A Quick Visit

This past weekend I made a quick trip to Lexington to see family and enjoy the lack of extreme heat! I flew into Lynchburg Thursday night. Here is a mini picture tour of my visit:

Nice puffy view from the plane

I made many trips to my LB's (Bryan's) new bachelor pad. Picked up laundry, took laundry back, watched dad mow the grass, washed his dishes. This kid has it made!

Visited an old family house that has been renovated. (This room is still very 1920's)

Watched the sunset over the mountains.

Enjoyed some chuckwagon steak at the Lexington Restaurant. Nothing in the place appears to have been purchased since the 1970's but the food is always delicious!

Did some good ol' fashioned rock shoveling!

Watched LB get dirtier than I thought humanly possible.

Ate at Kenney's not once but twice! Soooo worth the drive to the top of the hill!

Caught Grandmaw learning how to grow a donut plant ;-)

I greatly enjoyed the cooler weather, the yummy food and seeing lots of family!

Traveling Revelations

When I travel I tend to have tiny epiphanies and/or learn random things. Here are some of my most recent revelations:

• I nearly never use my high beams since moving to the city
• Airlines should seat the poor folks in the back first so that they do not have to shuffle by the wealthier passengers in the front
• I have no desire to become a pilot, flight attendant, or other airport worker
• It is fairly difficult to explain what I do for a living to other folks
• Chickens can in fact swim
• Coconut Pineapple ice cream is delicious :)

VA Bound

I am typing this post via my phone while I sit in the Charlotte airport waiting for my flight to Lynchburg. I have put in a little over 40 hours at work since Monday to get everything done and taken care of so that I can enjoy a 3 day weekend at home! With all of the strange weather/natural occurrences I am hoping to survive my trip North! I was told by a co-worker prior to departing NOLA that I cannot use a measly little earthquake as an excuse to not be back to work on Monday! I'm not as worried about an earthquake causing a delay as I am concerned that Irene will put a kink in things. But I can't think about any of that right now. My mind is more occupied with making sure I see lots of family, getting to eat some Kenny's chicken, loving on Lucky & Little Kitty and trying to relax as much as possible! So until Monday I am work-free, family-full and loving it!!

d.b.a

Friday night AV and I headed to Frenchmen Street for some zydeco tunes. We hit up d.b.a to see the Pine Leaf Boys perform good ol' Cajun music.

Pine Leaf Boys (Grammy nominated!)

Decor at the bar.

Picture time!

Zydeco music = smiles :)

Say Cheese

Wednesday, Thursday & Friday there was a photo shoot going on in the packaging room at work. Sam, Tariq's brother is Sucre's go-to photo guy. He and Jess, the Visual Branding Manager were shooting all of the products for the new website and upcoming holiday campaign. I had no idea it could be such a lengthy process! While I attempted to get my work done in my newly modified area they set up chocolates, macaroons, cocoa, pecans, marshmallows, toffee, gift sets and more.

The most perfect of the perfect ready for their close up!

The holiday gift box collection all set up.

Getting the lighting correct.

Sam & Jess making sure everything looks good.

Checking the picture on the screen for any flaws.

It was fun to see how they set things up and adjust angles and lighting to showcase everything perfectly. I will be excited to see what things look like once they are on the website! You can check out Sam's other food photography here!

I Want Fall

I want it to be fall. I want the high temperature for the day to be in the mid to low 70's. I want to not instantly drip with sweat when I step outside. I want football to be the Sunday routine. I want to curl up in a blanket when I read. I want to swap out my tank tops for sweaters. I want to be surrounded by pumpkin infused treats. I want to watch the new season of Dexter. I want the summer to end!!!!

Guess I will have to settle for making this picture my background on my computer and phone for now.

Looking Good

The Saints won their first preseason game last night. They beat the San Francisco 49ers 24-3 at the Superdome. Things are starting out well for the season :)

The Big Bird Heads North

Last night New Orleans had to say goodbye to a one of a kind southern gentleman. Our good buddy Andrew (aka Big Bird) has departed for D.C. to begin his masters at George Washington. To send him off in style some amigos gathered at La Boca for a wonderful dinner together. We gorged ourselves on awesome Argentinian influenced appetizers and devoured some delicious steaks! There was a lot of sharing and passing of food which resulted in my first ever taste of "sweetbread". I was skeptical, but apparently people really do eat the thymus gland of a baby calf. I would not choose to order it for myself, but it was not awful.

The special cocktail of the evening was fresh watermelon juice with vodka and a splash of lime juice. I threw in a dash of salt for good measure! Since the majority of our party works in the service industry we were offered a special menu known as the "S.I.N Menu". My guess would be S.I.N = Service INdustry.

I had absolutely no room for dessert but luckily for me someone many years ago invented the wonderful "to go box" so I took home some flourless chocolate cake that was covered in large specks of raw sugar. It was the best breakfast ever!

It was hard to hug Andrew goodbye last night, not only because we were both stuffed with scrumptious treats, but because Andrew is one cool dude! He is always down to hang out, he is a decision maker (important amongst a group of indecisive friends), and he has the coolest vernacular I have ever heard!

While the selfish part of me wants something to go wrong and for him to come back to us, I know that he is making an important step in the direction he wants to go with his life (sports management). I suppose for now all of us being left behind will have to settle for a few visits a year. So until December, we say farewell to the Big Bird.

Rambling

August is slipping right on by! I have been so consumed with things at work that I hadn't noticed that summer is chugging right along. It has been hot and humid in my neck of the woods...err...swamp. This week hasn't been so bad at work. The wholesale orders slowed down a bit, hopefully that will give me an opportunity to get ahead of the game some. Since I have not been swamped with packaging I had time to tinker around on Excel with some order forms. I can completely lose track of time messing around with things like that! I get obsessed with getting it just the way I want it--the right font, the right spacing. Any way, nothing new going on with me. Just in the midst of the dog days of summer!

Satchmo & Boutte

Saturday was another festival day here in the Crescent City. This time it was the Satchmo Summerfest, a celebration of Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong's birthday (August 4, 1901).

I read that the nickname Satchmo came from his youth when he would preform on the streets. When people would toss change on the ground for him he would snatch it up and put it in his mouth so that no one would take it from him, earning him the name "satchel mouth" later shortened to Satchmo.

The festival covers three days (Friday-Sunday) and takes place at the old US Mint down in the Quarter. Like any other festival held in this location, there were two stages, multiple food vendors, and lots of people out enjoying the good time!
Per Louis Armstrong's style of music, the bands on the stages were mostly jazz and brass bands.
I got my first snoball at the Plum Street Snoball tent. Sugar free pink lemonade! Not bad and along with my paper fan, it definitely helped beat the heat!

After festivaling Brie and I headed out to Boutte for our friend Eddie's house warming party. Boutte (pronounced "Boo-Tee" not "Booty") is a small town south west of the city about a half hour away. Eddie and his girlfriend, Alexis, just moved into a house behind Eddie's True Value Hardware shop. So now he can just walk out his front door and be at work! It was fun to hang out with them on their turf since usually they make the trek to New Orleans to see us! We got there right as they were finishing up frying some fish, alligator, mushrooms, and onion rings! Yum!!

Ribbon & Rango

Last night I brought some work home in the form of pink and purple spools. While I snipped ribbon to the desired lengths I watched my latest Netflix DVD: Rango. It was a cute movie. Very interesting style because it is animated but it is not like any other movie I have seen. There were some really awesome scenes that I had to remind myself were all digitally designed! And while Rango himself is not the easiest on the eyes (he is a teeny blue gangly lizard) he is an enduring character for sure :) If you enjoy westerns, desert critters, and the sound of Johnny Depp's voice then I recommend checking it out!

Sample Time

A last minute Creole Creamery run with AV had me trying all kinds of new flavors!

From top to bottom:

Black & Gold Crunch (I believe it was vanilla base with Oreo crumble, chicory ripple and chocolate chunks)

Blueberry Pie

Heirloom Tomato Sorbet

Dark Chocolate Coconut Mint

The tomato sorbet tasted like a tomato with sugar on it! Not bad. Definitely my most successful sampler so far! Yum :)