I'm Willing to Break Myself

New Orleans will be the death of me...but at least I'll die happy.
I thought that I was tough enough to handle Jazzfest Weekend, because yesterday I wasn't really tired and I didn't hurt, but oh WOW today I'm exhausted, sore, and covered in random bruises.

So the weekend.
It started off Friday night with a trip down to Frenchmen Street--that's where locals go instead of going to Bourbon...it's a few blocks removed from the French Quarter. We had dinner at Mona's, which is a local chain of delicious Lebanese and Greek food, and then Janice and I met up with a bunch of her friends who had all flown/driven in from various places and were staying a few blocks away. We headed to d.b.a. and heard a bunch of local bands and danced. End of night: 3am.

Saturday. I woke up at 7:30 to the sun streaming through my curtains. Four hours of sleep does not a happy Kirsten make, but I pushed on. We convinced the guys to give us a ride in their van so I didn't have to contend with my horrendous parallel parking skills, and ended up at the fest around 1PM. We found Barry to give him his ticket and then we headed straight for the Hospitality tent. Let me tell you, big oil really knows how to lay out the red carpet. Hot cajun foods, bags of chips and other goodies, all the cold water, soda and ice cream that one could ask for. They had beer too...this would become a sore spot...but more on that later. Having B around was a nice surprise. He was meant to be showing around his crowd of Europeans, all over from Houston where they're having training, but he left them and hung out with us.
We spent most of our time here:

That's the blues tent. Then we parted ways and Janice and I left with the guys, except we got distracted by bloody marys in the street...we didn't make it back to the house until 9:30. At that point, B was calling, trying to make arrangements for dinner (dinner with 20 people not being at the top of his fun list). We thought we needed to be ready in half an hour, so we scrubbed our feet and jumped in the car. We ended up at Redfish Grill, which was incredibly yummy. I had redfish cakes, B had seared tuna, Janice oysters and crab cakes. We followed it up with a double chocolate bread pudding a la mode. Get used to food orders...they'll be included a lot now.
From dinner, we went to the Royal Sonesta, where Janice had a friend working (she knows the world). After that, her friend Matt took us to a locals dive bar in Uptown, which is called Shake and Jake's Christmas Tree Bar. I can't make these things up! End of the night: 5:30AM. It was starting to get light.

Sunday...well, it was pretty hard to drag ourselves out of bed on Sunday. I made waffles with Ponchatula strawberries on them, which helped, as did the strong coffee. Alison, my roommate, came back from her jazz mass and we all met up with the same guys to get a ride to the fest. Well, B didn't, as he had to drive back to Houston in a Taurus with four others. He decided to sleep until 2pm...wuss. That's about the time we made it to Jazz Fest. We get there and I'm ready to see some bands like this:
But after about 30 minutes, Janice decides she wants to get into the hospitality tent. We don't have B with us, so we made a new friend to let us in with our tokens. This takes at least 20 minutes. Then, after our hand stampings, we had to revisit three times. Why? For beer. Forgive me, I love my friend, but seriously...I don't feel the need to drink all day long, especially Miller Light. I can have fun listening to music without trekking back and forth to the hospitality tent to re-load on alcohol. In fact, I can have more fun, because number one I am not dehydrated, number two I get to hear more music. But at least I got to hear:

All in all, it was a great couple days, with fun music and tasty food (Jazz fest is almost as much about the food as it is the tunes). Still, it grew a little tiring. Again on Sunday, we didn't leave until 8:30. We were distracted by a band playing on someone's front porch and the dancing in the street that accompanied it. After, Alison and Janice decided to go out again, and that's when I put my foot down and said no, they could go but I was going nowhere, my legs were tired and I needed to be in bed before midnight. Still, the effects of the weekend are still with me, and I have another festival next weekend in New Jersey, so I have a feeling that I'll be tired for quite some time. It is worth it though...I love this city!