New Orleans, LA: City of Jazz

Day 1: 

I arrived in New Orleans on Thursday afternoon. After picking me up from the airport, my family and I went to check out the Destrehan Plantation, one of the most well-preserved plantations in Louisiana. 

It was interesting to see how the plantations were run and what the quality of life was like (for plantation owners as well as slaves). All the employees were dressed up in historical costume, which was adorable, especially if you were our guide, an old lady who seemed half-bored by her presentation but knew an inordinate amount of information about anything and everything related to the house.

 

According to her, there will be a movie coming out called Twelve Years a Slave (also a book!) that was shot on the plantation. So that's cool.

 There were also chickens, which was unreasonably exciting. 

We may or may not have gotten beignets Thursday night at Café du Monde. Maybe it was Friday. Either way we got beignets and they were delicious and messy and delicious.

Side note: One of the great things about Louisiana for a (semi) French speaker is that everyone kind of almost speaks French. This means that in words like "café," companies and people actually understand where to put the accent and what an accent even is. Pro-tip: If you want to NOT look like an idiot, don't use an apostrophe like an accent ( cafe' or Renee' ). Better just to exclude the accent altogether. But if you want to actually do it right, here are the rules: In English (or words English stole from French), the accent is probably an accent ague, or forward slash, above an E, not beside it. If there are two Es, it goes above the first E. Renée. Café. Probably the only time you will use the accent grave, or backwards slash, in English is in Shakespearean poetry, when you pronounce the -ed at the end of words to add a syllable, as in "slashèd" (pronounced SLASH-ehd as opposed to one syllable SLASH'd). Got it? Good. Just a little lesson for you.

Sorry, I am both an English and a French major, so these things are real problems in my life. 

Moving on. Heh.


Day 2:

On Friday we woke up and hopped on the Natchez Riverboat, a windy Mississippi lunch cruise aboard an old-style steam-powered (or something?) boat (think Mark Twain).

It was quite neat (and windy). We ate soul food and learned some things about the Mississippi and its banks, such as that every one second, the river deposits one million gallons of water into the Gulf. That's a big freaking river.

After the boat, we chilled, walked around, looked at the farmer's and flea markets and all the shops, and generally explored the city. Everything there is named Jackson, for Andrew Jackson I guess, which made me chuckle.

A little later on we went on a mule-and-carriage tour led by a neat and knowledgeable local lady, who showed us everything from the French Quarter sights to the "ghetto" to Frenchman Street.

We learned that the area is called Dixieland because the original Confederate mint used to be in New Orleans, and the first note they printed was a ten dollar note. Because it was Louisiana, though, they printed the English word Ten as well as the French word Dix on the notes, but the English-speaking Americans pronounced dix phonetically instead of Frenchly, so they started calling them dixies, and Louisiana became Dixieland.

Later on we went down to Frenchman Street, a more local, musicy place (much cooler than Bourbon Street, although with just as many drunk people). We ate dinner at a cool place called Snug Harbor and then went to look at the nighttime art market next door.

 

And I saw this neat sign. 

  

AND I got this amazing poem, written by fellow English major David, one of several Poets for Hire on Frenchman, who would write poems on any subject for whatever price you thought they were worth. 

"The Life of an English Major" 

You will live inside the words of other, rooms without walls, a universe without boundaries, stories that pull around your neck like a scarf on a cold winter's night.

You will be one of a dozen who still appreciates a library.

Books will be your great love, and men will fall short of your romantic expectations.

Grammar mistakes on social media sites will drive you insane.

You will be sensitive to the thoughts of others. 

You will ask a lot of questions and be unsatisfied with most answers. 

Your life will be an endless source of storytelling material.

Then we went to listen to music at The Spotted Cat Music Club, where my Dad (naturally) started talking to these two British guys, a filmmaker and an aspiring chef, who are on a mission to taste food across America so that the chef can open a restaurant back in England. They were funny and interesting guys, and the filmmaker is from Falmouth of all places.Weird coincidences.

Day 3: 

On our last real day in NOLA, we went on an airboat tour of the bayou. We saw lots of marshmallow-eating alligators and even got to hold two-year-old Amy. 

We also learned that Spanish Moss can be processed by boiling it and removing the gray bark. Once removed, the plant looks like strands of horsehair and it quite strong. They used it to stuff furniture and car seats (horsehair furniture). 

I also thought it was interesting that they have managed to garner a population of over a million alligators, who were on the very first endangered species list, by stealing their eggs and hatching them at a specific temperature that allows for the correct proportion of males to females. They then notch their tails to mark when they were born and release around 15% of them back into the swamp, about 1600 gators. The rest of them go towards alligator meat and leather.

After that we took Austin to move into his hotel/home-for-the-summer, dropped off Gena at the airport, and went to see Star Trek Into Darkness, which was awesome. 

And that was it!

March Madness (which in my life, has nothing to do with basketball, or whatever)

This has been my face for the last month. 

So it's been a long time since I've posted. What have I been up to? 

To be honest, I don't even know. Work. Work. Work. Class. Class.  Phi Sigma Pi. Class. More work. Phi Sigma Pi. Being sick. Work. 

It's been just a little bit insane. 

But you know, I've actually done some cool stuff in amongst the stress. Let's see. 

I went to Denton 35 Festival, which was pretty cool (if crazy). Unfortunately, the first night I didn't go for very long, but then the next night it rained--a deluge like no other--and the thing was pretty much cancelled. Then the next night, I saw a couple cool bands, but I had a fever so I left early and missed the truly awesome stuff. This is my life. 

Then it was Spring Break! This meant my dad's and brother's birthdays, and this awesome otter cake my mom made. It was as delicious as it was adorable. 

Unfortunately I had to work all through Spring Break, and it never really felt like a break as I was sick and busy the whole time, but at least there was....

 MUSE CONCERT!!

It was unimaginably epic and spectacular. AAAAAAAGH! Still can't believe how cool it was. 

This is the Cellular Device Nebula located in the American Airlines Constellation, as seen from Section 318, Row H on planet Earth. 

This past week since being back at school has lasted years. 

There are a curious number of misplaced chairs around campus...Hm.

A couple days ago a balloon man came to Honors for an event! He made this beautiful octopus as well as many other spectacular balloon shapes. And I had many balloon sword fights. I won them all. >:D 

(not really)

Yesterday Jackson and I went to the Dallas Museum of Art, which has free general admission right now. We saw all kinds of old art, including a mummy and some very neat artifacts from ~2500 B.C. I wish I remembered more about each of these specific pieces, but I don't. So here, look at some pretty old stuff. 

This is a phoenix (Japanese?).

This is a weird little dude (Mesoamerican?). 

This is definitely Roman. 

This is ancient Indian. The detail here is amazing!

Then today I went with a bunch of Phi Sigma Pi people to paint pottery at Time to Kiln. I made this:

The colors look really ugly in the picture, but this is the color scheme inspiration (which I stole from the Internet, of course: design-seeds.com -- an awesome site) 

So hopefully it will turn out looking something like that. 

My "Big" (read: mentor-type-person) in Phi Sig, Erin, made a lovely mug!

She's awesome. 

 Then I got sushi and went to a bunch of meetings and bought some chocolate and studied management nonsense and now I'm writing this blog. Whoopee! You're all caught up in my life now.

Have some things!

A Jackson wearing a fringe-ful coat, next to a flower tree!

A turtle cartoon, made in times of boredom at work!

A Sheldon the Tiny Dinosaur cartoon!

And a cartoon by my brother about winning Olympic archery! I hope you don't mind me sharing this, Austin, because I think it's fantastic. 

Have a wonderful day and a glorious, chocolatey Easter! 

Da College Life. Aw Yeah.

I definitely just made a giant un-muffin in the toaster oven I bought for twenty bucks yesterday. Somehow I think this means I'm a college kid.

Other things that have defined the first week of my college life:

Watching the Republican National Convention with a bunch of cool people, including the most awesome Scholar-Family-in-Residence ever. Because being informed is our responsibility! Also, Mister Mitt McRomneyface makes me laugh. Sometimes. 

Beautiful full moons over the nighttime campus.

Homework. Blugh. 

A cute little concert on the Library Mall. 

And a big concert on the fair grounds!

A somewhat crazy concert. 

With Reggie Watts. 

And The Black Lips. 

And VIP passes. 

And giant water slides. 

Oh, and flamingos of course. 

Because what is life without some flamingos along the way?

Day 23: Liverpool, City of Beatle Pride (duh)

I went on a guided tour of John Lennon's childhood home, Mendips, where he lived for eighteen years, and Paul McCartney's childhood home, 20 Forthins Road, where he spent maybe ten years after his mother died. Both have been restored to their original 50's glory, as accurate as possible to John and Paul's homes. A neat old couple, both of whom know Yoko and Paul personally (who donated the houses), guided the tours. It was fascinating comparing the stories and anecdotes they shared with the movie Nowhere Boy (excellent movie, by the way) about John's teenage years. Though they got some stuff wrong (where were the students Mimi boarded in their house to supplement her husband's meager income?) the vibe of the place definitely came through in the movie. It made me laugh to look through the passport John used as the Beatles started traveling and seeing a young rebel with Elvis hair staring back challengingly - that part the actor portrayed perfectly. It was also neat to see the memorabilia: John's school reports (often "shows promise but lacking in effort"), a photograph from the 60s legitimately signed by all four of them, and photographs taken by the (enormously talented) brother of Paul, Michael, of their family and home life, which made me really want to get my vintage cameras working. I stood in all the places John, Paul, and George would rehearse and write in on Sunday afternoons (hm, that reminds me of someone... :-P) : Paul's living room, John's parlor, and John's bedroom, the room in which, as he told Yoko, he "did his dreaming in" as a boy. Overall, a very neat tour, but I couldn't take pictures of the inside.

The rest of my day was pretty simple: wandered, wondered what to do, got food, wandered, ended up at the Cavern Club, watched some music, wandered, got lost, went back to the room, got bored, wondered what to do, wandered, got food, ended up at the Cavern Club, watched music, came home. Now I'm exhausted, even though that doesn't sound like much, it's a lot of walking. The Cavern is not really near my hostel at all. But that's pretty much it.