Brian's Birthday!

I just want to put up an I love you and Happy Birthday message to my honey, Bri. I can't wait for us to have at least seventy more of these....:) I'm so lucky to have such a brilliant, thoughtful, and fun husband. I'm glad we are able to spend your first birthday together as a married couple....love you and happy 26th!

French Quarter and Our House

Well, you haven't seen the inside yet, so here it is! This is what our new place looks like right after you walk in the front door.


Here's looking from the last doorway into the bedroom and beyond into the kitchen...


Cabinets...check.


The new couch! Our one piece of non Craigslist/hand-me down/old furniture.


Here's our little backyard. It looks super small in the picture because it's all cut off...but it is pretty small. We're hoping to get some used patio furniture in the next couple of days to spend all this nice fall weather sitting around outside. Oh...and that's my mango tree in the plant on the bottom left...she's doing good.


Lindz and I took a little bike trip to the French Quarter a week ago. It's been really nice weather lately, mid-70's and sunny. So, we just went and walked around a little bit. It's about 2 miles from our house.

The classic shot of the church in Jackson Square.

This is just a view of the French Quarter looking down towards the business district. I should have taken some pictures of the balconies with the overflowing plants and what not...but I didn't.


I thought this was cool. This is the street we live on (just two miles north) and it runs right through the heart of the French Quarter.


Oh Bourbon St. Love Acts and pizza? Who knew? This is the kind of stupid stuff you see all over down there. But, if you stay off of Bourbon St., the Quarter is really beautiful and really nice to stroll around.

Brian Calls the Marines

The Marines are everywhere..including our apartment!
This is a photo of the helicopters that were flying over continually before and after the storm in both Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

Soooo..... we are adapting to all the stress of our first full-on schedule of classes, attempting to balance this with cleaning, moving in, and getting to work. I have gotten lost 3 times on my bike going to and from school, as the roads here are not on a grid system and one road can lead you in the completely wrong direction. I actually had to call Brian to come pick me up in the car on Monday because I'd kept biking in two different directions in the 90 degree heat.

I am very happy because we've both met a lot of cool people and our neighborhood rocks. I also just found out I will be doing work study with Save the Children....this is awesome because they are an international organization, as well as all over the U.S. and are difficult to get a job with. They don't offer internships for people trying to get a job, so therefore, my working with them for five hours a week for the next year and a half could really help out with connections and networking. Next semester, I will be starting my field placement, which will be an internship at another organization. All the hands-on experience has gotten me really excited, but both Bri and I are struggling with the amount of reading we have to do in a day.

Brian has an assistanceship at his university. He will be making a website for a neighborhood that has not taken off since Katrina. His website will be a model for the revitalization of all of the New Orleans neighborhoods. Hopefully after this, he will be working in conjunction with a professor about bike-way initiatives in New Orleans. For all of you who know Bri, this is right up his alley.

Now, the whole point of this e-mail. While we are adapting to all of the newness here in New Orleans, we are still trying to remember when and how to set our apartments security alarm. This morning, at 8:00, Brian decided to open the backdoor to check out the clouds going by for Hurricane Ike. The alarm goes screaming off, the community-wide alarm and I rushed up to turn it off. Ten minutes later, we are sitting in our kitchen, and I'm still in my pj's. Four marines walk directly by our kitchen window, meaning they hopped the fence to our backyard. Brian was like-what the heck? I told him it was because of the alarm and he kept saying, "No, no...but how did they get back there?" He went to the front of the house and sure enough, the Marines were securing our neighborhood because they'd heard an alarm go off.

The result: Post-It notes on both doors for Bri to remember, and I guess happiness that we live in a secure neighborhood. What a way to start the day!

We Survived Gustav

We didn't see much destruction when we got back to New Orleans, but this was a clear sign on Gustav rolling through.


This is the aparment we stayed at, on the second floor. A lot of trees went down and we lost power pretty quickly in our stay.


Here's one of the many trees down in Baton Rouge, which was hit much worse than New Orleans. Especially since no one there was ready for the storm and no one stocked up on supplies.


Here we are sitting in the dark eating crawfish pie! It was actually really good.


When we got back, the cable line was across the road and taped off. The mayhem!


Some of the National Guard troops stationed around New Orleans, helping to keep the looters at bay.


This is right near our house, they were there when we went grocery shopping the other day.


Lindsey wanted a picture of the stop sign down...seems like Gustav didn't listen...har har har.


Traffic! It took us about three hours to make it out of town when we left New Orleans, it should usually take about 1.


At least we were going the right way.


The only thing to do when the power is out...conquer the world...at which I failed.


In retrospect, I shouldn't have gone with the standard 'thumbs up'.


Line outside of Walgreens in Baton Rouge.