Nawlins

Recently I had a business trip to New Orleans. I've traveled to the south quite a few times for work to Atlanta, Oklahoma City and Jackson so I thought I knew what to expect. I have to admit New Orleans handed me a few surprises. Sooooo, my Top 10 Most Surprising Things About NOLA (as the locals call it) are:

10. All the residual damage from Katrina... even after all this time.

9. Hearing the word "Katrina" spoken with such disdain. Katrina is also the name of my sister and it took me a little while to get they weren't all ticked at HER.

8. All the sushi restaurants and I didn't see ONE Asian while I was there!

7. The GINORMOUS mansions and how many of them there were. I could have looked at those for days and they were all different types of architecture: French, Colonial, Spanish, it was absolute eye candy.

6. The drive-thru daquiri places. My colleague said it's not illegal to have a daquiri in your car as long as there isn't a straw in it?

5. I never ONCE saw a chain store like Gap, Old Navy, even a Dillards or Macy's. We weren't able to go out and explore TOO much so they're probably there and I just didn't see them. Still, that was impressive.

4. The bridge named after an infamously corrupt politician. I have to admit I never finished reading All The Kings Men but from what I understand Huey Long wasn't exactly a saint...

3. All the Mardi Gras beads stuck in the trees and telephone poles. My colleague told me no one takes them down so they're up year 'round.

2. I braced myself for the thick accents I heard in Mississippi, Georgia and Oklahoma. Not so much... Those that had accents actually sounded like they were from Long Island. Weird.

1. It's DECEMBER and it was 81 all three days we were there! We left an ice storm in Boston!

Coming home was bittersweat. On the one hand there is nothing like sleeping in your OWN bed. Still, on the other hand it meant getting back to the office grind in the cold and dreary weather. This morning I was grousing to Brent about how I had so much stuff to do at home and not nearly enough time. Our weekend is completely booked and I feel the need to schedule in some time for sanity before Christmas arrives.

It's almost as if the Lord heard my prayer... okay my WHINE. After completing the absolute essential items on my To Do list at work we received a company wide announcement that the city of Boston had declared a snow emergency and we were shutting down for the afternoon. I was reminded of my childhood when we'd find out school was cancelled for snow. It's almost as if the Lord wanted everyone to slow down so he slowly blanketed the city with heaven's down--big, fluffy flakes of beautiful snow. Ahhhhh, life is beautiful.