Woooooooo! I just got back from New Orleans! We had a fabulous time eating spicy seafood and listening to great music at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival (my first music festival ever!) Five pounds and one sunburn later, here are the things I found noteworthy enough to say here:

Day 0: The Flight.
Met two guys on the plane who saw Bob Dylan at the El Rey in 1997. The El Rey! I have friends who share a stage with Bob Dylan! Wow!
Hertz guy Shawn decides to give us a hot Ford Mustang convertible instead of the Hyundai Accent we reserved. We didn't complain. Thank you, Hertz guy Shawn!

Day 1: The City.
Items consumed: Chicken andouille gumbo, fried shrimp and hush puppies, approximately five boiled crawfish, three beers, half a hurricane, half a hand grenade, and one beignet.

Day 2: Jazzfest, baby!
Items consumed: Catfish almondine, one mango freeze, approximately four boiled crawfish, one cup of vegetable soup (I've had better ;) ), and stuffed crab.
Performance of the day: Galactic with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. Funky brassy jazz rock! Honorable mention: Garage a Trois. Louisiana Heritage Stage is the best!
Also... what is it with me and older men?

Day 3: Jazzfest continues!
Items consumed: Chicken & Tasso over rice, crawfish Monica, and one very fine cheeseburger.
Funny moment of the day: Micah teases a crawfish and receives a painful reward.
Performance of the day: Marva Wright and BMWs. She's a bitchin' big-voiced blues mama. Also: Crosby Stills and Nash, and Bob Dylan! Wooo!

No breasts were bared over the course of this trip.

Emily and I, following an intensive scientific study, have determined with great certainty that Toffee is, in fact, female. See unmistakable evidence here.

"stars
in your multitudes
scarce to be counted
filling the darkness
with order and light
you are the sentinels
silent and sure
keeping watch in the night

"keeping watch in the night
you know your place in the skies
you hold your course and your aim
and each in your season returns and returns
and is always the same..."

--Les Miserables

Funniest picture. EVAR.

I gave Shirley her Les Mis ticket for free, in exchange for her guitar. It's for playing at Stephen's apartment. Yay!

So undergrad work is life sucking? As in, it sucks your life, or it makes your life suck? Heh, I guess it would be both. :P

Whose Les Mis ticket did you trade it for?

and why do you need a new guitar?

I spent the weekend in what started off as the same way as Jean's...up unitl the Thai food part. Unfortuantely, I had to get up supper dooper early on the Saturday that followed to be at school at 6am. Yes, 6am on a Saturday. This was because I was to spend the day at UCLA at a forum on diversity in graduate school. It was actually very interesting. And now, I am competely terrified of grad school! Long hours, little to zero life, and pain, oh yes, pain, I mean, my god, what kind of massochist am I? But I am still going to do it none the less, sign my life away to acedamia for another 6+ years. In fact, I might just make a career out of it. Why ever leave school if I can become a tenured professor?

And I thought undergraduate work was life-sucking.

Yay! It's been a great weekend so far. Last night I went to the crazy-freak-out-sebastian-a-bach-love-fest-rock-show and saw The Bachs officially live for the first time ever. I love them. Thai food followed, and there was great pleasure in it.

This morning, I went to Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and saw Catherine in a made-for-children performance of Humperdinck's opera, "Hansel and Gretel." The show was much fun, and Catherine was amazing, as expected. John de Lancie, who played Q in Star Trek: The Next Generation, narrated--after the show, we slipped backstage (no bouncers, amazing!) and Stephen got his autograph. Stephen was/is thrilled about it. And right now, I'm sitting on a stomach full of Claim Jumper's black tie pasta. Mmmm...

Oh! And I have a new guitar. Well, a new-to-me, used Yamaha acoustic. It came with a case, a strap, guitar polish and dusting cloth, picks, strings... you get the idea. I traded it to Shirley for a Les Mis ticket. And Les Mis is next week! I am so happy!