Can vacation ever be bad?

I had a wonderful, wonderful time in New Orleans with Gena. We ate and ate and ate. Definitely some of the best food I've had in quite some time. We ate a ton of sushi and seafood. The sushi at Asahi was definitely the best. I guess I'm getting ahead of myself. Of course I have no desire to tell you moment by moment what we did...so here's yet another highlight list.

• SUSHI and someone to enjoy it with!
• Female conversation...if you're not female, you just can't understand. If you are, you know exactly what I mean.

• Red Room and the "King of Swing" Johnny Angel. We saw a show Friday night in this totally swanky club recommended to us by Earl. Johnny Angel headlines a swing band and though he's not a great singer, he's one of the best showmen I've seen in awhile. Of course we met him and hung out with him - it was an experience! Johnny has the biggest pompadour I've ever seen! I'm talking Morrisey times 3. And the local gossip says he even wears it like that to church. Talk about living in an alternate reality. There's nothing like meeting new people...especially the ecentric ones.
• Earl, the best sushi waiter in New Orleans. Earl works at Asahi and I struck up conversation with him while we ate. Started conversation for 2 reasons: I figured he was young enough to know where to go in New Orleans and he looked to be fairly cool. Turns out both were true though I didn't have any idea how great Earl really was. Earl got his degree in photography at LSU not long ago so we had the whole artist not making art conversation. Then I found out he has a band, though I haven't heard their stuff as of yet. New CD is in the making so maybe I really will get the copy he promised. Earl had all sorts of great suggestions for places to go the best being Red Room. Saturday night, Earl and his girlfriend, Courtney (who is easily just as cool if not cooler than Earl simply for the fact she is female), met us at Top of the Mart. Top of the Mart is a SUPER swanky rotating bar on top of the World Trade Center. Apparently they just happened upon it a few months ago and are enjoying it in all it's 70's swank because it is all too soon going to be made into yet another tourist trap. Courtney is a psychology major from Arizona. I'm hoping to see both of them again someday because we had a great time. Now, why can't I meet people like this in Dallas? Oh yeah, I seldom stop to talk to the waiter in the sushi place here.
• D-Day Museum - If you're in New Orleans this is a must. We heard from Scott, the piano player in Johnny Angel's band, that is was really good so we went. Thank you, Scott, because it was. I found myself tearing up through different parts. Makes me thankful for peace.
• Of course we went to House of Blues to have a drink. The "outsider" art is so great...though I wonder about the autheticity. It's just another Disney World. Disappointing music as well so we didn't stay long. Though I hear their Sunday brunch is the best and we just didn't make it back.
• Another dissapointment was Emerils. I'm not going to get into it. Let me just say that uncooked pork isn't very appealing.

• On the other hand, K-Paul's was very, very good!
• We also got to meet Adrian, who is a friend of Blake who is Karen's friend and my acquaintance. Adrian got his master's at A&M which is the connection. Why does everything connect back to that school these days? Adrian was a wonderful tour guide and an all around interesting person. We didn't spend enough time together but there's never enough time, is there? Adrian fulfilled two of my big desires - alcohol in the street and oysters on the half shell. We had a really, really good time.
• And as is par for the course, Gena and I did plenty of shopping.

It was a great trip. Gena is a good friend whom I've know for 20 years it seems. Can't say that about too many people. The neat thing about Gena is we always pick up where we left off and we always have something to talk about. Thank goodness for friendship therapy. Food and talk - there's nothing like it to make everything okay.