Forecast Outlook: High Praline Probability

Good almost afternoon! Happy Super Bowl Sunday, for the sports fans. I'm going to a Superbowl party this evening, which made one friend guffaw when I told her. I *am* an unlikely attendee, but the invitation had Superbowl party in quotes and the folks involved are fun and there's bound to be all kinds of good food. I know better than to bogart prime sofa space and I imagine there will be someone to duck behind if anyone REALLY wants to school me on football. Which, why would they, when there are other fans around? So. I have my spiced yogurt dip at the ready.

In the meantime, I can't really settle in. I think it's because I'm on the verge of a vacation. Compatriot and I are off to New Orleans on Wednesday and I can't wait! It has been years since I have ventured to a brand new place, just for the sake of going, but here we are! I can barely believe it's happening. The flights and French quarter hotel are booked, travel guides thumbed through, tripadvisor, chowhound, Facebook friends all polled and scanned; notes scribbled. So! Many! Possibilities!  C & I are pretty much aligned: we both need downtime, we're both REALLY focused on food/drink/soaking it up through walking around.

When my Dad hears we're going, he leaps to what is important to him, as a lifelong railnut: "You need to take the green line of streetcars: those are the REAL antiques, built in 1922. Get on at Canal street, they go through the garden district. The red line is okay, but they were built later. They were damaged in the floods, not sure if they're up and running."

Mom, who got a little confused about who I am going with and what the nature of our trip is, says, "This sounds expensive...Is this Compatriot rich?" Expensive, yes and rich, no. And there are no sugar daddies or sugar mommas involved here, just two friends splashing out a bit. She follows that up with a recommendation for a very expensive Creole restaurant that Dad & Mom went to a year before Katrina.

Someone asks if our hotel is supposed to be haunted, which I haven't read anywhere. But isn't everything haunted in New Orleans? I want and do not want to brush up against the haunted. I don't discount the idea of ghosts, though I think there's a lot of bunk surrounding such things. Really, I am a bit superstitious anyway. Continuing on the superstitious tip, I can't help but feel this trip is yet another indication that this year is and will be a huge year of change. No matter that we planned it and brought it into being. And maybe it doesn't matter, in the end: if you enter a time frame convinced it will be one of change, you'll make it that way, anyway...I know that change is always happening anyway, but some part of me is gearing up for more/bigger/better.

[Also superstitious: horoscope warns against my spending money at this time. Well. Good luck with that.]

Anyhow, it's time to do some sketching and to cook a batch of artichoke avgelemono soup to freeze. I'll leave you with a couple snaps of the framed Frida Kahlo brochure:

Her sideways gaze looks more serious than I noted before

 

 

 

Doesn't it look lovely? I have it hanging in the living room, on a red wall (which I can never photograph well). I realized after I hung it that I inadvertently created this interplay of the gaze between works. To Kahlo's left is a large poster from the DIA's exhibition of fashion photographer Richard Avedon (which I won! through a little bit of my own social media finagling); the black and white photo shows a beautiful woman with a HUGE white flower, looking backward behind her --> in Kahlo's direction. A couple feet over is a wonderful sepia toned photo of "Dorothy and the Duck"  by Joel Anderson. How fun! The spacing is weird, but otherwise, I'm pleased about that. Anyhow, Dexter Picture Frame did a really nice job. 

Hard to tell from the photo, but the beige mat has a nice, threaded texture

Exhibit details, right on the frame backing.

Check out the detail on the right! At this point, I'm definitely friends with the fine folk of the Dexter and Saline Picture Frame Co.s and they are my go-to framing place, so you may think I am biased. But I'd just like to take a moment here. When I brought the brochure in for framing, it was just that: folded, a little beat-up. I knew they'd cut the front off, so it would lay better -- but it was such a nice surprise to see that they had also cut the exhibit writeup from the brochure and affixed it to the back! I'm so pleased about that and certain they would have done that for any of their customers. Nice job!