Happy birthday to me!

So Sunday was my birthday. I have class early on Mondays, so I didn’t really want to go out on Sunday night, but what’s the point of going out for your 21st birthday before you actually turn 21? Mary (my roommate) said we should go out Saturday night, and I lamented that then I would not be able to order a drink at dinner. Mary said we could go to a bar at midnight and get a drink then and it would be exciting. I lamented that most bars in New Orleans let you in when you’re eighteen so what would be the point? Mary told me that Pat O’Brien’s, home of the Hurricane cocktail, dueling piano bar, “flaming” fountain, and many many stories from my friends, does not let you in until you are 21. So I agreed that that would be exciting.

My friends Vaune, Johnny and Amanda came to Mary’s and my apartment at 6:30. Mary informed me that it is a New Orleans tradition that, on your birthday, someone pins a dollar to your shirt. Then other people will know it’s your birthday and they are supposed to pin more dollars to your shirt. I thought this was crazy, but a lot of strangers wished me happy birthday while we were out!

So Amanda drove all of us to Port of Call, which is a restaurant on Esplanade, on the edge of the French Quarter. They have the best baked potatoes of all time, and pretty amazing burgers, too. They don’t take reservations and the wait outside is usually about an hour… but it’s worth it. We eventually got inside and all had delicious baked potatoes and burgers.



Dinner folk, minus Johnny (who was taking the picture):
Amanda, Vaune, Mary and me. Note the dollar!


Neither Vaune nor Amanda really wanted to stay out late, so they left after dinner. Johnny and Mary and I meandered over to Bourbon St. We couldn’t actually get in to Pat O’s until midnight, and we hadn’t really planned what to do for that time, so we just walked up and down Bourbon St. for a while. Eventually we stepped in to Hustlet Hollywood, which is a really silly store on Bourbon St. It seems every single time I go to Bourbon St. I stop in there… I can’t help it! It just amuses me so much. Also our legs were pretty tired by that time, and HH has this plush couch shaped like lips and draped with feather boas, so Mary and I sat there and rested our feet for a few minutes while Johnny made a goodnight phone call to his long-distance love.

In Hustler Hollywood: Mary seriously considered buying me this hat if I would agree to wear it any time she asked.


"Death of Bachelorhood" elaborate bachelor party parade on Bourbon


Johnny and I on Bourbon St


At around 11 we went out in search of a daquiri, but by the time we chose one of the many daiquiri spots, I wasn’t feeling too great. While we were standing around outside debating what to do, we ran into Ly, another friend of mine, and so we talked to her for a bit. Then, around 11:30, our friends Culum and Stacey finally made it into the Quarter. We decided that it was near enough to midnight that we could probably convince the bouncers to let me into Pat O’s, so we headed over there. The bouncer looked at my ID, looked at me, looked at my ID, looked at the dollars on my shirt, looked at my ID again, and finally got this huge grin on his face and said, “Happy Birthday!” and let us in. All was well. We went into the outdoor courtyard of Pat O’s, which was full of colored lights and fountains and pretty foliage and well-dressed cocktail waiters, and we all ordered Hurricanes. We sat around and played a silly card game we’d picked up at Hustler Hollywood and had an all-around good time.

My first drink as a 21 year old!


Johnny enjoying his Hurricane


Silliness with cherries


One Hurricane from Pat O’s is a pretty big drink, and I drink slowly, so by the time I’d finished mine it was near one. Stacey and Culum were ready to go, and I made the executive decision to go with them, because I had a lot of homework and didn’t want to be out too late either. While we were walking down Bourbon, I saw a Lucky Dog stand. Since I hadn’t bought a drink with my birthday money (which is what you are supposed to do) I bought a Lucky Dog with it! ¼ of meat, plus chili, pickle relish, onions and mustard. A great way to end the night!



So I went out and had a fun night with friends, did a lot of traditional New Orleanian things, and still was home relatively early (for a 21st birthday) and didn’t have too much to drink… so I will actually remember my 21st birthday! It was really a perfect night.

I did homework most of the day on my actual birthday, but then for dinner my friend Rachel and I went to O'Henry's, a restaurant that serves free steak on your birthday. And it's good steak! So I had a free steak, and then the family at the table next to us heard that it was my 21st birthday, so they insisted on buying my drink (which was a very strange blue concoction), which was really cute. It was parents with children and a grandmother (named Bobbe, short for Roberta!), and the mom was all matter-of-factly explaining the importance of turning 21. The little boy was very intrigued. It was adorable.

Well now that I have shared this story with you I can be off to the rest of my day! Which mostly involves doctor's appointments, pharmacies and grocery shopping.

No me Gustav

So I never wrote about my evacuation, or my classes, but now I want to write about my birthday! So first, quick recap:

Thursday: Decided to evacuate, called home

Friday: Got on a plane at 4:30 PM to Dallas. They told us that all flights in and out of Dallas were being delayed an hour, so our flight was delayed an hour, but all the connecting flights would be delayed, too. So I got to Dallas and, of course, my flight had left an hour ago. I couldn’t get on the last flight to Boston so I spent the night in the airport, after befriending a young Loyola student named Ray. We camped out at Gate A37. I got eaten by fire ants in the night. Ray was spared.

Saturday: Got home around one, did some shopping and some laundry, took a shower, and drove to Connecticut to spend a few days with Jim and all the other UConners. Très relaxing. While I was there I went through the painful process of getting my flight home changed from Wednesday to Sunday… they weren’t even letting people back into the city until Thursday, but of course since my flight was booked by American Airlines but carried by US Airways, nobody could cancel it. Until they could. Funny, that.

Wednesday through Saturday I was in Lexington, bumming around, doing work for the classes I was missing. Sunday I flew back to NOLA, though it took me most of the day, because at one point I gave up my seat for a free travel voucher and then they said they couldn’t get me on the next flight and I would have to wait. But since they gave me a first class ticket when I gave up my seat, when I got on standby for the next flight and all they had open were first class seats, I took preference over the other passengers! So I flew back to NOLA first class. I met up with a friend at the airport, we shared a cab home, went to the grocery store (which was mostly empty) and I made dinner for another friend that evening, to help me relax.

Then I started classes on Monday. My Monday schedule:

9AM: Intro to Historical Linguistics
10 AM: Beginning with Minds
11 AM: Linguistic Field Methods
12 PM: Intermediate Italian

and then my French Senior Seminar (on French national identity) is from 4:30 to 7 PM. Long day. Especially once I started work as the “administrative assistant” of the department of Cell and Molecular Biology (they were hiring!) and I work from 1:30-4 on Mondays.

Tuesday I have an 8 AM Italian class and then a 5:30 PM Astronomy class followed by observation, and on Thursday I have just Astronomy. I’m also writing an Honors thesis. This adds up to 22 credit hours. To the intense relief of all of my advisers and loved ones, I dropped Italian yesterday. It’s the only one I don’t need to graduate. The Linguistic Field Methods class is the one I am taking for my Masters. Exciting!

I’ve been meeting with all sorts of advisers trying to figure this year out. It’s going to be complicated. But I’m done talking about all that now! I want to talk about my birthday!

Just in case you were wondering...

I have absolutely no time to post while juggling all of my academic and extracurricular commitments, but here's the latest Tulane Ike info:

"Hurricane Ike will cross western Cuba in the next few hours and emerge over the southeastern Gulf of Mexico this afternoon. The storm is expected to move across the central Gulf of Mexico. Tulane officials continue to monitor Ike’s track, which at this time appears to be heading toward the lower to middle Texas coast."

Take me back to New Orleans

So it has occurred to me that some of you might be mildly interested in hearing a bit about the New Orleans/Gustav situation. I had planned to get back into posting regularly once I was back in the swing of things in New Orleans (because, let's face it, a year in New Orleans can certainly be just as interesting and hazardous as a year in Paris). I was gearing up to get you all up to date on my first few days moving into my new apartment and starting classes, and then Gustav hit. So let's begin at the beginning! We'll get to the juicy bits (read: evacuation story) later.

The week before my departure for New Orleans is a little fuzzy. I was originally scheduled to fly out on August 23rd, which gave me only four days before the start of classes to furnish my apartment. My roommate, Mary, had already been living there for a couple of months, so she'd taken care of a lot of it, but I didn't have a stick of furniture for my own room. I also had a lot of other things to worry about - petitioning for credit for my classes, finding a work-study job, finding a second job, meeting with my academic adviser, meeting with my thesis adviser, declaring my Linguistics major, meeting with the Honors program people... so many meetings! I had managed to fit it all into those four days, along with buying a bed, picking up some donated furniture from a friend, and tabling at an event with the student health organization that I am a part of.

Unfortunately, due to a family matter, I had to change my flight to Monday, August 25th. So now I had approximately a day and a half to do all of those things.

On Monday, my friends Sarah and Carolyn drove me to Logan Airport at an ungodly hour. I had slept for a mere three hours the night before. I was very early for my first flight, but finally got on it and it took me to Atlanta (still no direct flights from Boston to New Orleans). My second flight, in Atlanta, left the gate on time but due to some pesky tropical storm known as Gustav, we had to wait on the tarmac to be rerouted around the storm, which took about an hour. Finally we took off, arriving in New Orleans about an hour late. My roommate Mary picked me up and took me to our apartment. I didn't have a key yet, and Mary had to run back to class (it was her first day of law school) so I sat around in the apartment, acquainting myself with it, unpacking, playing with the cats, and enjoying the air conditioning. After Mary got back from class we went and picked up my key from her friend. We also went grocery shopping and picked up a dresser and a desk from a friend of mine in New Orleans who is getting new furniture and decided to donate her old stuff to me. When we got back Mary had a migraine so she crashed and I started to bring the furniture in but I was very tired. Luckily some random Asian man who is our neighbor took it upon himself to carry all of my furniture up to my apartment. Very nice. I was too tired to put it together, though, so I crashed.

Miss Lily playing in the un-set-up furniture


Tuesday morning I set up my furniture and then had an advising meeting at 9, where my adviser told me that I'm doing great, I signed my Application for Degree, and my credit hour allowance was extended to a whopping 25. My laptop is currently out of commission, so I headed over to one of Tulane's computer labs. I was fiddling with calendars and checking email and stuff until I realized that my job interview was at 12 and not 12:30. I realized this at 12:01. I dashed across campus to Stern, which is a big sciencey building that I have never been in, and tried to find the department. Nearly impossible. But eventually, at 12:10, I stumbled upon the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology. I went in and had my interview. It went really well and they told me I would hear from them by Wednesday.

Miss Lily (up top) and Mufasa George Rockefeller enjoying the playground of my new desk.


After my interview I had lunch with my good friend Johnny, who I met when I was 15 at my father's college reunion and who was abroad in Japan all year, and we were joined by Jen and Laura, two girls who did the JYA in France with me.

I went home after that and a friend of mine, Ly (pronounced "Lee"), who is an RA brought, over a futon (sans frame) that one of her residents left behind after moving out. Mary and I put it up against the wall but it didn't feel very couch-like.

Mary playing with Mufasa


Then it was time to obtain a bed. This is where the real adventure begins (sort of). Mary and I hopped into the car and headed over to MattressFirm, which is where Mary bought her bed. I called my bank and upped my daily withdrawal limit to $1000, which is high as they would let me go, because I needed a bed and I also needed to pick up the stuff I had put on hold at Bed, Bath and Beyond. As Mary and I headed into MattressFirm, I mentioned to her that I could spend $450 and no more on a bed, because I needed the rest of the money for my Bed, Bath and Beyond stuff. So we went into the store, and there was only one guy working there (who turned out to be the assistant manager). We walked in, looking a bit overwhelmed, and he asked us how he could help us. I just said to him, "I'm looking for a full bed, cheap." He walked me right over to the clearance section, and pulled out a mattress, which he said was the most comfortable for its price. I tested it out, along with a couple others and he was right - it was the best one. It was $400, and the frame was $40. "Perfect!" I said, "That's exactly the right price!"

Of course, when we sat down to add it all up, with taxes and delivery, it cost closer to $550. So Mary and I scrapped the delivery idea and made the assistant manager guy promise to help us tie the mattress and box spring to the top of Mary's truck. Even without delivery, though, it came to about $475, which I still couldn't afford. Plus, for some reason, they didn't have the cheap frame I wanted. So I was talking to Mary, trying to figure out what we could do. I just didn't have the money to spend that day, and she couldn't drive me back out to the store anytime soon. We were kind of stuck. Suddenly the assistant manager just says, "How much do you have? $450? I'll make it work." And he magically made it all cost $450, including the more expensive bed frame. Just like that. And then he carried it all out to Mary's truck and masterfully tied the mattress and box spring to the top. And when I asked him if there were anyone I could call and tell what a great job he did, he said, "No, I'm the assistant manager. Just hearing that is enough." What a nice guy! I swear he would have come home with us and carried it inside if we asked.

So then we drove across the street to Bed, Bath and Beyond. They packed up all my stuff for me (including a mattress pad that was nicer than the one I'd chosen, but for the same price, because they were out of the one I'd chosen), and rang it up, but it still cost more than I'd planned, so I magically picked and chose things that I didn't really need and brought the price way down. It was really my day for being thrifty! Of course now I am going to have to go back and buy myself a second set of sheets sometime soon, but I can do with just one for now.

We headed home and the aforementioned Johnny effortlessly helped us moved my bed inside and set it up. I owe him dinner.

The rest of the night was low-key. Maybe later I'll write about the next day - first day of classes!

Mufasa on my new bed


Mufasssssaaaaaa!