Wednesday, February 3. Dog Mirror. Cruise Dinner At Drago's. Floats On The Causeway. After I've been writing for an hour or two, I'm usually ready for my second cup of café au lait. And it's warmed up enough outside that I don't need a jacket. I set the microwave to take four minutes to warm up my milk, and stroll with the dog Suzie to the mailbox to pick up the newspaper. It's about a city block away from the house, and it gets the blood moving to my brain again. When we get to the road, the neighbor's dog is usually standing near the fence, alerted by our approach. Suzie hops across the ditch, and the two dogs trot back and forth along the fence, one turning back the other way at the precise moment the other one does. I truly can't tell which one leads and which follows. They're about the same size and color. They look like one dog walking next to a long mirror.
I live for moments like that. Something about its oddity will stay with me the rest of my life.
Tonight was our pre-cruise dinner. We cut this one pretty close: we leave on Sunday. But the function of the gathering has changed since the early days of our Eat Club cruises. Then, we passed out the travel documents and answered a million questions. Now all that is done online, and all wea're really doing is eating and meeting.
It was at Drago's, as usual. Mary Ann and Debbie Himbert were there for the first three courses as I made my way from downtown. The Drago's people caught me up on the grilled oysters, fleur-de-lis shrimp, and the shrimp chopped salad before the massive lobsters came out with the seafood pasta. It's as if we're getting all our travelers ready for the massive amounts of food that will be thrown at them aboard the ship.
This is the smallest group we've ever had: fourteen people. We had been up to forty-something, but when the Saints started winning people began cancelling, as if the team were going to make it into Super Bowl or something. I couldn't get a straight answer from the cruise line as to whether the Super Bowl would be shown on board. By the time that was settled, we'd lost more than half of the group. Every time the Saints won another game, another couple pulled out. Even the Marys dumped, and told me just to go it alone.
Nice bunch of people, though, most of whom have been with me on prior cruises. One couple, however, has never been on a cruise before. It's been awhile since that's happened. Cruises have been such bargains in the last few years that almost everyone has at least tried one. Especially with the much better ships sailing out of New Orleans in recent times.
It was raining when Mary Ann and I left for home at around nine-thirty. I had been up since five-thirty--I needed to get ahead of the game for a busy day tomorrow--and I was very tired. The last thing I wanted to encounter was a full parade's worth of floats on the Causeway, slowing traffic to a crawl and turning the usual two dozen minutes on the bridge to over an hour. First time I ever saw a Mardi Gras parade on the world's second-longest bridge. In the rain. I wished I hadn't.
