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Email From NOLA IIb
I got bored over on Rocheblave, opened a warm budweiser and thought I would listen to Saints football on the radio but it wasn't on yet so I came over here and parked in front of Armstrong Park to check my email, I guess I'm ready to take big step and change my Netflix mailing address, hope the show your ID pickup at the Mid-City post office works as advertised (did a dry run the other day, yep they took my ID, and nope I haven't any mail, which I shouldn't of course because I haven't done a change of address) and anyway I won't be sitting here too long because it's a little too warm right now and my house is the perfect cool temperature. All I really wanted to say is--and here let me say if you can't respond maturely better not to respond at all--I just drove past the Funky Butt coming over here and they have it opened up, fans inserted inside, airing it out.
Email From NOLA IIa
Today I write from the truck parked in the FQ on St. Philip between Burgundy and Rampart, engine running because the charging device I got has an emergency shut off if the devices you are charging drain too much power from the car battery, and this morning it keeps shutting off without the truck running. That is one of the new rules. If you are driving around, have something plugged into the charger. I have with me two laptops, cell phone, mp3 player, and a very small 2megapixel digital camera. All have to be plugged in at some time in order to work.
Gas is 2.80 a gallon here. Lorina called me about 3 this morning to see if I was awake and I told her I was about to get up and pee anyway. She said gas was down to 2.29 out there in Rappahannock, VA.
No offense to Cooter Brown's Bar and Grill with its hundreds of different beer choices but it just too far away to be driving every time I want to access the Internet. I found a gay-run diner on Bourbon St. and I have been getting eggs, grits, bacon, toast and coffee breakfasts for about 8 bucks including tip. And they told me of a much closer wireless connection, just 12 blocks from the house so I'm pretty happy about some recent developments (although I wouldn't mind a couple more eggs in my scramble for that price). They serving on paper plates, coffee in Styrofoam, utensils plastic. And look, I wouldn't even mention the place was a gay establishment if they weren't constantly cracking jokes between themselves like, "yeah baby, I want some cream," and some other allusions regarding bacon, and the cashier calling his male co-workers "bitches" every time they not getting his orders out fast enough. The one female employee put some lively dance music on the jukebox this morning and the cashier/server was a little more free with the coffee fill-ups today so all in all this new breakfast place is getting high marks from me. And the breakfast is well-made, all three cooks making better than average scrambled eggs and the one of them making the eggs better than the other two. I don't know how long I can keep showing up there without being thought of as one of those wannabe homosexuals, or godforbid, an outright homosexual, but I don't guess its that much different than living in the hood all those/these years and at least part of the time being thought of as a crackhead (why else would that skinny, long-haired white boy be here), or what?--wannabe African American? You can also be a dumbass and that is what you will be whenever you think people aren't labeling you.
Yesterday one of my Rocheblave neighbors showed up with a hand truck and we moved my refrigerator and three others to the street and now there is a neat pile in front of my house and extending across the opening to the Pentecostal vacant lot--a furniture pile, a tree limb pile, a mattress pile, and a white goods (appliances) pile.
Somebody left a big mound of trash bags full of insulation right in the middle of the Pentecostal lot next to me, a hundred feet from the street, and closer to my house than any other structure, so the issue of Pentecostal debris continues.
About ten blocks in front of me is the Mississippi River and every once in awhile, down that sliver of horizon offered by St. Philip, I can see the top of super tankers floating by.
Things are feeling good right now in the FQ. I know the town has got to have those tourists to survive but there not too many these days and it feels really fine to me.
I'm starting to notice a few of "us" camping at our properties. Saw a couple of people in Treme today.
It got a little too hot sitting in the sun on St. Philip so I gave up my parking space and am back in my driveway on a perfect Fall day, sunny, breezy, upper sixties.
I've mopped my floors a few more times and bleached the little bit of mold near the baseboards in the front two rooms. So it turns out to be a lucky thing my house is not level because the back half of the house was just a high enough difference not to take any water. And the front two rooms didn't take much more than would happen if you kicked over a couple of mop buckets. My wood floors did not buckle at all. I'm still going to cut out the bottom two feet of sheetrock and insulation in the front rooms but I'm going to attend a couple more town meetings with the mayor and his crew before I do too much. There is some talk about who is going to be allowed to do what according to the elevation of your site and at this point I'm considering the option of just cleaning up a little more before any inspectors get a look at me. My water heater sits in shed outside and my AC condenser sat on the ground so the both of them need replacing, and the fridge, and that's about it. My house is good to go. I might get me a kerosene heater before its all over, and I was at Mary's True Value Hardware on Bourbon St. this morning looking for an oil lamp, so I can read at night, but they were all out.
I was a little worried about leaving all that bucolic isolation up on that hill in Rappahannock, VA., but, here in my driveway, in the middle of New Orleans, I got all the isolation a person could really use. Today, nobody around for several square blocks.
I thought I was going to tell you about this crazy blond chick and her boyfriend who followed my neighbor home the other day, offering what I considered very suspicious good samaritanism, but maybe I'll get to that tomorrow.