Loose Leaf Notes

1. The first sign that we were in the south while on our spring break road trip was when Joe spotted a dead armadillo in the road.

2. Somewhere driving through Alabama or Georgia, we gained an hour, which was like the gift that kept on giving and put a whole new perspective on the idea of “free time.”

3. It’s nice to be where palm trees grow and fragrant roses are in bloom. I called this one (right) “Worth the Price of Admission,” but in actuality when I stopped to breathe in its fragrance, I said to Joe, “People should smell so good.”

4. Said to Joe on our first night in New Orleans: I feel like I’m in an extended Saturday Night Live Street Scene Intro.

5. New Orleans was built on wrought iron and a lot of life happens in the courtyards.

6. Looking at the colorful cottages in the French Quarter, I said to Joe, “It’s like Martha’s Vineyard Tom Ryan style, which means something like Paris meets Jamaica.

7. We met a young photographer named Joseph Walton vending his art at the Frenchman’s Market. He looked like our Floyd friend Jade, and we bought his photo of a New Orleanean at a jazz funeral. “We’re calling him Mr. Tambourine Man until we learn his real name,” Joe later told me that he and the artist decided.

8. While in the beach town of Fairhope, where we were getting around on bikes, after drinking some beers at the local oyster bar, I asked Joe if he thought we needed a designated biker?” After our first night in New Orleans, we were leaving a club, and I joked about a “designated walker.”

9. I’m not even interested in being in New Orleans during Mardi Gras because I imagine that it’s overrated the way Times Square on New Year’s Eve is, and judging by how much action there was on a Monday night in the French Quarter, I don’t think I could handle a Mardi Gras.

10. I’m typing this under a misbelief fruit tree, according to a New Orleanean who works at the hotel we’re at. Curious, I did some research and discovered that the fruit in question is actually a mispronunciation of the French word for a type of loquat tree: “mespilus.”

11. Last night I dreamt that my six year old grandson Bryce was cutting my hair. In the dream I had to remind myself that he had done it before and did a great job. The feeling of the dream was of putting my utmost trust in Byrce and in his abilities.

12. Some good advice I came up with sometime during a car ride conversation: Sometimes the advice is ‘don’t give advice.’

13. Watch Joe dancing on Frenchman Street with the Young Fellowz, a hot youth brass band HERE.  Another look from a balcony of the street scene is HERE.

_________Thirteen Thursday