all the oysters to start. Denny and Greg are experts:
Thom took a turn at charbroiled oysters – all good until he poured on too much sauce and caused some very high flames.
This was the first year that all five of Kelly and Fred’s kids were in attendance. What a great group:
Thanks for another great year, Denny!
The return to work on Tuesday felt a bit harsh, but I struggled through.
Jack and Mason’s 21st birthdays were celebrated at Commander’s Palace on Thursday. It’s so nice that this is just 600 feet from our new home. It’s tradition that we accompany them on this birthday lunch. The old school service never ceases to make me smile. All dishes put in front of everyone at the same time – so much coordination needed. And I’ve never seen the wrong dish in front of the wrong person.
Of course birthdays get balloons on the table and chef toques:
That’s the ridiculous bread pudding soufflé with whiskey sauce in front of Jack. Mom and Dad look very proud:
The lunch was so leisurely (over 2 hours) that I had to walk back home to take a 2pm meeting. Poor planning on my part. I won’t need to worry about that next year.
Alicia arrived on Thursday evening. Diana took her for a ramble along Magazine street on Friday morning – stopping for an Empanola empanada and then lunch at Tito’s ceviche. I met them there and shared some of the excellent ceviche and quinoa salad.
It was an early start for Alicia and Diana on Saturday. They had committed to outdoor yoga in the sculpture garden with Kenny, Kara, and Nina. It rained on Friday and was pretty cold. They sucked it up and seemed to enjoy the yoga, and the coffee and beignets afterwards at Café du Monde.
Alicia was getting restless on Saturday afternoon, and so Diana took her for a walk to Superior Seafood. She tried an oyster and ended up liking them. Maybe not quite as much as the frozen French 75.
While the girls were out, I took a final stab at fixing the freezer door ice dispenser. I had called out a high end appliance repair guy on Friday and he was zero help. Couldn’t even find the parts diagram that I had up on my computer. I rebuilt the entire mechanism from scratch and made one washer position adjustment. Success! That was a lot of work.
Carnival/Mardi Gras season started on Saturday evening (Twelfth Night.) The first event is the Phunny Phorty Phellows and the Funky Uptown Crew riding streetcars and celebrating. We walked the 100 feet down to St. Charles and enjoyed the revelry. Some neighbors had hired a brass band to celebrate with the Krewes. Here are some videos.
Alicia enjoyed the festivities and meeting our neighbours, Roeland and Jules, and their dog, Lumi.
I’m watching the Saints game as I write this. They are not off to a great start. Shortly, I’ll be dropping the girls plus Kara in the French Quarter for lunch, and coming back to watch the final Cowboys game. They win the division if they win today, besting the Eagles.
If we’re still up for it, there is a good show with Joe Krown and Papa Mali at the Maple Leaf tonight. We’ll see.
I’m almost finished with “Wellness.” Here are some passages that I enjoyed so far. This is funny because Diana has some different features in each ear:
“She insists that one of her earlobes is slightly larger than the other, and he doesn’t believe her at first, not until they get our the ruler and measure.”
An entertaining simile:
“Agatha looks at her with red, wet, puffy eyes and a balled up chin. “Nooooo,” she says. “It’s not youuuuuuu.” Her words are coming out with a kind of musical fall to them, like bagpipes deflating.”
A very good description of what I witness often at gatherings in California:
“The presence of new people in the house seemed to serve as a kind of trigger for children to get aggressively and sometimes violently attention-seeking, and the parents, perhaps on their best behavior and not wanting to discipline their children harshly in the presence of friends, would just let it all kind of happen, and the kids, testing their delicious newfound freedom, would start acting up and shouting and roughhousing, whereby the parents would become even more frustrated, and the whole spiraling thing made Elizabeth feel guilty for being there at all.”
The reason for the title:
“What they did at Wellness was test claims made by specious health-related products to see if the products achieved results any better than a placebo. Basically they were a watchdog group, a subcontractor to the FCA and FTC, sniffing out bullshit. In 2008, some of the more well-known products that had come through the lab included: the SlimSkirt, a miniskirt made of some tight, rubbery, tensile material that felt like a big rubber band around your legs.”
Elizabeth makes a fortune pitching this idea to United Airlines:
“This was the solution! Make the seats even narrower, the lines even longer, the competition for overhead space even more cutthroat – make it all famously bad and then tell people they can avoid it all and have a more or less normally below-average experience for a modest fee. Thus, if they knew beforehand that the experience would be dreadful but they didn’t pay the fee to avoid it, they would be less unhappy about the dreadful experience because, ultimately, they chose to have it. They did it to themselves.
It was her eureka moment, the moment that changed everything, the moment that led to her pitching the idea to United Airlines and collecting their fee, a fee so substantial that she and Jack could finally afford to make a down payment on a home – their forever home, out in the suburbs.”
I have a few more passages that I highlighted, but that’s enough for now. This is a very unique and enjoyable read.
A very pleasant and laidback track:
And something from the excellent Shuggie Otis album:
Coexist peacefully, with kindness and patience for all!