Well Hello Again

I think I was a little overly optimistic when I said I'd be back to blogging in the middle of last week. Between my warring desires to be absurdly lazy because I was still off from work, and the necessity of doing things like cleaning and buying groceries, things like blogging kind of fell to the wayside.
But, whatever. Back to work, back to blogging, back to real life.
Halloween was really fun, if a bit low key because we had to catch an 8.30am flight. His former roommates always throw a raging party, and although we didn't want to drink too much because of our early start the next morning, Brian still took the chance to get a bit... silly. I wandered out to a porch at one point to find him in the middle of changing costumes with one of his friends, down to rubbing their faces together to transfer some of their makeup.
Brian was a snooty Frenchman, and I was a deer.

Kind of a 1920s or 30s cartoon deer, maybe.

I didn't manage to get any full length shots, but it was mostly about the makeup anyway.

After going to bed at about 2am, we woke back up at 5 to head to New Orleans. I have to say, don't fly Spirit. I was a cheapskate when I was booking, but worrying that they were going to notice our slightly too large personal item and charge us for a carry-on was annoying, as we not being able to sit by Brian on either flight.
Once we got there, though, things couldn't have gone better. Our Airbnb host was really gracious, and we were just a couple of blocks off the St. Charles Streetcar line. It made getting around so easy, and we just bought day passes each day because they were so cheap ($3 a person, good until 4am. Even if you just use them 2 or 3 times in a day, it's worth it).
Highlights of the trip - sitting in Jackson Square, listening to a jazz band play while a tiny little girl chased pigeons; getting dressed up and going out for a fancy French dinner; stumbling across an Anne Rice book signing at a little book store in a random residential neighborhood; catching a rugby match that Brian was really excited to watch in a great Irish pub we just happened to be passing. That, and being pretty much continuously drunk the entire time. Good times.



From our visit to a city of the dead. It was really fascinating - a lot of tombs were started between 1800 and 1850, but several of them were still in use.

Jackson Square. On a side note, I love the HDR setting on my phone for shots like this. It looks almost unreal.

Cafe du Monde for beignets and coffee.

The Sazerac Bar in the Roosevelt Hotel for sazeracs.

We did spend one day just wandering around in the French Quarter. It wasn't really on purpose - we were trying to catch the street car from there to City Park, and then just never did. We did get champagne at shrimp for dinner at an overpriced restaurant, though.

Brian was starting to get a bit goofy by our last day there. "I'm just going to lean... over... a little bit..."

My dress from our fancy dinner out. It's hard to see the details, but it's pretty smoking, and it's from ASOS and cost $30, so I feel pretty good about it.

Kind of random, but does anyone know what kind of tree this is? We saw them all over, and they are freaking majestic, and perfect for climbing.

So, that's pretty much it. I'd say it was a successful vacation - we spent too much money, drank too much booze, ate too much food that was probably terrible for us, and I don't think we would have had it any other way.