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Reading:  The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins.  It’s a general overview of Evolution.  I’ve read about that a few times before so it’s nothing all that new, but it’s engaging and and I like the topic.  I really need to find something a little bit deeper on the topic, but that’s surprisingly hard to find.  Maybe once the Cretin population dies off a little bit and America jumps up from near last on the list of industrialized nations and knowledge of Evolution.  Also, why do the books supporting science have such great names: The Blind Watchmaker, Endless Forms Most Beautiful, Climbing Mount Improbable, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, all very evocative and poetic.  The books criticizing science never seem nearly as artful.

Writing: That short-story I’ve been babbling about — it’s done and submitted.  It’ll be a few weeks before I hear back.  I’ve got another short story to resubmit after a rejection slip and another short-story to write, this one hopefully a lot shorter than the other one.  The premise is a character whose genes were patented.  I read a story about a patent case in the news not so long ago that managed to capture my imagination.

Playing: I’m finishing up Splinter Cell: Conviction.  It’s much faster and action oriented that the previous Splinter Cell games, but they did a very good job keeping everything together.  They did not overpower Sam Fisher too much, kept the gadgets interesting, and managed to pull the story along a lot better than expected.  I miss the old, slow-paced planning Splinter Cell, but the gameplay was maybe getting a little stale.  It seemed more realistic, but this did such a good jump with Conviction I can’t criticize.

I pre-ordered Red Dead Redemption, which looks like Grand Theft Auto in the Old West.  Sounds amazing, can’t wait!

Watching: Maybe Iron Man 2?  The character does not have much room for plot development.  I imagine it has to be terrible.  I know already that I’m going to be disappointed…I’m going to see it anyway, probably, maybe, unless someone saves me from it.

Cooking: maybe a pizza?  I’m still got a few bread mixes from my x-mas Bread Machine.

Hiking: Minnewaska 6th time this year.

And that’s the weekend.

Another rejection letter for a short story.  That makes seven for this year, three on this story alone.  Perhaps, I need to see about making some improvements…

I finally finished Old Man Goriot by Balsac.  It reminds me of a French version of Dickens, maybe with a bit of Three Musketeers added in.  A sad book ultimately, but a social book, like Dickens might write, and a stirring one as well.  I’d give more of a book summary, since it’s not the best known book these days, but it’s a tough plotline to pin down.  A dozen odd lodgers live in the same boarding house.  A social climber named Rastignac has a number of adventures therein involving a mysterious criminal, a forgotten heiress, and a broken old vermicelli maker.  The closest plot I might link it to would be King Lear, but I’m not sure that’s the best comparison to make either.  It’s quite the read,  also short.  Worth finding on the shelf.

My own short story is almost finished.  I’ve got a finished draft that I’m trying to polish.  It’s still drifting between 10 and 11 thousand words.  I was hoping to chop it down to the mid 7s, but I don’t think it’s going to happen.  SO far, I’ve got an intro that comes together rather well and the ending seems pretty tied up, but the middle has it’s guts to the wind.  It needs a lot of polished, probably a few more weeks, and then I get it sent out.  Sigh.  It’s all very time-consuming.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned previously, but http://www.duotrope.com is  the best resource I’ve found for looking up publishers especially for short stories.  I can’t say I’ve had any particular success with any of my would be printers, but the search functionality at Duotrope has at least given me a shot.  Absolutely invaluable.

Since I’m in something of a hurry I’ll end this right here.  One last item because I’m a sucker for graphs:   Is it better to rent or buy, a calculator.  Enjoy!

A short post today.  Last week was so exceptional that I suppose it was no surprise that this one had to be miserable.

Mostly, I’ve just been busy but not with anything interesting.  I did finish the last of my editing books and I’ve started reading Old Man Goriot by Balzac.  I got another rejection slip, this time from Strange Horizons, but the story only barely flt their oeuvre anyway.  It wasn’t really a surprise and I’ve already sent the story back out to www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com.

I’ve got a 10500 word short story draft done.  I expect it come in around 7500 words after editing, maybe a bit longer.  I’ve been dabbling with an omniscient narrator which is a little new for me.  I normally avoid it.  The voice does not normally come naturally to me and it starts to feel a bit contrived when I’m showing everyone inside out.  I think I’ve managed to work it in this one fairly well and I’ve keep the all-knowing voice to a minimum.

No other news.  Long week over and a long week coming.  I went hiking today which was absolutely gorgeous.  I keep hoping that if I can get this writing business going for real, maybe I’ll be able to hike a little more.  Here’s to the dream!  Adieu.

It’s been a busy week for work and a slow week for everything else.

A seven mile hike at Lake Minnewaska followed by homemade chicken quesadillas with mango salsa.  That’ll do, that’ll do.

It hasn’t been a bad day (or week) for writing either.  I’m some 5,000 words into a short story, probably the best I’ve written in a year, not that there’s any proof of quality there. I’m a motivated slogger.  I expect to get another few thousands words put down this weekend, maybe finish a draft next week.  Exciting times, I know.

I’d like to give credit for my new-found inspiration to a handful of writing books that I purchased last week.  I could drag up the names, but I don’t credit the books themselves. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Periodically, I find myself lost and muddled when it comes to any sort of genuine writing.  Sure, I’ve been tossing assorted blog entires out for years and I keep something of a weekly journal as well, but that’s not really writing.  The quality is suspect and there’s no editing.  No editing means no writing.  That’s just how it works.

Disappointed and thoroughly disgusted with my more intentional output, I start to think that maybe I just don’t know what I’m doing.  I’m untrained, untested, amateurish.  I need a mentor, a trainer, something to push me over the hump.  In a pique of desperation, I buy a book (or 5) on the craft of writing.  I get  excited that I’ll finish it and find myself newly remade into the next Hemingway.

As I’ve already let on, that’s not exactly how things have turned out.  I’ve read 4 of the 5 books.  They were decent in a way, but there’s only so much that can really be said about writing.  There are the usual platitudes: show don’t tell, start with the action, write what you know (really write what you care about).  There’s also some helpful market acumen tossed in (that 40,000 word fantasy epic novellete is never going to be published).

And then there are the suggestions.  A good half the suggestions are really just tricks to encourage writers to write.  I’ve honestly never found that to be an especially big problem.  I write when I can.  I can’t as often as I should like and I do get distracted easily, but no one can accuse me of ignoring my hobby.  I really don’t need parlor trick psychology to get me to a keyboard.

The second half of these suggestions are different ways to come up with ideas, different methods of arranging stories to be exciting.  Again, is this really the difficulty writers are having?  Perhaps, but I’ve always felt quite deeply that the idea, the story, the urge to arrange a beautiful world is the motivation for writing in the first place,.  I’m not interesting in writing because I like to sit on my ass at a keyboard for hours at a time staring at blank office programs and giving myself medically novel forms of carpal-tunnel.  I write because I’ve got a thousand and one ideas and stories to get down.  My problem is that I get them down…and they suck.  Different problem and not one that books seem to be able to fix.

In a weird and sadistic way, this is encouraging.  I’m not suffering from a lack of ideas or a lack of motivation (in which case why would I even want to write?).  I just suffer from inexperience.  I’m newly inspired because the book fundamentals were old hat.  I know my tenses, I know my viewpoints, I know why you start with the action, and I know why passive tense is no good…mostly.  I’ve got my spelling down and dialog locked in.  I can conjure a decent story and bring it to completion.  I just don’t have a strong enough voice.  I’m new.  As birthdays, anniversaries, and local historical societies like to periodically remind me, new doesn’t last that long.  Someday I will cease to be new and won’t that make some exciting blog posts?  That’s today’s inspirational tale for the masses.

I will say, the two books on editing were decent.  I’ve never read The Elements of Style and I was dumb not to.  It’s fantastic.

The book Line by Line, put out by the MLA, is a hideous looking book, a little yellow cookbookish thing like an 1980s guide to television repair, but it’s oddly inspired.  Editing is just so damn hard and there’s enough examples strewn throughout the book that it’s hard not to find something useful.

I also read Fear and Loathing, Hunter S. Thompson’s drug-inspired classic, an utterly hilarious little gem that I’ve never come to before.  Again, it’s a plotless book, although not nearly as plotless as Naked Lunch.  Gonzo journalism at least makes an honest effort at a complete story, something Naked Lunch seemed to intentionally avoid.  I always feel sort of strange reviewing a well-known classic, so I’m not going to, but this is my blog and I’ll make it a poorly annotated reading list if I want to.

Since I’m falling into a list, (although the premier form of internet writing) I’ve come to the end to this week’s entry.  My xbox bit the bucket so I’m not able to play Splinter Cell Conviction.   I haven’t had any new short-story rejections so for once I’ve got nothing to really whine about.  That pretty much leaves writing and quesadillas as entertainment.  That’ll do.  That’ll do.

I have them occasionally.  Rarely.  Almost never.

Of course, as usual, I haven’t written a thing.  Not a word.  Later.  Today.  Soon.  Tomorrow.  Famous words of the pathologically incompetent.   Still, it hasn’t been entirely a loss.  I’ve got some ideas rumbling around, a few of them might even be good.  Soon.  Soon.  Always soon.  I’ve got the file already up and saved with a nice working title.  That means the project is started!

In lieu of writing I’ve been reading.  Three books this week.

Monday I started Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs.  I’m not going to pretend that I understood a word of it.  Half On The Road, half Henry Miller.  It’s one hell of a skip-around drug adventure.  I’m not sure how it slipped through the cracks before now, but I finally got it reading it.  Interesting, fun, mind-boggling, also completely useless for anyone trying to get better at writing.  There’s nothing to pick out there, no skill one can marvel at.  It’s simply a hundred and change pages of crazy nothing held together by either madness or genius.  It was a quick read, and easy one to mark off the list.

What sort of unadulterated weirdness could follow that?  As of Tuesday morning, I knew nothing about  Vernor Herzog, the German director, or his eccentric actor star Klaus Kinski.  A coworker of mine mentioned sent me on my way with Kinski’s biography, All I Need is Love, and Herzog’s Kinski retrospective, a documentary called My Best Fiend.  I watched the dvd that evening.

Insanity.  That appears to be the running theme.  The back-story behind Fitzcarraldo is fascinating.  He actually dragged a boat over the mountain.  There is a line from Herzog, “I am sane, clinically sane, but Kinski thinks I’ve lost it.  He does have one thing in mind when he says that.  This one time when I was especially fed up with him, I did legitimately consider fire-bombing his house.  I was all ready to do it, but the plot was foiled by his Alsatian shepherd.”  Herzog offers no further explanation.  Why did Kinski have an Alsatian shepherd?  It’s not a dvd for final answers, also it’s in German with subtitles, but it’s well-worth the price of admission.

Following up on Herzog’s dvd, I read Kinski’s version.  Again, nothing but insanity.  The man was either a epic liar, a playfully insane chronicler of non-truth, or genuinely the most absurd person to have ever lived.  Again, I won’t give anything away, but it’s a fun biography to read as long as you’re prepared for a lifetime of rambling sex, insults, and movie magic.  It is an absurd book.

To round out my week, I started reading Rainbow’s End, by Vernor Vinge.  It’s cyberpunk, speculative science fiction, hyper-tech, all the usual sorts of things that I normally read and, despite the post-singularity technology, the most grounded thing I read this week.  Without going at the plot with any especial gusto, it’s a combination of Neuromancer, Snowcrash, and an action director’s take on Eco’s Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana.  There aren’t too many authors who can pull off the recovering Alzheimer patient protagonist, but that’s what science fiction is made for, yes?

I’m not sure if I was tired of reading or tired of the genre, but it failed to capture as fully as some other books.  In truth, I think it was better written than any of them, but I’m reading this story last so it takes third place.  As a writer, it has finally solidified my mind on something that I could and should have seen a thousand times elsewhere, namely, that in any longer work it seems absolutely necessary to have multiple viewpoints.  It is simply no longer optional.  The modern novel appears all but unsustainable  when forced on a single voice, a single character, a single point of view.  Perhaps novels have become too influenced by movies?  Movies used to have longer cuts than they do now, for sure.  Have we lost any ability to follow a long narrative?  I don’t think so, I just think multiple viewpoints has become a better method for telling most stories.  It opens up the fictional world in ways that a single viewpoint could never realistically compete.  Rainbow’s End used a half a dozen characters for the primary view without any especial pattern.  It picked up a person when it needed them and then let them become secondary once their part in the mosiac was finished.  The umpire in me finds it unbearable, but it’s literary genius when used correctly.  I’ve obviously got a bit to learn.

Which is where I intend to do now.  Soon is finally?  Probably not, but the week is over and it’s time to start looking at the next one.  I don’t think I have any books on the docket, but I am considering Splinter Cell: Conviction.  I get too distracted, I know.  My one short story came back rejected.  Such is how things go.  I’m off to mail it on to the next future-rejector.  Wish me luck!  Adieu.

I finished The Blair Years.  Final estimate: anti-climactic.  I’m well aware that a diary, or any non-fiction for that matter, can’t just make up a nice Hollywood ending, but there’s something to be said for not misleading your audience either.  It took 600 odd pages to get to Bush’s presidency and another fifty or so before the Iraq War came up.  Considering ‘The Blair Years’ is practically a short hand for the post-9/11 wars in Aphganistan and Iraq, it seems downright cruel to carry the reader all that way and then leave them with a haphazard assortment of mini-anecdotes about the run up to the war.  I’m sure most of the good stuff was edited out, but it honestly would have been a stronger narrative if he’d cut the book off just as the Bush stuff was about to happen.  I’d rather have a cliff-hanger than a botched and boring token gesture, especially coming off a fascinating look at the back-end of the Bosnia/Kosovo conflict…

Next book on the docket:  Naked Lunch by Burroughs.  Can’t get much different…

In other news, I watched the movie adapation of Cormac McCArthy’s The Road.  In theory, it belongs to that venerable holiday genre: apocalypse survival movies, but it’d be tough to put it next to Mad Max and Children of Men.

The spoilerless gist of the movie is a father and son wander the post-apocalyptic wasteland surviving and looking for a better place.  There’s a little violence, there’s a few semi-shocking revelations about the survivors, there’s some back-story about the father and son, but it all wraps up in just under two hours.

I’d like to say it was a good movie, and I can, grudgingly, but I found it boring.  I suspect the book is very good, haven’t read yet, but on film the story didn’t seem to come together.  The father’s relationship with his son in a nuclear winter is an interesting concept and the movie tried awfully hard to make it interesting, but the whole thing came off too brooding, too slow, and ultimately unfulfilled.

I’m currently working on my own slow, brooding short story.  Coming along, coming along.  I’ve got three other short stories out in the wild.  The fourth came back declined.  Sigh and double sigh, but that’s how it goes.  I’m hoping to get that one out again sometime tomorrow. However…

there’s not that much point in me rambling about it.  It’s been a slow week in general, but the weather is getting better.  I’m hoping to put up some hiking pictures soon.  Until then, I’m out.

April Fool’s Pranks?  Is April Fool a thing?  April Fools’ Pranks?  I really have no idea…

So last week I went to New Haven to see a play called An Italian in Algeria or something like that.   Short version of the story is we never found the theater and completely missed the show.  (This is why I like free shows.)  Instead of wandering around aimlessly looking for a show that doesn’t exist, we watched The Ghost Writer, Roman Polanski’s arrest-aborted thriller.

I can’t say I’ve followed the tabloids all that much.  I remember offhand that Polanski avoided the US ever since ditching out on a statutory rape charge or something along those lines.   Whatever the crime, I doubt the movie would absolve the directory anything, but taken as an evening flick it wasn’t half bad.

Without spending much time on it, the movie is an exploration of what an unrepentant Tony Blair might do if he was being hounded by a war crimes tribunal.  Alan Lang (aka Mr. Blair and played by Mr. Bond…aka Pierce Brosnan) is a former PM whose having his memoirs written for him by a ghost writer.  The old ghost writer died, murdered of course, and the new ghost writer has to deal with a cagey PM, a betrayed wife, and the all accessory characters that fill out space.

In retrospect, I can sort of see the similarity with Ninth Gate, also by Polanski, and one of my favorite movies (though it’s been critically panned).  All the critics mentioned the claustrophobia and paranoia of the movie and yes I saw plenty of that.  Really though, I was more enthralled by scenery.  The house off Martha’s Vinyard where Lang is hiding out is quite possibly the ugliest building ever constructed.  It’s a genuinely hideous thing with an uber-chic interior that looks like a cross between a prison ward and M.C. Escher painting.  The island itself suffers from English weather (it rains a lot) and feels more desolate that a New England vacation spot should.

The story rolls around without any really obvious non-spoiler hints I could drop.  In truth, the plot is neither all that complex nor really that interesting, but Mr. Bond and Obi Wan Kenobi (the young one, Ewan McGregor) do a damn good job of keeping eyes to the screen.  The ending seemed weak, but not woefully insufficient.  In total, Ghost Writer is worth the time to watch, but it’s not playing on many strings so it can be hard to find in the theatre.  Another DVD movie for most, I imagine.

In a close follow up to the movie, I started reading The Blair Years, the diary of Alistair Campbell, Tony Blair’s Communication Director.  It’s a dense read and not exactly the smoothest narrative out there, but it’s an interesting look at the day to day operations of politicking.  I suspect plenty of readers were disappointed to find out that it’s not an inside look at a grand Bush-Blair conspiracy, but I was never under that expectation.  The diary, and it occurred me that it’s the first diary I’ve read since Anne Frank’s, is really more like a really slow episode of West Wing.  It skips the policy discussions and sitcom drama in lieu of detailing the endless infighting and personal bickering that takes place inside any substantial and competitive organization.  Overall, interesting but far too long.  I’m 50 pages in and I’m not sure how thrilled I am to slog through the next 650…

Moving on to my own writing, I’ve got three or four stories out in the world.  My submission to Clarkesworld was rejected, but the response came back in a record two days time.  I like the efficiency!   I’ve already send that story out again.  I’ve got another two ideas in the works, but they aren’t even outlined yet so no details.  Lots of work for the weekend!

Other than that, nothing planned.  Should be quiet and stress free.  Not doing anything Easter except tennis and everyone’s off and about with their own things.  Here’s to getting some work done!

That’s pretty much the word.  Until next time.  Adieu!

Beignets!  I cooked em for breakfast.  Not shown:  burning canola oil scars, powdered sugar debacle, or dough-gummed sink.  Oh well!  It made for a good breakfast, beginning to a hopefully even better day.  This evening, I’ll be seeing L’Italiana in Algeri  by Gioachino Rossini somewhere in New Haven.  (I’m a guest.  The arrangements have been made without me having to worry about it.)  I can’t say I know anything about the play (The Italian in Algeria…that means something I guess), but everything I’ve been treated to down there has been excellent.

As for my own creative accomplishments, I finished another short story, this one entitled Hull Breach.  I’m planning on submitting it to…someone…today, but I haven’t decided who yet.  At the moment, Clarkesworld, looks like the best.  The online submission form makes life significantly easier.  Strange Horizons, an online e-zine (but a paying one), also has a nice online submission form that saves me a little stamp money.  Lastly, there’s the trio of big science fiction print publications, analog, SF&F, and asimovs.  I currently have a story out to Asimov, so that’s off the list and I just got a rejection slip from SF&F, so I’m not feeling the love there at the moment.  I don’t really want to submit this story to Analog just yet, because if my other story gets rejected I’d prefer to send it there than this one.  This story definitely isn’t as good…

That isn’t say I’m not damn happy to have it done finally.  Pain in the ass from beginning to end.  I wrote once it in full.  Hated it.  Started over.  2nd draft was terrible.  I took my first throwaway and merged it with my second throwaway to make it into a mostly complete draft that told a nice little story, but also bored me to tears.  In a pique of desperation I added a second viewpoint, which let me pull some of the text away from the first viewpoint and add a little extra color to the world.  By checker-boarding the viewpoints (1st view, 2nd view, 1st, 2nd etc) it made for a much more interesting read, and actually made the scenario a little clearer overall (the danger of tossing in two many disparate points of view).  Unfortunately, none of these drafts solved the fundamental problem: the story had no end.  It was never really a story in the first place, really just a premise explored (What would generic person A do if ordered to destroy Earth).

I’ve yet to figure out exactly where inspiration comes from, but during the last and final edit I managed to put in a few lines right at the end that provided an acceptable coda, if not an especially fulfilling finale.  In total, the story came out to some 4300 words, less than half the length of my last short story despite spending at least twice as much time on it.  Sigh!

I’ve got a few more stories on the docket, but for the moment I want to concentrate on taking what I’ve got and putting it out somewhere.  I’ve become increasingly of the mind that publication is less like sniping and more like a shotgun blast.  There doesn’t appear to be any good way to choose a publication and design something for them, you just have to write a billion things and figure someone out there will pay for something someday.  At least, that’s the theory that I’m currently working on.  Future updates guaranteed, I’m sure.

I won’t be leaving for New Haven for another 6 hours, so I’ve got sometime to get some research done, maybe start a story, keep playing Napoleonic Total War, etc.  I really do have too many hobbies, but really, what else would I do with my time?  Tomorrow is Tennis, possibly Minnewaska, probably some web-design upkeep.  Enthralling stuff I know.

Before I get to rambling on the nuances of freelance web-design, allow my to play myself off with a picture of my home-cooked (from a box mix) beignets!

The internet, for all its ability to communicate information, has become something of a haven for faux science and con-artistry.  Fake medicine, in particular, has become entrenched on the ‘inter-webs’ with real seeming advertisements being common even on otherwise legitimate websites.  Aside from a few stray websites here and there, there hasn’t always been a strong response against these sorts of harmless, but useless (at best) medications.

This infographic seems to be a step in the right direction.   Sadly, orange juice doesn’t seem to be as amazingly healthy as I would like, but I’ll probably still go for my daily vitamin C infusion.  It’s much more pleasant than fish oil…

I’ve been on vacation for a week. In lieu of a writing update, allow me to bring you along my travel itinerary of the New Orleans French Quarter.

March 14th, the morning:
Flight is delayed by about five hours due to heavy wind and backed up flights. The airport starts to look a little bit like the Super Dome after Katrina. A few more hours and roving bands of looters might have started to riot against the TSA.

Mid-afternoon: Our three and a half hour flight finally lands. We checked into the Maison Dupuy, a beautiful hotel on Toulouse streets on the north side of the french quarter. After perusing our room and getting settled, we go outside to start our vacation. The weather is a cool mid 60s, perfect for strolling the narrow roads of the old city.

Late-afternoon: We eat at Remoulade. I had a shrimp po’boy, my first taste of Louisiana cuisine. The bread is fantastic, a cross between a crumbly dinner roll and french bread. Afterwards, we got some beignets (fried dough suffocated in powdered sugar) from the famous Cafe du Monde. Despite my on again, off again, allergy to coffee, I had a cafe au lait for the experience. Very unnecessary. The fresh-squeezed orange juice is much preferable.

March 15th morning: We have breakfast at the Cafe Beignet near the statues of jazz musicians. I ahd the french bread french toast, an interesting take on a pretty standard breakfast item. Again, the fresh squeezed orange juice is an excellent choice.

We spend the mid-morning touring the city beginning with a stroll of the french market filled with the various sellers of dresses and watches and touristy crap along side local foodstuffs and similar offerings. We walked around Jackson Square beside the be-horsed statue of Andrew Jackson in mid gallop of his defense of the city. We listened to the tuba playing street musicians and took in the Mississippi air.

Our afternoon was taken up by a bus trip to the Oak Alley Plantation. Our bus driver was an encyclopedia of creative tense usage, an interesting taking on the usual rambling monologue. The Oak Alley Plantation is, itself, a gorgeous greek revival family house from the 1800s. The surrounding oak trees, each around 300 years old or more, form a shaded driveway of sorts, almost like statues. The house was equally ornate and gorgeous with some old rooms and period furniture in place.

On our return from the plantation, we stopped into the Meltdown Popsicle stand. I had a pineapple cilantro Popsicle. I’m not sure I would order that again…

After an afternoon nap, we had dinner at the Gumbo Shop, a popular and moderately upscale restaurant nestled amongst one of the old french courtyards. Our waiter was a jovial ex-navy seaman who was somewhat confused by my fellow traveler’s disinterest in cajun cuisine. I made up fr that by ordering the crawfish etoufee, chicken andoulle gumbo, and praline sundae.

Again we went to bed after some more gift shopping. We bought some beignet mix, some postcards, and a whole collection of shot glasses.

March 16th morning: My favorite breakfast in New Orleans was at the Court of Two Sisters. Their jazz buffet was well worth the $20 something per person expense. A trio of jazz musicians played while the waiters kept an endless supply of orange juice refilled between plates of crawfish salad, turtle soup, grits and grillades, bananas foster, and the best sweet potatoes I’ve ever had. The courtyard was itself a beautiful arrangement beneath a canopy of wisteria, sadly not yet in bloom.

Instead of spending our entire visit in the french quarter, we braved the New Orleans street car system, (about as inefficiently organized as it could be) to the Garden District. We toured six blocks of mansions and stopped into the Lafayette Cemetery to view the above ground tombs. Beautiful houses, beautiful cemetery. I’ve now got a running list of architectural features to toss onto any house I might build someday, starting with surrounding gardens, inner courtyards, and liberal use of second story rot-iron balconies.

Back in the french quarter, we ate at Johnnys, a famous po’boy shop on St. Louis street. I had the Johnny special: roast beef, ham, and cheese, and the sweet potato fries. Both were well worth the wait and health code violations it took to get the food.

In evening we got hurricanes on Bourbon street and toured that famous road a little bit further, but we were tired. Back at our apartment we watched lost and got ready for St. Patrick’s Day.

St. Patrick’s Day: The streets were especially quiet in the morning, all the parties still sleeping off their pre-gaming. We ate breakfast at the Pere Antoine. I found the service uninspired, but my red beans and rice with andoulle sausage was quite good. Afterwards, we watched a film crew for the HBO series Treme filming in front of St. Louis Cathedral.

We had the option of taking a Katrina Tour (too depressing), a steamboat tour (I worked on a boat), or a swamp tour. We choose the swamp tour. It was touristy, I suppose, but we saw snapping turtles, plenty of alligators, and an assortment of birds along an old oil company canal that connected to the deeper bayou. Jean Lafitte’s swamp tours did a good job keeping the two hour tour entertaining even for the people less enthused by nature.

On the advice we overheard from one of our fellow swamp tourists, we ate at the Mona Lisa pizza place on the East Side of Royale street almost outside of the old city. The pizza was averageish, but the bruschetta was excellent and the atmosphere was very cozy. It seems more like a pizza place for natives than a tourist facade. Fair warning, their music selection was highly eclectic — Alanis Morissette and Mame right after each other.

After dinner Bourbon street started to liven up. By midnight we had seen a half a dozen live entertained including a street corner jazz band seemingly assembled from nowhere, a New Orleans parade in its resplendent bead-enthralled glory, and a good experience of what Mardi Gras must be like. The St. Patrick’s Day parade is seemingly a bit less indulgent and there’s definitely less college kids walking around, so probably the better experience if booze-besottedness isn’t on the itinerary.

Our last day, the 18th, was basically a day of rest. We ate at McDonalds in the morning, walked along the boardwalk, toured the Mint, and finished up our exploration of the old streets.

For dinner, we ate at Broussards, one of the old high cuisine restaurants snuggled in beside routine bars and tourist trap gift sellers. In a fun bit of irony, our quiet and mild-mannered busboy had been a dancers from jazz band the night before. The food was less explicitly Cajun than the other establishments we went to, concentrating more on routine french preparation and haute cousine standards. Predictably, we walked away a hundred dollars lacking, but the old style formality was a nice coda to a vacation that saw everything from 12 ounce rum drinks to Who Dat shirts to old french antique stores.

On the 19th we came home. The week was a thoroughly enjoyable adventure down south. Any longer and we would have likely gotten board, but four/five days in the quarter let us experience pretty close to everything they had going. It’s a pretty great vacation spot especially if renting a car isn’t an option (or undesired). There are plenty of hotels within walking distance and it’s nice relaxing experience. I’ve managed to get a few pictures off my camera. Enjoy!