Hurricane Gustav aka Stupid Head

Well, Don't worry about us. We may be from New York and Minnesota where the biggest worries of the year are ice storms and blizzards. Yet, a hurricane is on the way towards our new home in New Orleans. We just went out and bought some water and little snack crap for the drive to Baton Rouge where we are going to stay for the next couple days as the storm goes through. So don't worry about us, all is well. We just hope everyone makes it out of the city and everywhere else ok and that everything works out fine.


Here are the spray paint symbols that were put on houses after Katrina when they were searching for bodies. There are still lots of these on houses all over the city, even on houses that have been fully restored.




This is the last house in our neighborhood that was in truly rough shape when we moved in and reconstruction just started on it...maybe a little too early.


Lindsey says this is her dream house every time we walk past because it's just so cute and homey.


Here are just a couple of houses on our block, I just love the porches and the architecture of these older places.


Again, this is just a block away from us our place and heading towards the park, a really nice neighborhood.


Here's us eating a meal while hanging out in our 'cave'. It's been fun having no space to eat or cook.


We stocked up on water and some snacks for the long drive to Baton Rouge. It's only an hour normally, but it's probably going to take a lot longer after everyone starts evacuating.


I'm probably a little too cheery in this picture...but at least we're in zone 3!


Here's the place we will be moving in to, all boarded up in preparation for the storm. Before everyone goes, the doors will be boarded as well. This is all to make sure that the wind doesn't break the windows and then cause water damage in the house.


Here's Roxy, the new dog that our neighbor bought and we've been helping to walk a little bit. There's really nothing to 'beware'.

Tropical Depression?

We had a little bit of excitement over the past couple of days. We watched the news as Tropical Storm Fay seemed to be headed directly towards us, bringing 70 mph winds and torrents of rain. Yet, Fay arrived as a 'depression', or, a gray, rainy, gusty day. So, we're just sitting around inside our 'cave', as the still box strewn, makeshift apartment has come to be called, waiting for the rain to stop. Classes start for me this week and Lindsey has her orientation. While nothing very worthwhile has occurred in the last week, we did see an alligator (awesome), went to Bourbon St. (ridiculous place), and Lindsey is taking pills for Giardia again.


Here's a picture of the streetcar as we drove past it right near our house. One of the lines runs two blocks from our house and goes right downtown. We took it downtown the other night too.

I dragged Lindz to Jean LaFitte National Park and then literally dragged her through the trails on our journey to see an alligator. The Park was really cool, but the huge spiders, huge black grasshoppers, snakes, alligators, and other such things kinda had Lindz freaked out.

Here's a shot of the trail through the park.

Here's us ducking to avoid the 6 inch long spiders.

I know, I know, I'm sorry. We saw an alligator here, just a little one, but I didn't get the camera out quick enough and missed the photo. So, all you get is the pond picture! We'll get an alligator picture for you soon enough.


On our way back from the park, we got this view of the skyline. The National Park was just a 30 minute drive from our house, pretty cool.

We also met up with a Lindsey's friend Patrick and our new buddies Kelsey and Alex. Patrick bought this grossly large beers during Lindsey and I's first trip to Bourbon St. Lindsey thought Bourbon was like Cancun and I equated it with bizarro Disney World...probably our last time there.

New York and Back Again

I'm sitting in our swelteringly hot living room (only the bedroom has a window AC unit) after just arriving back in town yesterday. We took a 10 day long trip to Upstate New York to see my family before school kicks off down here. After flying into Syracuse we drove up to the Adirondacks with my buddy Cobra (Colin Brady) and spent a while up there kayaking, making campfires, trying to BBQ chipmunks, and other such mischief. It was a great time. Then we spent a week with my parents and probably spent 70% of our waking hours watching the Olympics. But, we had a great time in New York, it was so fun to see the family and hang out before life starts back up for us.

Here's a picture of our block, the house we will be living in is the blue one, but I cropped our front door off.

Cobra and I's ridiculously half-hearted attempt to capture a chipmunk.

The Baldwin's camping, minus Caitlin.

One night we went and bought 150 clams, or steamers and cooked them up. This was Lindsey's first time having this staple of New York summer parties and she loved em.

We stopped at a wine tasting in downtown Lake Placid during a shopping trip, yet the elderberry overtones were a trifle overpowering.

All of the family came up on Sunday for my cousin Mike's birthday. Happy B-day Mike!

Cute picture of Lindz and Caity.

In honor of the Olympics and because I found my old BB gun, we had a shooting contest in the backyard with the family. Mom and I tied with all five shots landing in the inner circle, but I overtook her in the paper plate round.


We went out for Indian food and played mini-golf with our neighbors the Hornings. The food was awesome and I don't know why my leg is up like that.


Well, we just got back in town yesterday and this morning we took a little bike trip around City Park, which is only 2 blocks from our house. It's a really gorgeous park, but we didn't see any alligators so the trip was a complete failure.

Arrived in New Orleans!

It sure has been a stressful couple of days, but everything is great now. We came into town on Friday having not seen our apartment yet...and then found ourselves moving into a dirty crap hole in the middle of an incredible neighborhood full of amazing neighbors. Yet, after the stress of hating the place and wondering what we were going to do because we didn't want to move in, everything worked out perfectly. The people living right next door to us are moving out, so we're moving right next door in September. The place that we will be moving into is gorgeous and we can't wait to move in and spend the next two years making it our home. Also, all of the neighbors have been so wonderful and friendly. Lindsey and I can't get over how lucky we were to find such an amazing place to live.


We stopped in Chicago to see Mat and Karen, it was a lot of fun to see them but I wish we had more time to spend in the windy city. We ate some Chicago pizza and had a great time going out for one night before we hit the road the next morning.


Well, it wasn't super fun driving the stupid truck down with the car hooked to the back. In this scenario, I almost got us stuck in a Taco Bell, but I went over the curb and smashed my way through the drive-thru. I also went through a few red lights in the city of New Orleans, almost hit a truck in the city, and hit countless curbs. Lindsey managed to nail some curbs and cruised down the rumble strip.


Truck driver Binzer


Baldwin the map reader.

This one is for Becky.

Our new home state!

This was a house right on the Bayou off I10, it was crazy to see the landscape change so quickly right after we crossed in Louisiana.


Here's our new home! We are currently living in the crappy pink one, but will be moving into the blue one in a month. We can't wait to move and start unpacking. There's still no power in the pink house we're in right now so we're spending a lot of time at our friend Emily's place about ten minutes away from ours. We've have a great time the past two days. We've eaten some incredible food, seen some music, and it's hot as hell. We're both really excited to start exploring the city over the course of our next two years here.