New Orleans!

Well let’s just jump right in shall we? Cath got to my house around 7:30 monday morning and we piled into my car and went over to pick up Mel. Then we picked up Josh and met up with Mel’s parents at a gas station, and Mel and Josh rode with her parents the first leg of the trip while Cath rode with me. The trip there was pretty uneventful, except that it was my first time driving that long a distance and driving in a city I wasn’t used to. I think I did pretty well! We had the car decked out in UofM stuff… a tiger in the back window and a pompom, and a flag on the window. We saw lots of fans on their way down and waved at them all, it was fun!

Well, we got to the hotel and checked in. It was a really nice hotel – turns out not to be the one I thought it was, but the one where the alumni were all staying. I swear everybody in the hotel was a Tiger fan, everybody was wearing blue and grey. As soon as we got there and unloaded our stuff (and I had put my Tiger tail on and blue and grey ribbons in my pigtails!) we went down to the concierge.

Now, see, we had gone online to look for LOTR midnight show tickets, but couldn’t figure out which was closest. Since none of the shows were sold out, we decided to wait and ask the concierge to get tickets for us when we got there. So we went to him and explained our situation – and he told us point blank he couldn’t help us. We’d have to go to the desk and get a paper, find a movie theater and go buy tickets ourselves. I thought that was strange – he’s a concierge, isn’t it his job to at least TRY to help us? And besides, the only paper the desk had was the New York Times. Like that would do us any good.

So Mel’s mom came down a few minutes later and asked if we’d got our tickets – we told her what happened and she was like, oh no, that isn’t right. So she goes over there and I swear she’s over there for 15 minutes. She comes back and TADA we have tickets and a taxi to pick us up.

So we went down on Bourbon street and found a place to eat. We sat out on one of the balconies and watched drunk people stagger about. Cath and I both decided to have red beans and rice, and mine was pretty good. We even had a little show – on the balcony across the streets these drunk guys were trying to get girls to show their chest for beads. And some girls were actually doing it! OMG!

Anyway, then they had the UofM parade down Bourbon street!!! It was so exciting!! The marching band came through playing the fight song, and the cheerleaders and pompom girls, and the colour guard and baton twirler people, and they had five floats with people throwing blue and silver beads off of them. The first float had our mascot Pouncer on it, and Elvis 😀 Some dude on the back of one of the floats randomly threw some beads at me and I didn’t realise it… I saw them coming and I moved my head not even an inch and it whizzed right by my ear, so I just missed getting hit by them… But I got them off the ground… we bought some more later on because ALL the Tiger fans were wearing as many blue and silver beads as they could get.

We followed the parade down to Silky O’Sullivan’s (a Memphis owned pub, so it was where the party was of course!). In the crowd I managed to run into two old high school classmates of mine, luckily they didn’t recognize me. And then Mel almost fell out of the window.

Then decided to go Pat O’Brien’s for another drink, where I fell in love with the Purple People eater. LOL
It was late by then so we decided to go back to our hotel. All 3 of us girls were pretty silly by then, and once we got back Mel managed to fall off the bed and send all of us into insane giggle fits.

Next morning we got up at 9 and went down to Cafe Du Monde for breakfast. There were SO MANY TIGER FANS! Everywhere you looked you saw people from Memphis. It was so funny that morning, because EVERYBODY had been drinking the night before. Everytime we’d pass someone on the street, we’d say “Go Tigers!” and the reply was always this somber “go tigers….uuuuugh” hangovery kind of groan. lol. Breakfast was good!

Afterwards we went over to Jackson Sq again and took some pictures, and then went in St Louis cathedral. Inside they had a sign saying “please turn off your cell phones and pagers” and of course we didn’t because we figured we’d only be in there a minute or two. And of course cath’s phone goes off, in the dead silent sanctuary. and when she goes to get it, she drops it and it goes skittering across the floor. the guy working there gave her a DIRTY look, and we were all embarrassed. LOL

Then us ‘kids’ decided to go to the Aquarium while Mel’s parents went shopping. The aquarium was really cool, I made a penguin friend 😀 We saw the Imax show and it was one I’d already seen before here, but it was still really good.

(Petting a shark)

So then we went back to the hotel and got changed to go to the pep rally. We walked down to the Superdome and it was packed out with Memphis fans! After a while we went on in and found our seats – we had really good seats, like 10th row, 50 yd line.

And everybody kept saying, it didn’t matter whether we won or lost, because it was great to just be in a bowl game. But…

WE WON!

It was a great game!! We kicked butt! It would have been really sad to have to go home losers after all the fanfare we’d had. But it was really fun, and as I said, this is coming from someone who hates football.

But, there’s always bad with the good – I got beer spilled all over my favourite jacket. The drunk guy sitting next to me (well, actually 2 seats down – we had extra seats so we had spread out) kept setting his pompom on the empty chair between us. In the first half I’d even picked it up for him and set it back in the chair when he’d knocked it off, because I knew the floor was gross from all the spillage and he thanked me. But then in the second half he’d gotten really drunk and at one point, I was sitting there with my pompoms (everybody had the same pompoms, they’d handed them out beforehand), and he goes, “give me that, please.” I guess he thought I had his pompom. I had two, so I figured I’d just share with the crazy drunk man, and handed him one. His friend next to him who wasn’t quite as drunk looks at him funny and tells him his pompom is on the floor and makes him give me mine back. heh.

Then we went to have a quick dinner at Margaritaville. I had a Cheeseburger in Paradise. We ate really quick and caught a taxi back to the hotel so I could change into my dress. That dress was not made to be put on fast but I managed it in about 10 minutes. Our taxi had waited on us, and he zoomed us out to the theater. We still only got there maybe 20 minutes before it started, and everybody was already in the theater, so we had to go straight in and find seats (no standing around in the lobby showing off my costume :() We had crappy seats too – second row so I had a crick in my neck all the next day.

After the movie we got on out of there because it was already 3:30. We got back to our hotel and I quickly packed so I wouldn’t have to do it in the morning. We went to sleep and then Cath and I got up 8:30, got our stuff together and went down to get our car. Now, we told everybody we’d be following Mel’s parents back to Memphis, but they weren’t leaving til after noon and I had to be back for my Lion King tickets at 7. So nobody really knows that Cath and I came back by ourselves, LOL. But anyway, we went down and got in line for the valet, and that took forever. They finally loaded us in a van and took us to the parking garage, where they had my car started and warmed up.

So, we tried to follow the directions we’d been given for getting back on the interstate. For a while we kinda thought we were heading in the right direction, but eventually it turned into the boonies and we realised we were NOT going to the right way. I turned around and went to a gas station where Cath asked directions. We had to pay a toll to get back on the right road :p But we knew we were heading right now, because all you had to do was follow the sea of Tiger fans heading back to Memphis 🙂 We came out a different way though – coming in we’d gone over the super long bridge – coming out we went through a swamp. I preferred the bridge.

Ride home was uneventful. Cath and I talked the entire time. Got home, took a shower, changed clothes and headed off to Lion King. We stopped at Sonic for a quick bite and then got to the theater. We got there really early and had to hang around in the lobby for a while, but that was ok because the Orpheum is neat.

Then the usher seated us in the wrong seats, and we had to move when the seat’s real owners showed up :p I had really wanted to be on that aisle seat, too – my legs were sore from all the walking and I had wanted to stretch them out, and now we were stuck in the middle of the teeny row. But luckily no one sat in front of us so we had a good view.

The show was AMAZING. The singing was absolutely beautiful, especially when everyone was singing together. And the costume designs were incredible… but the thing I loved best was the scenery, how they used colour and shadow and various other effects to create the mood. It was amazing. Man! Inspiring. The guys who played Timon and Pumbaa did really great. One effect I loved was how they did Mufasa’s giant head in the clouds – I can’t even describe it. It was so cool.

and that’s my weekend 🙂