Housepants

Hello and I am pleased to tell you that my sister has begun a blog at www.housepants.blogspot.com. Please go look at it. She is a better writer than me, but probably not as interesting. It will be fun to see what she puts!

Last week I was in and around New Orleans (the Crescent City) and Baton Rouge. I will likely write more about that place later, but I'll give a very brief summary now. It has great food, nice people, and a good jazz radio station. It is filthy, smells horrible, and has bad roads.

Here is a microcosm of the French Quarter. We were driving down Bourbon Street when I noticed a lousy man jumping up and down in front of a building holding up a sign that read "BOTTOMLESS". Disgusting!

Overall, I'd give the French Quarter about an F+. You can get good food there, but you can get food just as good outside of the Quarter (I can call it that for I rode through it.)

On the border of the FQ is Canal Street. There you will find the department store formerly known as D.H. Holmes. You may recognize the name from my favorite book, A Confederacy of Dunces starring Ignatius J. Reilly. On the sidewalk in front of D.H. Holmes is a statue of Ignatius which I hugged and took pictures of. That was my favorite part! And let me say that if you like stuff that is funny and you haven't read it yet, please, read A Confederacy of Dunces. I promise that you will like it or my fake name isn't Mister Larry Feathers.

At New Orleans is a massive lake called Lake Pontchatrain (sp?). It has a bridge that is 23.9 miles long, but that doesn't have a top on it (a'la the Golden Gate Bridge, e.g.). It got me thinking about why certain bridges have covers and others don't. Certainly the covers can't be just for decoration. I called my brother-in-law who knows about all, and especially about things. I asked him why some bridges need covers. He explained a lot of stuff about wave action and seismology. I told him that it's too bad for all that stuff on account of I thought I'd discovered a new way to make bridges (without covers!). He told me that before I start discovering new bridges I need to be a civil engineer.

I'll write more crap about Louisiana later. Wait until you find out about how they give you a bowl of new potatoes instead of a loaf of bread as an appetizer at certain restaurants. Ooooweee!