We made it to New Orleans.

After a stop in D'Iberville at the Super Wal-mart (because, of course, I needed that double pack of Equate facial cleansing towelettes,) Mom, Dad, and I headed to downtown Nola for a walk.

 

After aimlessly wandering around for a couple of hours, and after I proved to Mom and Dad that I had been into nearly every bar on Bourbon Street (“This is where I learned how to salsa dance at 5 a.m.” and “This is where the police officer and his wife from the Coast hit on Beth,”) we decided to venture over to Poyndras to eat at Mother’s. Thirty minutes later, we found the restaurant. Dad’s GPS device, that he’s affectionately named “Mistress,” didn’t seem to have a handle on New Orleans, but then again, neither did we. Parking was our next issue, but thirty-ish minutes later, we made it to Mother’s and ordered our food and drinks (a Bud Light in a can for me; who knows when I'll have one of those again, right?) So we’re standing around, deciding where to sit, when the blasted fire alarm goes off. Lovely. It was actually quite humorous though, because I flashed back to my times as an R.A. when the fire alarm would go off in Miller Hall, and we’d yell at our residents for standing around and just looking at one another and not moving a muscle. I was reminded of this because that’s exactly what everyone, including the restaurant staff members, did. It seemed as though we’d rather die in a fiery blaze than be inconvenienced. And I love how, in the case of a fire alarm going off, people have to be engulfed in flames or smell a forest fire in order to evacuate. No one evacuated, and eventually the fire truck arrived to OK the building. 

Anyway, dinner was great, and we only got lost heading back to the car once. We found the hotel without incident, and Dad and I were stoked to find that the hotel we're staying at (The Radisson) has Sleep Number beds.  Seriously, who hasn't seen that infomercial and wondered what their sleep number was? Anyway, to top things off, Edward Scissorhands was on TV, so Mom was doing her thing in the bathroom and dad and I were alternately freaking out about the beds, and then the movie, when, I kid you not, a roach crawled up from behind Dad's pillow.  So I told him that a roach was about to eat his face off, and he freaked out, and jumped up and used the plastic wrap from one of the styrofoam cups provided in the room to dispose of the roach.  Then he flipped over the pillow.  We still haven't told Mom about the incident.  

I’m all set to fly out of the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International airport (in Kenner) at 11:31 a.m.  Talk to y'all soon!