You know you've had a great night in New Orleans when you barely have time to rush to F&M's in Uptown from the French Quarter before the city's curfew hour hits and you still manage to bite into some tasty tasty cheese fries stolen from a friend's basket (who you haven't seen in 3 months, stupid Katrina) since the kitchen refused your order citing the proximity of the curfew.

You know you've had a great night in the French Quarter when you incite the awesome lady piano player at the piano bar in Pat O's to play "Old McDonald" (...had a farm, e i e i oooo) AND get the whole bar to sing along while you're doing the hand motions for "a cluck cluck here" and "a cluck cluck there" because she didn't know the music for 50 Cent's "In Da Club" or "Sippin' on Gin and Juice" by Snoop Doggy Dog. You also know it's great when you get the waiters (who are my dad's age) to dance to "Hava Nagila" in a big circle.

You know it's a stranger night than normal in the French Quarter when there are as many miliary police officers and national guardsmen as there are party revelers and when you look around you there are a disproportionately larger than usual number of skeezy construction workers. In fact, they're ALL skeezy construction workers who don't understand, "No, we're lesbians, we don't want to dance with you" (which was C's motto for the night as I hugged her away from men with dry wall still under their nails and in their hair). The men we tried to inappropriately dance with, the national guardsmen -- hey, who can resist a man in uniform?! -- walked quickly away from us as we laughed hysterically.

I love the "small town" feeling of the New Orleans late-night scene (it was like this before the hurricane, too), how you always manage to meet up randomly with friends. And when you're having a good time, there's nothing like the joy of "Heeeeeaaaayyyyyy!!! I know you!!!" even when you've only met them a few times before. I like having "our" spots in the city (though that list was rather large, it has dwindled to the 3 places that are open now).

In other news, I got my hair cut yesterday and LOVE having short hair again. It just bounces on my shoulders and has some layers with long bang-ish things in the front.

Thanks Jen for continually educating me about cool technology :) A link to my site feed is now in the "notes" section of my sidebar. I'm about to google "site feed" because I still don't know what it actually does..... hehe