Mardi Gras = major holiday

Never have I seen the coffee shops closed here - but they are today. I'm giving up coffee for Lent so this was my last chance - and they deny me. Sigh.

So I made it to Zulu this morning but my back was hurting and I didn't last long. Plus some obnoxious tourists were hanging around where we were and I just didn't have the patience. So I came home and fell asleep while sitting upright on the couch. My back tends to hurt when I'm sleep-deprived, so hopefully that's it and I'll be fine for camping/horseback riding in a week and a half.

The other thing that really bugged me is that Zulu kept stopping for long periods of time and people would jump the barriers to beg for the best loot and the float riders would give it to them. All I have to do to get a gilded coconut is break the safety rules? That's messed up. And this same family kept sending their kids to every float to get stuff - running right up the floats and dammit - kids get killed that way. They got so much good stuff they were greedy and it bugged.

The problem was of course that I was too near Bourbon Street, where the tourists are, and not on St. Charles, where the locals are. Or that I wasn't volunteering. Or not with friends. The people around were nice (I was with the random Canadian) but I wasn't feelin' it. Anyway, next year Karen & Gale and lots more friends will be here (Gail, am I convincing you?) and we'll have a big party on the neutral ground (median) and have a grand old time. I met a woman yesterday whose family rents a port-a-latrine (called a port-a-let) and sets it on a trailer on the back of their pickup and they use that for the four days they have someone camped out on their neutral ground territory for the parades.

Today I saw while coming home the "truck parades" going past a main street right near me, and they were already throwing beads though it was before the start of their parade. These are the homemade floats, lots of neighborhood and professional organizations - some teachers, for example. Way fun. I definitely want to see them next year.

So, I should have a ton of work done because my day wasn't spent parading, but I don't. But if I do get some work done now I'll allow myself a trip to Whole Foods for a slice of pizza and a cookie for dinner - my last junkfood until Easter (though I may have to allow myself one beignet when Sabine & Mike are here). I went back to the gumbo place for some yummilicious catfish & boiled potatoes and the people there are really nice to me. The woman serving is I'd guess Salvadoran, and she says "babe" with the cutest accent. When I left today the woman ringing me up, Vietnamese, said, "Thanks, love" and it sounded more like "Tankluv." Their boiled potatoes were absolutely perfect.

Ay and her mother-in-law and I are going to do the Crescent City Classic the day before Easter. It's a 10k and we plan on walking it. I could walk it tomorrow without difficulty, despite what the doctor says about how quickly I lose muscle mass because of the hyperthyroidism, but I can do mini-marathon "training" for it. It's just a psychological thing for me, and I already walked quite a bit today, so psyching myself out seems to be working.