What a day...

My cousin Mary is getting married today - it's an interesting day to pick, I guess she wanted to take an infamous day and make it her own. Mary's having a weeklong celebration of her wedding, though, and that seems a little more like her. :) I hope they all have a good time....

Congo Square

I find this funny because there's a section of Grand Forks that they built in the late '90s, or the '00s called the "Congressional Square" that my uncle always called "Congo Square."

I guess I was just surprised to find out it's a real place, with a history other than what I realized.

Where the streetlights are much brighter...

They have pretty cool streetlights downtown, there's four sides to 'em - this is the French Domination one. I think there's an English Domination, the American Domination, and the Zombie Domination.

I should expalain the photo safari, we had a theme (fleur-de-lys, totally easy in NOLA) and Matt & I took pics and tried to outdo each other for the "bestest" pics. I usually never win the contest, he always seems to find the thing with the light shining on it in the perfect light with the perfect background. I like to think that I win 'cuz my pics get better & I get some nice shots I can use... It's fun.

Fleur-gasm

This was another photo-safari pic. There's always tons of Fleur-de-lis around, and they're put into the building stuff & stuff.

Photo Safari

So it was decadent around here this weekend - Matt's got some really great photos you should check them out:

Anyways, the day after we went wandering around the French Quarter on a photo safari, and lots of the decorations were still up. It was pretty fun. I'm in love with the new camera, but I really miss the old one - it's hard to get used to the buttons. And the old camera fit in my hand better. I was telling Matt that I was thinking of getting the shell of an old 35mm camera, taking out the guts & seeing if I could put my new camera innards inside it. I also wish I could twist a button to get the different settings, instead of having to go thru menus. Change is good, right?

New Orleans

Today it rained so much it made Metairie into a minature...

Or maybe it was a function on the new camera.

Surprise...

Okay, ok... I know it's been awhile. I apologize - life has gotten busy lately.

Anyways, big news: Matt's brother emailed him. That seemed big to me, but it turns out his brother & wife just had a baby - so that's much bigger. His name is Nathaniel Levi Hinton, so now we're an aunt & uncle again.

I feel a little weird about it - I was so happy for Jeff & Kristina (and Lucas and Addison) and worried and I felt really involved with them. This one seems really abstract to me - well, I guess I've never really met any of the players (parents), so it's understandable. Matt's family is so weird, I don't get them.

On the home front - oh, dear, the worst thing just happened.

Last night, we were at home, Matt had worked late, but we were playing the LEGO Indiana Jones right before gonig to bed, when all of a sudden I realized that there was a gargantuan bug crawling up the wall. Icky icky icky icky.

And here's where Matt made an incalculabe mistake - he said "it'll just make it's way outside, c'mon let's keep playing the game."

WHAT?!?!?

I wouldn't rest until the vermin was exterminated (and Matt didn't get to play the game until it was gone, either...) but for one of the first times in my life I wussed out and acted like a girly-girl. I didn't exactly scream, but I have to admit I freaked out, which freaked Matt out.

And in my defense the bug was BIG - like three inches and then plus a huge antenna. Matt said it's a...shudder... cockroach. He also claims that because we are close to the tropics, we're going to get bigger bugs and more of them. He claims that it's normal to have them in the house in NOLA, but I don't know if I believe him - I still have that NoDak mindset that the only way a bug gets into your house is if it's really badly messy.

So I bleached the kitchen last night and made sure all of the food was in ziplocks. Today, after work, I forage for bug spray.

Definately not an overreaction, right?

Anyways, I'm going to try and be a better poster - let's see how that goes...
Barb.