Just realized it's been almost a full month since I've posted anything here, so I thought I'd do some quick catching up. Suffice it to say that April was a bitch, and not in the happy mama dog way. Workwise, April is our crunch time, and I spent the month trying to wrap up two projects while doing enough work on my other projects to keep the natives quiet. Both projects are now off my desk, so I can sit back and breathe for a minute before tackling the ever-mounting pile of projects I've been ignoring. But my point was that work kept me so tired, physically and psychically, that I pretty much crashed every day when I got home. Hence, stringing words together here was beyond me. I did have a fun month though in some respects.
* Early on, my friend Brian came to visit for a few days, his first trip to NOLA since the Sugar Bowl visit in college. We had a good time catching up, visiting restaurants, and touring the town. I also took a day off from work to play tourist. In addition to the mandatory visit to Cafe du Monde, we went to the
Southern Food and Beverage Museum, which provided lots of info about "native" New Orleans foods like po' boys, red beans and rice, chicory coffee, and jambalaya. There was also an exhibit on Elvis and food. For lunch, we tried
Bennachin, featuring the food of West/Central Africa, which was terrific. Now I owe him a trip to Minneapolis, which sounds like a wonderful respite from the August humidity.
* I finally made it to a practice session and concert for the Crescent City Wind Symphony, one of the local community ensembles. They only do 2 rehearsals before the concert and actually sight read a piece at the concert itself. Many of the other players are music teachers/professors or students, so in that respect I definitely felt outclassed, but for someone who hasn't played her flute on a daily basis in 20 years (yes, it's been just about that long since I finished high school), I did pretty damn well.
* Drove 300 miles to Birmingham to see
Wicked with my friend Kelly in Tuscaloosa. She introduced me to a terrific barbecue place (where I had a chocolate cream pie to die for), the famous Alabama stadium, and the
Vulcan, whose bum is the first think you see coming out of the observation deck elevator. That was probably the first time since moving to NOLA that I've been somewhere with hills. I'd forgotten that the Appalachians actually begin in Alabama. I've missed the views you see. The musical was incredible, and I got quite a shock because it ends differently than the
book. The ending is happier, which made me glad, though I do believe it takes away somewhat from the point of the book.
* I bought an iPod Touch because my dog-chewed, sad little Nano finally died. I wanted more of the PDA-type features than I did the ability to Twitter while I'm on the can (see the recent Doonesbury story arch to get the reference). So far I adore it.
Other than that, I seem to have slept a lot, knitted a good bit, gardened (you should see the bean plants now -- they're blooming), read, and hung out with the dogs. Can't think of a damn other thing of interest I did.
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