Krewe Du Vieux

Saturday night we went to our first parade of 2009 Krewe Du Vieux. This parade is in the quarter and is a very adult parade, you def. want to leave the kids at home for this one! We had a good time watching the parade with some friends then hanging out at Filipe's after.

Here is one of the floats......

The sperm bank float is always my favorite, followed by the "swimming sperm" on sticks.

Angela caught this nice vibrator...

Some other funny floats

. Adam wanted me to be the same height as him.

Me, Adam and Steve- as moss man...

Mardi Gras 1/2 Marathon Minus Me

Sunday, February 1st was the annual Mardi Gras Marathon and 1/2 Marathon. The 1/2 marathon that I was supposed to run. :( I was all registered, trained and ready to then I got my bad news about my stress fracture. I have been very bummed out about it so I decided that I would volunteer at the race Expo on Friday so at least I could participate in some way. It was acutually fun, I was working the registration table so I got to meet and wish good luck to hundereds of runners. I even treated myself to a new t-shirt that says "In my dreams I'm a Kenyan":)

My friend Mary was walking/jogging the 1/2 so I lived through her on Sunday:) We were at the start at 7 a.m. and I got to watch everyone run off. It was acutally amazing. I have always been in the middle of the crowd nervous etc, but Sunday I climbed up on a sign so I could get a view from above and it gave me chills. 7,400 people were registered.

I had to restrain myself when the gun went off , but after Mary left I started my journey to different miles to cheer her on. As her coach I had worked up a map where she would be at what time and she had a printed version on her water bottle.

I watched the race from about 5 different mile points. At mile 3 I saw the front runners come by and they were looking fast. Santilla from track came in 3rd female and Kelly 6th. I knew about 30 people or so that were running the race so I had plenty of people to cheer for. I met Mary at the finish line of course and I think about 15 people must have asked me how I did, guess they didn't notice I was in jeans.... which I had wore so I won't be temped to run!

It was nice seeing some of my track friends that I haven't seen in the past few weeks. Of course I was jealous of everyone that went running by, but this was a neat experience to be the spectator for once. I hope it was a one time experience though next time I want to be IN the race!

"Not to Scale"

The New Orleans AIA (American Institute of Architects) started a bowling leauge and the first game was last night at Rock N Bowl. It was crazy there were 24 teams composed of different firms with well over 100 people there. Our team name is "Not to scale".
For some reason the guy at the shoe rental felt like I needed to be the only person in the bowling alley sporting these "LSU" shoes. Yeah purple and gold complete with a tiger and "LSU" on the side. People kept thinking they were my personal shoes.... um no I do not own my own bowling shoes and if I did they would not look like this.

The way it works is you play three teams each night, rotating your team members through all ten frames. We were not aware of this until our second game so the first game everyone on both teams played all the rounds. Well with 12 people per lane you can imagine this took forever. We only made it to frame 6 before it was time for the next team. So with 6 frames of bowling I had bowled a 41.... 4 out of the 5 people on my team had bowled a 41, are we consistant or what?

It was lots of fun and I can only hope we improve for next month~

There it is....

In case anyone is intrested in seeing my stress fracture, the culprit of my hiatus, lapse, suspension, break, and freeze in my running .....

Here it is..... in the form of a black spot.... I hate that black spot. :(

The Jacket

The New Orleans Track Club has a thing called the Grand Prix Series. This is composed of certain NOTC races throughout the year that are worth points. Depending on what place you come in you get a certain number of points.

The past two years I have come in second place in the 40-under division and received a nice plaque. 1st place however gets a jacket with their name embroidered on it, so this year I decided enough with the plaques my goal was to get the jacket!

I worked hard and somehow made it to every race and got 1st place this year. So last night was the award banquet. They called my name and I went up to get my long awaited for jacket, only to find out they misspelled my name..... go figure.

Crime Happened Here

The city of New Orleans has been placing these signs in places where, well you guessed it "crime happened". They list the date, location and what kind of crime it was. It's all hand written of course for a more personal touch. I don't really know what I think of them, I don't think I like them though.

I mean I don't want to see that crime is happening everywhere, I know it is.


What if the criminals think of these as trophy's, take pictures with them saying "I did that.." I just don't think a little yard sign will prevent them from committing a crime.

Yes I understand the city is trying to help prevent crime but I think this might just scare away the innocent people. One lady said she is having a hard time selling her house, there is one of these signs right down the block from it. What tourist are going to want to come to a city pointing out every spot that a crime was commited? Are we proud of how many signs we have?

I guess I just don't understand. Are these signs suppose to make you want to be more careful or aware in these areas, when really you should be like that all of the time no matter where you are?

Next time you pass one of these signs just remember "Crime Happened Here"

Bad News

Well I had my bone scan on Friday. I got to watch the screen as I was being scanned and I am no radiologist but what I saw was not good, so of course I was dreading Dr. Hoffman's phone call today. What he said was pretty much what I expected..."Kid you have a stress fracture". What I didn't expect was that it was in my leg and NOT in my hip (Adam says this is much better than in my hip). Then Dr. Hoffman continued by repeating about 6 times in a row.."no running, no running, no running"

He's gotten to know me pretty good over the past 6 years so he followed that with "you heard me??" Every time I would try to say something he would cut me off with another "no running.."
I was afraid to ask "so this means I can't do the Mardi Gras 1/2 Marthon in 2 weeks?" kidding, I think I knew the answer to that one.

I am very bummed right now I was finally to a point where I felt like I had trained well for the race and now I don't get to run it. I'll never know if all of those long runs had paid off, if my new pacing plan was going to work or if I was going to run a P.R.
Looks like I will be volunteering and cheering on all my friends who will be out there pounding away, a side I've never been on but it looks like I don't have a choice.

as Dr. Hoffman has stressed..... NO RUNNING, NO RUNNING, NO RUNNING.........:(