Welcome to my blog!

Well after a week-long adventure that took me through fourteen states, I have arrived at my new home in New Orleans. I decided that I'd keep a blog to fill you all in on what's going on here and what Phil, Joanna and I are up to. I'll try to post pictures when I can but right now my camera is being repaired. I do have this one:



This is our new house! It's AWESOME. It's half of a shotgun double, which basically means it's a walk-through (i.e. I have to go through Phil and Joanna's bedroom to get to the kitchen, and they have to walk through mine to get out the front door). But we enjoy communal living, and don't anticipate a problem. It's super hot here and muggy, but luckily we have window air conditioners in most of the rooms so the house is pretty cool. I met our landlord Sean (Shawn?) today and he's really nice. I've also met a bunch of our neighbors because around here people hang out on their porches together in the evenings and drink a beer or play the guitar. Next door we have a couple of musicians named Tom and Joe, and I'm secretly hoping Phil will whip out the guitar one night (and I'll whip out my ukulele... which I still don't know how to play) and jam with them. We're right down the road from City Park, where Joanna and I are going to funrun (meaning, in honor of Lillian Meredith, more fun and less run.) We also have a couple of neighborhood grocery stores, a big grocery store, a library, and this awesome little coffee shop where I am now using the free internet. We even have a Home Depot (which is of course one business which is doing VERY well these days.) Funny how no matter where I am in the country I walk into a Home Depot and I feel like I'm home...

Anyway aside from really friendly neighbors the neighborhood is really cute. It's a narrow one way street (the roads here are in REALLY bad shape- I keep worrying that I'll pop a tire) with a lot of little shotgun houses and shotgun doubles painted all sorts of bright colors. There are also lots of cats, which makes me happy. Almost all of the houses are inhabited in our neighborhood (it only got a couple feet of water, like up the front steps but not into the house as I understand it.) However some of the neighbors have left up the Xs that the National Guard drew on the fronts of houses when they were going through in September 2005 to survey damage. They look like this (I didn't take this picture, but the markings all look similar.)



Today I went to a job interview more toward the French Quarter and found out that New Orleans is very difficult to navigate. The roads are full of potholes, and street signage is lacking. Typical of New Orleans, I ran into Jan Gilbert (the artist I've been in touch with down here) on the street as I was leaving. She's going to give us some furniture from her studio. Next weekend we also get a kitchen table and chairs from Phil's relatives. Phil, Joanna and I made polenta and salad last night which we ate on our upside down book shelf on the living room floor.

All in all I'm super excited. People are really friendly. They don't look at me weird when I stop and say hello. In fact usually "hello" turns into a ten minute conversation.

Well, back to this week's issue of "The New Orleans Levee" (Subtitled "We don't hold anything back")