Wonderful OP BioTigs! , the one and only visit I ever made to N.O. was when I was 17, you make me want to make going back a priority.
I was out and about all day yesterday, at a baseball game, then dinner with the friends we went to the game with. I got home and collapsed on the couch, holding my stomach - ate too much.
Today is JC-Day off. (just 'cause). I’ll pay some bills, go to the gym, go see the doc, then kill some time before I meet the wife for dinner.
Ok, off I go!!
I hope that as an EMT-B, I’m not expected to check cervical dilation… :eek:
I can’t say much more about this without winning the weekly TMI prize.
Good morning! What a wonderful OP, MamaTigs. We went west through Mississippi, Alabama and north of NOLA on I-10 the week after Katrina. We were vacationing in Florida when it hit, and drove back through the devastation. I’m glad to hear that it’s getting back to normal, somewhat. We’re actually considering a long weekend-type of vacation there. Lots of us still care, NinetyWt.
Congrats on the baby, LiLi! And on the apartment Nava.
I’m just sooo happy to be back at work… not. At least I can rest today! I had a rough weekend. 
(See previous MMP.)
I’m scheduled for all day First Aid/CPR/AED training tomorrow. That will be fun! I can pretend I’m Bobbio or BibKitty, training to be an EMT.
And on Wednesday afternoon I’m going to the Offshore Technology Conference. I actually recently designed some stands that our equipment is sitting on. 
I had a hand in the designs of the equipment, too.
Well, I better get to working a bit. Have a great day, y’all!
Good morning, all!
I had a pretty relaxing/boring weekend. Did some more packing (sometimes it feels overwhelming to have to pack, as I realize that not everything is going to fit in my car-- too many books!), and saw Hot Fuzz with my dad. Afterward, we went to Carabba’s; their lobster ravioli is delicious and not a bad price either.
I barely got anything done on Sunday; the television got me sucked in with its tempting silly wedding shows and the Hitler Channel having interesting shows on lumberjacks and whoring it up in the old west. I’m looking forward to seeing an episode of their new Cities of the Underworld show tonight, as I presume it might be interesting, educational, and lacking in connection with Hitler. (I got burned out on Hitler about three years ago; Hitler’s Secret Bunker was the last Hitler-themed show I’ve watched on the Hitler channel since.)
BioTigs, great OP! I haven’t been to Louisiana or Mississippi yet, but maybe someday I’ll at least drive through the region and check it out.
Congratulations, LiLi!
Vbob, when I was in high school, our varsity volleyball coach had to explain what an episiotomy was to some of the girls on our team. Talk about a somewhat scary procedure! :eek:
Morning all! Thanks for a wonderful OP, MamaTigs. I’ve always wanted to visit New Orleans, ever since I was 9 - my dad went on a business trip there once and came back with the most amazing pictures. One day, perhaps.
Must hustle off to school, got stuff to do. :: blows kisses at everyone ::
OK, I am back up and caffeinating. I am off today, so I can just bum around all day.
Ok, I’m off and into the exciting world outside da cave. I’m going to the post office and to drop off resumes. Woo and Hoo! Later Y’all!
I’m sure you’ve already checked, but make sure your policy covers water damage from hurricanes. Many many people who thought they were insured for damage of that type up here when Isabella blow through found out they weren’t - the exact type of damage that caused most of the problems down in New Orleans.
Great OP, Mama Tigs. I’m glad you didn’t take a lot of pictures of the Mississippi damage. It would really be a downer to see that nothing much in the way of repairs and rebuilding is the new status quo down that way.
Congrats to Li-Li and Sperm Husband.
So, what else did I miss?
Welcome back. Did you regain the ability to slack on the job?
With two tropical storms under my belt in the new lair, even though I live in the Dismal Swamp, my place is high enough that the crawl space was dry the day after, both times. I’m on the highest ground in the county, and the soil is sand to boot.
OH, MY!! CONGRATULATIONS, LI-LI!!!
I am sure that you and Numero Uno husband have made a beautiful child. 
::kaff! kaff!!:: swampy, please put out that dang fahr!! It’s so smokey down here that there’s a respitory alert! :eek: Who would believe that it would travel over 200 miles and be so dense.
Huzzah, nava, on the new French Apartment. Does it have French Doors??? 
Great OP, mamatigs! I visited Nawlins almost 30 years ago and had a great time. Also got there by way of a leisurely trip along the gulf coast. As I recall, it wasn’t too long after another hurricane had hit, I think, Alabama. We have pictures of our house before and after Hurricane Charlie and you can see how stripped the trees were. They have all grown back pretty much but it took some time. Oh, and bobbio, FEMA paid for our generator. I’m just sayin…
After watchin Nature last night, I have decided that my next canine must be an xolo. Call me weird. 
I hate Mondays…
Tupug
Yeah, it’s a liitle better here now. Although the woman they hired to pick up some of my workload quit Thursday. (It’s not my fault. She was still doing indoctrination stuff and hadn’t gotten over to me yet for training. If she hated indoc, I would have killed her and stuck her head on a pole outside my cubicle.)
I know what the conditions are at your place. I’ve even seen water pool up in one of your buildings. I’m just saying that a lot of people thought they were insured for storm damage (incouding wind and rain), and the insurance companies were able to weasel out of paying up. It was a very common story in VA and NC in the aftermoath of that Cat 1 storm. If we ever get hit by something bigger, you may be out of luck.
Welcome back, Sean!
OK, that’s it, now I have to go back to dealing with feckin’ golf students. Golf. I ask you.
Hey all. I’ve been a bad MMPer, I know. Going to try to keep up with you guys this week because - hell, I’ll say it - I missed you. All of you.
MamaTigs, that’s a fantastic OP. I promise I’ll go look at every single picture later today. The trip sounds like it was a lot of fun, and a reminder about the state of living down there is never a bad thing.
LiLi!! CONGRATULATIONS. throws confetti
Not too much going on in Spatsland. Celebrated another grad student’s birthday on Friday, saw Hot Fuzz on Saturday, and other than that I have been doing work. Here, have some puns.
So yeah. Hi! waves Must eat something before class, but I’ll be checking in later, I promise.
Awesome OP, Tigs, and some great pics. I love those old homes; they just ooze that quintessential southern charm. The jazz festivals would have been fun – my dad would have loved them. (He’s a jazz trumpet player, lots of big band and dixieland stuff, though he’s mostly retired now.) And real Nawlins cuisine, that’s as good a reason to go as any. That’s probably why your leg feels so much better; your body had to get that thing healed so it had a place to put all that food. Shrimpin’ Boat[sup]*[/sup] Billy was funny. Where else can you find pink, polyester, and gumboots worn without a trace of irony all on one (presumably sane) human?
Well, I spent more time last night installing crap. At this point I’ve probably installed about half of the main core of software that we use on a regular basis. I’ve still got a few idiosyncrasies that need to be ironed out, but for the most part things are slowly returning to normal. If there’s any silver lining in all of this it is that at least the “bloat creep” has been cleaned out of my system, so functionally it’s relatively responsive and quirk-free. Not that this is much of a silver lining, but I gotta take what I can get.
My coffee this morning was less than spectacular. Would you believe they ran out of half & half? They were using 5% “light cream” (which should really just be called “heavy milk”) instead of normal half & half (10%). You can’t just use twice as much light cream to make up the difference because you end up diluting the coffee twice as much. Blah! They’d better have real cream tomorrow or I’m gonna be real upset. Miffed, even.
My co-worker is back to work more or less full-time now, though he still has to cut out early twice a week for physio. It’s a good thing we don’t have a stressful or physical job here or he’d be out for much longer.
LiLi - Congratulations on the future ankle-biter! Oh, and I discovered I really like a lot of Vietnamese food, too, when I worked with one who brought me some from a local Pho joint one day. It’s pretty excellent stuff overall, though I can’t say I enjoyed all of it. I once tried some sort of shrimp that I didn’t know quite what it was and that turned out to be whole, unpeeled shrimp crusted in salt. Not quite what I had in mind. At one place we had what he called a “fondue” – really just a hot & sour broth in a huge tureen brought right to our table on a portable gas burner and surrounded by an enormous platter of fresh veggies and meat that we dumped in the brought to cook ourselves. I had like three large bowls of that stuff, it was just that awesome.
[sub]* I can’t say “shrimpin’ boat” in anything but Tom Hanks’ voice.[/sub]
The OP is totally why I’ve had “LIfe is just a box of chocolates” running through my head all morning. I just figured out the connection.
Aerin is on my lap, and annoyed at me leaving for laundry purposes.
BooFae, I would love to load off more housework on Mr. Lissar, but as I continue to work part-time, and he’s at work all day and at school all evening, I don’t think I can in good concience. Did I spell that wrong? It looks wrong.
QD is supposed to come over around noon to rant. That should be fun.
I thought families were like chocolates. Mostly sweet, with a few nuts…
Mornin’ all. Nice recap of your trip, Mama Tiger! I’ve never been to New Orleans, but your pictures are much more hopeful than the ones Kid Kalhoun took when he went down there to aid the victims immediately after the storm. Maybe they will recover after all.
My weekend was great. Got lots of yardwork done and I also went out with my friend to take sunrise pictures of barns. http://new.photos.yahoo.com/karlen1956/album/576460762399946529
We live in a largely rural county. I was saddened by how many aluminum barns are replacing all the old wooden ones that have so much character. Some of them appear to have passed their useful years (those are the best ones to photograph!). I can’t help but wonder what the story is behind the boarded up farmhouses. Was it poverty? Were there children who didn’t want to continue the farm life and just let the place go?
All in all, a great, peaceful start to my Sunday morning.
Good morning, everyone. I’m glad you liked the OP. Bobbio, I’m glad you can pronounce Tchoupitoulas, but I notice you can’t spell it. And I second the vote for making sure you have hurricane coverage from rising water, wind-blown water, etc. – we know people whose homes were destroyed who received not one penny of insurance because some of the insurance companies are weaseling out any way they possibly can. The insurance companies are finally starting to lose some lawsuits, but it’s going to be a long haul for a lot of people to get any funding to rebuild out of all those insurance premiums they paid, apparently uselessly, all those years. So cover yer ass!
NinetyWt, we were just appalled at how little attention has been paid to the Mississippi Gulf Coast. New Orleans is getting all the attention even though the coast got the vast majority of the damage. As far as we could tell, mostly they cleared away the rubble and brought in some FEMA trailers and then it’s become the Land that FEMA Forgot. I hope the folks there can prevail in spite of the idiot Feds!
I also second the vote to have one of the Husbands do your laundry, LiLi – hey, you’ll have enough on your hands with a new rugrat, the last thing you need to be doing is running to a laundromat! Which reminds me of my mom’s tale of traveling in the early '50s to India aboard a ship with my sister, who was a year old. Mom brought along a bunch of early Pampers, which were a new product, but alas, TigerSis proved allergic to them, so with the help of the ship’s staff, they had to wash and rewash and rewash etc., the single dozen cloth diapers she’d thrown in at the last minute. With a one-year-old. :eek:
I guess I should go do something constructive now; I’ve not been able to get myself in gear this morning. It’s just too pretty a day to sit inside and work!
Morning.
Great OP, BioTigs. Glad to hear your knees are feeling better and that you had such a great trip. That’s definitely on the list of places we want to visit someday. A list that’s getting longer and longer and we haven’t crossed off even one place yet. Oh well.
I think I wanted to comment on other people’s posts, but… now I don’t remember what I wanted to say. Oh well. It’s Monday morning and I don’t think I’m quite awake yet, despite having been at work for 2 1/2 hours already. I’m not exactly productive at the moment.
Wow! Great MMP, MaternalStripedLargeFeline! I got to go to New Orleans twice many, many years ago, when I was too young (late teens) to legally enjoy it and fell in love with the grace and charm of the city. My mom was the executive secretary for a Court of Appeals judge who was on the 8th Circuit. They held court twice a year in New Orleans, and if Mom drove down it didn’t cost her anything to take me since her room was paid for by the Federal guv’mint. Just as I got old enough to legally enjoy the alcoholic side of New Orleans the guv’mint split the 8th Circuit into the 8th and 11th and mom was in the 11th, so no more free trips. Hacked me off, it did. We stayed in a really nice hotel, too - the Royal Sonesta on Bourbon Street. I still have a beautiful pastel portrait a street artist did of me sitting in Jackson Square when I was 16. I look like a “Breck Girl” if anyone remembers those old print ads.
By the way - I was allergic to the newfangled disposable diapers, too, when I came along in 1960. My mother would remind me of it at various times of my life when I was frustrating her for some reason… . She was also one of those moms who broke out the embarassing pictures in front of dates.
VB - good luck in the OB section of your training and pay attention. All three of my uncles were firefighters back when the firefighters were also the paramedics, and all three of them had babies named after them because they delivered the baby.
Pugs, I think I need an xolo - doesn’t he look like Magic?
Kai, you’ve been in my thoughts.
Mr. SCL unclogged the stoopid vacuum last night, so there is that to do today. It’s beautiful outside so the doors are coming off the Jeep to make a PetSmart run for more gooshy fud for Gwen. She is still hanging in there and seems to enjoy the gushy fud, although she’s not eating a lot.
Have a wonderful day, everyone!