Thursday night, Reagan & I joined my parents at the Hilton Garden Inn for our usual Thursday night rendezvous:
Friday morning(ish), Trey & I departed, our Gala attire safely tucked in plastic bags.
New Orleans isn't my favorite city. I ventured there frequently when in high school to watch the football state championships, but haven't made many return trips since. I don't care for traveling over water, which is one drawback to visiting NOLA:
Since our hotel reservations for the evening were in Baton Rouge, where the rates are cheaper & the shopping is better, Trey & I found a parking space & walked down Bourbon Street to the hotel of another Gala bound attorney who was kind enough to let us deck ourselves out in his room. It wasn't a long walk, thankfully, since we were somewhat conspicuous carrying our plastic bags of evening wear. Well, I thought we were conspicuous, but then, on Bourbon Street, maybe not.
Gala Bound:
The dinner set-up:
The interior of the ladies' restroom:
Photo attempt by yours truly:
Trey, always eager to rent a tux & spend a Friday evening away from his recliner:
The happy couple, Gala-ing away:
While everyone around me enjoyed the endless flow of wine (& Trey drank roughly a gallon, maybe two, of Diet Coke), I pleaded with a kind employee of the Ritz-Carlton to bring me a cup of coffee to accompany my dessert:
I took a picture of this clock while we were standing around the lobby waiting for our car at the end of the evening. It looks like something that might line the walls of the castle where the beast in Beauty and the Beast lives, coming to life to dance a jig when no one is looking. It was late, & maybe I was overly tired, but I really love this clock.
Saturday morning, we awoke in Baton Rouge & proceeded to hit some of Trey's old law school haunts. We were in the Mall of Louisiana by 10:30 that morning, & out by noon, after Trey graciously sat in the food court while I shopped, & then drug him to Dillard's to see some floor samples of the Paula Deen furniture I am obsessed with like. Remember the good old days when our local Dillard's carried furniture?
Next we hit Barnes & Noble so I could purchase a copy of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, the April selection for my book club, because there are no respectable book stores in Monroe & I couldn't find a copy anywhere (& I waited too late to order one from Amazon). Perhaps more on Rebecca later; it's an intriguing read. You may have seen Hitchcock's 1940 adaptation of it, which won a best picture Oscar.
We ate lunch at The Chimes, the original location right off campus. When Trey was in law school, I had a love/hate relationship with The Chimes. Their food is wonderful, but back in the day before the ban on smoking in Louisiana restaurants, The Chimes was always filled with smoke . . . the whole restaurant was the smoking section, seriously. It's nice now to enjoy their food without choking on smoke, & leave the restaurant smelling as fresh as when I arrived.
Next, the bookstore. It was nice walking around campus knowing Jordan Jefferson was nowhere near, & if he happened to be across town assaulting someone outside a bar, his actions have no bearing on the upcoming football season. Let's hope Bobby Petrino remains this year's off season SEC star.
Continuing our theme of enjoying awesome things we don't have locally, we stopped at Dairy Queen on the way home:
And, because life is cyclical, I focused on my chocolate dipped waffle bowl filled with ice cream & brownie bits while Trey maneuvered us toward home over the waters of the Mississippi, a special joy for me as he simultaneously ate his Oreo CheeseQuake Blizzard:
We returned home to find our girls happy as ever, both of them still avid Cheerios fans:
This weekend: Nothing.
AZ
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