Tonight, in our apartment...

Brooklyn, NY

We ate red beans and rice and raised a toast to New Orleans. There was Nutella for lagniappe.

(It is a heartwarming feeling to find that lagniappe is recognized by Blogger's on-line spell-check.)

Extra Hours

New Orleans, LA

Here's the score.

PAINTED:
kitchen
dining room
living room
den
laundry room
Jeff's bedroom
my bedroom and closet

NOT PAINTED:
1 bedroom
2 1/2 bathrooms

But I just now looked at my e-ticket home and realized that tomorrow's flight back to New York is leaving several hours later than I thought (because I am often wrong about when I am supposed to fly) and so there probably is time to paint the last bedroom after all.

...Or mom and I could drive around New Orleans taking pictures and get in one last meal at a tasty restaurant. And we could go visit Creole Creamery for desert. Or get a piece of fried pecan pie at the Camellia Grill. Or raspberry snowballs from Van's. Or sweet potato pies from Tee-Eva's...

Gone with the Breeze

New Orleans, LA

There is an internet modem somewhere in my parents' house. It's been four days since we started searching but we still haven't found it. My dad brought an extra modem home from work but it doesn't seem to be working. Maybe it's not accurate to blame the modem. Maybe it's the cable line into the house. Either way, the connection is no good.

For the moment, I'm using the citywide free wifi service. The connection comes and goes with the breeze. There might be a good five minutes of signal and then nothing for half an hour. I'm optimistic that it will be possible to post this entry, though a fortune cookie at lunch today told me not to be hopeful.

If it seems the fates are against you today, they probably are.

My hands are speckled with paint. That's what this trip is all about; painting walls in my parents' house. Today, after the grouchy fortune cookies, my mother and I picked out colors for the living room, kitchen, hallway, bathroom, and my bedroom. We ended up with seven different shades of yellowish cream. I think the woman at the paint counter who was mixing up the samples thought we were nuts. Crazy ladies, getting seven versions of almost the same color.

The central hallway is my paint studio at the moment. The carpet has been ripped out and the concrete foundation can't get too messed up if I spill anything. It's working pretty well except that the pets don't like being shut out of the space. They both pushed past me when I opened the hall door and then they walked across the sample boards that were coated with white primer. Little paw prints everywhere.

Border Crossings

Chatham, Ontario, Canada

The blog has been in a coma for a while.

I survived the intensive reading of the summer. Now I'm in Canada for 24 hours. My friend Kim got married yesterday. Photos from the wedding to come later...

This afternoon I'm crossing the border back into the US and flying to New Orleans. For the next two and a half weeks my parents and I will be painting the inside of their house.