Home from New Orleans

[damont]

montuos and I were away for almost a week. kyleri picked us up last Wednesday afternoon, and I drove The Van The Size Of France down to giselle0002's. The next day we spent 13 hours on the road, not counting stops, and landed in Metairie (between New Orleans proper and the airport) a little past midnight EDT, or 2300 CDT. fosveny was there waiting for us, having flown in from Key West the day before. Crashed in short order. Spent much of Friday greeting people as they walked in, waiting for roommates sue_n_julia since I didn't remember when their flight was getting in. Once they had arrived, a lot of us headed down to the French Quarter for drinks and dinner.

Saturday was the main day for the Known World Heraldic and Scribal Symposium. I woke up that morning with a sinus headache killing the left side of my face, which refused to go away all day. Between that, some serious stupidity on my part, and some rudeness on the part of hotel staff, I ended up cancelling the class I was scheduled to teach that afternoon. I felt (and still feel) horrible about cancelling after having made arrangements to teach it just before the program deadline. I apologize to Rory, Kat, hrldndva, and everyone who wanted to take the class. I played Triton's Stunt Double at the Principal Heralds meeting late in the afternoon. (I must remember to let Eogan know what happened!) A bunch of us ate dinner at a Thai place in the strip mall next to the hotel. The food was good. We then headed off in search of ethanol-containing beverages; once they had been obtained we withdrew to our hotel room and proceeded to consume same, inviting a bunch of other folks to join us. I think we ended up with about 20 people at the party all told (though perhaps not all at once).

Sunday morning was the usual Team Laurel Road Show, with a bit more than the usual confusion since it was difficult for the commentors present to read their own comments (per tradition). It went well though, and we were done before noon. After the first round of goodbyes, many of us headed back to the French Quarter in TVTSOFrance, with a memorable Chinese Fire Drill at a red light in downtown, baronadhemar (who knew where the parking lot was) subbing in for giselle0002. Lunch and various boozy drinks later, we went souvenir hunting. (Memorable quote which will not be explained: "More thuddy.") Too soon it was time to head for more folks to head for the airport, so we headed back to the hotel. Afterwards, those of us who remained and weren't dead tired headed back downtown one more time.

Monday came much too early, and the five of us (adding fosveny for the return trip) piled into TVTSOFrance and headed back to giselle0002's, arriving somewhere around 2530 (i.e. 1-mumble in the morning). Tuesday we finished the return trip, dropping off montuos and myself around 1600.

I'd like to go back to New Orleans some time; we can get a timeshare condo right in downtown once they've finished fixing it up from the hurricane and flood damage. This trip didn't go as well as I'd hoped: all the reasons why I *should* go kept disappearing one by one as the weekend went on. But this wasn't because of anything anyone else did; it was either stuff I did to myself, stuff that happened totally *not* on purpose, or Stuff That Just Happened (because Stuff Happens). My LJ friends can find another very brief opinion of my trip here; I won't be going into further details on LJ but might on email.