Taking the back roads

Here's Jenia and Stasia with just a few of the beads from the local parade And here's what some of the things that are thrown from the floats How the floats look passing by Just a few trinket for my neck - cool hat When arms get in the way, it's hard to see the floats.   Who Dat was a common theme for all the parades. And this is only the beginning of the parade. So many more beads and so much fun. Honestly, the only thing I had to drink at this point was water, and lots of it.  Some of the things that are thrown are panties and one has to wear those on your head. How about some gymnastics on the top of the levy next to the Mighty Mississippi  This is what the back of the Yukon looked like near the end of the parade I kid you not... people do all kinds of things for these parades It's always helpful when you get a boost to get closer to the float for the beads Even the front of the truck gets decorated.

For a long weekend, we took a trip to New Orleans for a mini-Mardi Gras celebration. By mini-Mardi Gras I mean that we went to local parades and didn’t venture into downtown New Orleans . I think the local parades have more heart to them because the represent the town itself. I’ve been to some of the downtown parades… granted it was many years ago. But like any large parade, there are always large crowds and way too many people for me. It really was much more fun being at the smaller parades. The drive down to New Orleans (from here on in known as NO) would have been a few hours less than the 8.5 hours that it took us. We had to go thru parts of Shreveport and that’s where the trouble started. The drive to Shreveport itself is a little over an hour and that presented no problem. We were to take I49 south to Lafayette and then east toward NO. The only problem was I49 was closed due to an accident further on down the road and the potential for icing on the bridge...

As I get older I think I get more thoughtful about my life. Having more time to myself and not having the usual day-to-day pressures of working and living, allow for more thoughtful moments. It also shows me how life works in strange circles. I guess when you come down to it, I’m a person who believes in things happening for a reason at the time they happen. I make the moves and I make the decisions, for the most part, so the changes are caused by my decisions. When I was writing my previous post, I mentioned things about my working life and a brief note about my entering college. And that simple explanation is the crux of this blog. Ever since I can remember I have always wanted to go to college. As a young kid, school came pretty easy to me. I loved to read and I loved to learn. Maybe because as a youngster I felt my family life was so chaotic, I learned to escape by reading. I also figured out I could find out about any thing, any place or any person by reading...

The other day as I was tooling around Texarkana (AR and TX) I got to thinking about how I'm no longer working and how I felt about that. But first some history on my working life. I started out kind of early on the working scene. When I was just 9 I starting taking the almost year old baby of a neighbor on stroller rides after school. My neighbor had asked me if I wanted to earn some money and of course the answer was yes. We agreed upon 50 cents per hour (a lot of money back in 1948) to take her daughter for stroller rides around the block on nice days. I would report to Mrs. Wagner's house after I got home from school and she would let me know if I were to take the baby out for that day. I would walk around designated blocks for an hour, sometimes two, and then bring baby Carol back. And that was my introduction to being financially independent. Shortly before the end of my sophomore year in high school, I saw an ad in the Boston Globe for waitresses in Ogunquit, Maine...

This past weekend I took a quick trip back to sunny So Cal. Since I had left on Dec 14th with the thought that I would be gone for a month or so, I didn't really pack a lot of clothes, and mostly winter ones, cause I was going to be in Colorado for a while. Well, as things turned out, that changed and I landed in Arkansas with winter clothes. In actuality that turned out to be a good thing cause it's been colder than normal here in AR. Be that as it may, it will get warm eventually and I didn't have the proper clothes... ergo the trip back. However, since so much has changed and I am planning to be in AR permanently, at least for the next 2 years, I needed a lot of things from my home in So Cal. So I came back with two 29" suitcases full of clothes and various papers that I need right now. Thank you Southwest for not charging for suitcases. I flew out of Love Field in Dallas and that was a treat in itself. Dallas is about a 2.5 to 3 hour drive from Texarkana. I...