Hebert Hall in the background:

Sharp Hall in the background:

College

I’m preparing to soak it up as much as I can over the next week. I’ll try not to gain too much weight in the process!

In two months, I’ll visit for one last week, and then the trips will largely stop.

We hope to move back there when Amanda is done with residency, if we can swing it. There will probably be some visits for holidays, as my family’s home is still just outside the city. Nonetheless, it’s slowly dawning on me that my monthly, re-charging dose of New Orleans is coming to an end.

At this point, the legacy of Katrina in my life is diminishing. Assuming that all continues to go well, I’ll be graduating from Johns Hopkins rather than Tulane. All sorts of other things both in my head and in my life have changed as a result of the flood. However, I will once again be living with my wife, we’ll go on with our post-school and post-New-Orleans lives. I’ll finally start to get some closure on something that can never really be fixed or undone.

ADDENDUM: Here’s a video of Amanda getting her envelope and opening it.

The open part of the courtyard (only the edge is shown) is to the left, while Jones Hall itself is behind the point-of-view in the drawing. I believe there’s another name for this courtyard, but I can’t remember what it is. It was (and is) one of my favorite parts of the Tulane campus.

• Watching the entire series of Cowboy Bebop
• Reading (or attempting to read) Gödel, Escher, Bach
• Watching Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (and the original movie)

The (plausible) reasons for reviewing these works that I have come up with so far are:

1. To mark the passage of time internally.
2. Because the experience is enjoyable, and after a year it’s not too repetitive.
3. To remind myself of the feelings and thoughts that these media have evoked in me.

When at Tulane, especially when I was a freshman searching for meaning, I would do some other things periodically, mostly wandering around campus. In particular:

• Visiting the Nydia, typically at night, when it was still in its glass enclosure.
• Talking with Louis Rothbard, before they tore down the University Center and tore up the benches where he sat.
• Sitting in the Jones Hall courtyard under the vines. Here’s a drawing I did of one part of it years ago:
  

Like the more recent activities mentioned first, periodically I would feel compelled to do these things. Having done them, the need was sated for a few weeks or months, and would then come back again.

Have you felt like this? Do you have any secular rituals?

With that in mind, I took some pictures this year to highlight the fact that it’s only that way in the French Quarter. And I’ve never been to the French Quarter during Mardi Gras, because I’m not insane. Here are some of the pictures.

Here are some kids watching a marching band from their ladder contraptions. I’m not sure what these are really called, but most people with young children seem to have them. They’re a combination of a ladder, a wooden seat box, and wheels. Most of the time the axle of the wheels is used to hold the kids in. People fold them up, roll them to the parade on the wheels, set them up, stand on the back, and load the kids in. The kids can see well and it’s easier for them to get beads. The downside is that these things can totally block up access between the neutral ground and the parade route.

Here’s another one, without wheels.

In between the different parades, people walk around the parade route, throw freshly-caught Nerf footballs to each other, and so on.

This shot shows one of the things I love about New Orleans, the oak-lined avenue of St.Charles.

Don’t get me wrong — there are certainly the occasional risqué elements of floats and costumes. Someone must have realized what this cross looked like before it was complete:

Clearly the Mardi Gras is good wholesome fun — even the Pope was there:

(sorry about the poor quality — it was dark and I forgot the flash)

Finally, Mardi Gras does involve a lot of drinking. If you don’t want your kids to see drinking, well, then I guess Mardi Gras is not for you after all. Here’s a guy who looks like he’s done a lot of drinking of a certain beverage:

So, if you don’t mind the presence of alcohol, Mardi Gras can be a great experience for your family. Please join us some time for the parades!

Lastly, here’s a steam engine, calliope, and band that we saw in two different parades:

Today is Mardi Gras Day — Happy Mardi Gras everyone!

2007 was a very interesting year — a year throughout which I lived entirely in Baltimore, with regular jaunts to the Big Easy. This year that should change. This is also the year that I plan to finish my Ph.D.. Remaining steps include:

• Finishing two papers.
• Doing a graduate board oral exam (qualifier) at Hopkins. I’ve done one at Tulane already.
• Writing and defending my thesis.

I want to graduate by December.

My current focus, however, is finishing my abstract in time for our big conference deadline on the 4th.