Hard Rock and a Soft Place

On October 12, the building site of the Hard Rock Hotel on the corner of Rampart and Canal partially collapsed.  It happened in the morning.  I was walking Rudy, when TFP came to find us and told me to come with him to the Greenway to see.  He had been running downtown.  When he got to Canal Street, the street was blocked and he was directed down another street.  He got directed down Rampart street, where he could see the it pretty close.  It happened on a Saturday morning, which was a better scenario than it could have been.  There were less workers on site, and there wasn't the weekday rush hour traffic.  It was still bad.  I mean, part of a huge building in a busy area collapsed.  And three people died, and many were injured.   

So, I don't have a great camera, and I never got really close to the building to get a great shot.  But if you want that, you can google "hard rock collapse" and find many better photos and videos of it.  Anyway, here are some chronological photos that I have taken of the structure.    

So there were two cranes at the site that had to be taken down.  There was a fear that they were going to topple over.  So the solution was to detonate them.  This was supposed to happen the week after the collapse.  There was a parade, Krewe of Boo, that was supposed to roll through the French quarter that night.  So, they rerouted the parade to avoid the Hard Rock collapse site.  Then, they decided to cancel the parade altogether.  Then the implosion was postponed until the next day, so the parade was back on.  This next photo is a couple hours before the cranes were set to detonate.

Here are some photos the night after the implosion.  I know it's not a close up, but it's so weird how you can't even tell anything is off if you don't really look closely.

I didn't know when it was scheduled for.  If I had known, I probably would have walked down there to watch.  But instead, I was in the house.  I had just come back from running errands, and I had sat down on the couch and was watching TV for a few minutes.  All of a sudden I heard and felt a loud boom, or a rumbling that felt like a jet plane was taking off in the next door neighbor's yard.  It shook the house.  And I knew right away exactly what it was.  Our house is less than a mile away from the site.  But there were even reports that people could hear it from Gentilly, which is at least four miles away from the site.  Crazy.

I wish I had photos from right after the implosion.  The crane on the Rampart side broke in pieces and  the longer arm or whatever you call it, went straight down and impaled the street.  So it was standing straight up, stuck in the street.  The long arm of the other crane bent like an arm with an elbow, and it was resting on the Canal Street side of the building.  According to all the officials that made statements or went on the news, it was a perfect execution.  Because they meant for the one part to be hanging off the side, and they knew the other one was going to stab the street.  In the next couple of days, they removed the debris from Rampart street, and they kind of moved the base of that crane.  Perfect execution, my ass.

These are photos of the weird and sad destruction against the beautiful sky during sunset.

And these are from today, from the Canal Street side.  Amazingly, the street was still open a block away from the site.  I guess they felt pretty confidant that nothing is going to fall into the street.

It's only been a little over two weeks since the collapse, but it feels like it's been a long time, and that this tragedy of a building is going to be a part of the cityscape for longer than it should be.  I hope that it implodes soon.  And I also hope I am able to watch it.  Sorry, but I really do.

More photos

So, this is Monday evening yoga on Lafitte Greenway.  While I do not attend, Rudy and I walk around them and soak in their peaceful vibes.  The Lafitte Greenway being two blocks from our house was one of the selling points.  

Here is the levee off of Severn Avenue in Metairie (Metry).  I was a dragon 🐉🐲Rudy around Metaire to go shoe shopping and making groceries.  After the shoe store, which I will tell you about later, I decided to take Rudy to the lake.  I realized that I could just go north from the mall and there it was.  We parked at the end of a residential street and just walked up.  It feels so otherworldly up on the levee.  The grass was so spongy.  And I also discovered that there were fire ants in the grass.  Luckily Rudy didn't step in them.  

So here are my new shoes.  I mainly needed them for our half mile walks.  

But, I did not get these at Dick's when I dragged Rudy out there.  So, what happened was, there were about two and a half minutes left during the Saints game when I decided to jump (Rudy doesn't jump really) into the car and make it over to the mall before the game was over.  I got there no problem.  But, there were still a few seconds left to the game when I walked into Dick's.  (Notice I am not going to make any phallic references because I'm so matour.). I walked around the two rows of shoes multiple times before I settled on a shoe I liked.  And I waited.  The game was over by then.  But I waited.  And I waited.  And I waited some more.  I watched a women pick up a shoe and wait.  And wait.  But then a guy came out of the back and helped her.  He walked right by me going into the back.  Then he walked kinda near me coming back out several minutes later.  And then I realized all these other customers had appeared in the shoe section right after the game had ended.  So I knew there was no hope.  

So here's the thing.  A long time ago, I was ignored when I went shopping.  No one bothered with little young me.  Then I got a little older, and salespeople came right to me when I walked in the door.  Not necessarily to help me, but to make sure I wasn't shoplifting,  And they would "discreetly" follow me.  I didn't really realize this at first.  Naive little me.  Then I got older, and I guess more invisible looking, less shopliftery looking. This also coincided with the financial crisis of 2008.  That was when all the stores cut salespeople.  And then no one would help me unless I tracked someone down and asked.  And it's mostly been that way ever since.  

So, the next day TFP and I went to the Nike outlet store which is like two miles from our house.  They have the display, and then they have the boxes of different sizes so you can help yourself.  I found some shoes I liked in a couple minutes.  Which is so fast for me.  And they had my size too, which was surprising.  And TFP, who usually can find shoes, didn't find anything he liked.  The bonus about these shoes was that they were $29.99.  The shoes that I wanted to get at Dick's were $74.99.  So, FU Dick's.  🖕🏼

And finally, here is an amusing sign at the Big Easy convenience store.  Personally, I don't think it's safe to run with a propane tank.  Also, when they are full, they are pretty heavy... just sayin.

Random photos

So... here are just some photos from my iPhone.  If you follow my instagram or facebook page, then you might have seen some of these before.  Anyway, I'll start with Rudy.  I got lots of photos of Rudy.  So, here's a couple.  One is in front of our house, and the other is in City Park.  

Here's a tree that is overtaking a fence.

Here I have found the secret Smurf village!

Funny signage

Random sky photos..... hope you're not bored by these.  I know everyone posts sky photos, and they are probably better than these...

This is one of the many neighborhood cats.  I call him/her Moustache.

Here is my hand.  In the same week I cut my index finger with a serrated knife and got stung twice by a wasp.

There's a little rainbow.

Here is one of my latest paintings.  Inspired by Botticelli's Birth of Venus, I call this one "The Birth of I Fitz"

Here is a painting of a friend's cat, Horace, who recently crossed the rainbow bridge.  So, it's definitely chubbier than Horace really was, but I'm not good with dimensions and scale and all that...

So, that's all I got for now 😃

tan thumb

So, we moved from a very lush tropical landscaped house to one void of any greenery besides a rectangular plot of grass.  We wanted to spruce it up a little, but I don't like to spend loads of money on plants that might just die, since we don't really know anything about gardening or landscaping.  When I read stuff about acidity and spacing and soil layering, I kinda go blank and don't really absorb any of the information.   So, I plant stuff with minimal consideration for how it will grow.  I do group things together according to taste.  We have had herbs that all just ended up tasting the same... So, if you're not into gardening at all, you probably want to stop right here.  Because this blog is going to be a complete snooze fest for you.  If you have a huge interest in gardening, this will also be a snooze fest for you, as I am very unknowledgeable.  But, it you have a little interest in gardening and you're just bored already or killing time, then keep reading.....Anyway, here's our additions

The first two are some succulents that we got at the local garden shop.  I have an awful memory, as my early onset dementia has set in.  Ok, so I don't have an official diagnosis, but I can tell.  Anyway, I wanted some hanging ferns, but TFP wasn't totally into the idea, so we compromised and had it his way by getting these succulents instead.  

This pitcher plant was my impulse buy.  I don't know if it gets to eat many flies, but it's a cool Dracula plant.  I need to get a bigger basket for it.

Here's our citronella plant.  I had to buy a pot for it, which was weird to me, because at our home in Fort Lauderdale, we inherited so many planters from the previous owner that we never had to buy one.  I just got a clay pot and painted it with leftover paint from our shed.

Here's our other deck plants.  These are little desert rose plants that TFP bought online.  They didn't do anything for the longest time because the weather wasn't quite warm enough when we first planted them.

This little aloe and the pot it's in came from Fort Lauderdale.  When I drove over, I put a couple plants in the front foot well.  This was an aloe pup which came from a very large plant.  We had started with our first aloe when we lived in Hollywood, Florida.  It was a little smaller than this size.  We kept it in the shaded lanai, so it didn't really grow.  Then when we moved, we left it out front in a sunny spot, and it grew exponentially.  We had to replant it twice in a year.  Then, when we moved to the Fort Lauderdale house, it grew even more.  We also inherited two other large aloe plants.  They all grew & I separated the pups into several smaller planters to give them their own space.  This guy sat in the house for a couple months because it was so cold outside when we first moved.  I put him out prematurely, and for a month or two, it looked like he was just about dead.  And then it warmed up, and slowly, he came back to life.  Now, he's growing and happy again.

The bigger pot by the steps has 2 cayenne plants and a cantaloupe plant.  As you can kinda see, the cantaloupe is a bully, outgrowing the pepper plants and taking up a lot of space.  But it can go vertical at least.  The cantaloupe grew from some seeds that I just threw out when I cut up a melon.  I hope we get melons from this, because I want to know if they will be a little spicy!

Here is our front porch planter.  Once again, the cantaloupe is dominating.  But in the midst of it is a mango sapling, a tamarind sapling, and a few itty bitty lychee plants.  These were all from just being thrown into the dirt and giving them some water.

This is our The Fuzz planter by our front door.  When our beloved cat, The Fuzz, was sick, we bought her a basil plant to chew on.  When she passed away, TFP put her basil plant in this pot.  It eventually died, but we bought another basil plant to put in in.  When we moved here, I brought it, and the basil died.  So I replaced it will catnip for the outdoor kitties to enjoy.  I don't think they are actually eating it at all, but it's there for them.

This is a lychee plant that I brought from Fort Lauderdale.  This one too almost died when I put it outside.  But after a while it found it's will to live.  Lucky little thing.  Too bad we all can't be that resilient.

So that's the lychee in the foreground, then the "garden", then the banana trees that we bought from the garden center.  Then there are a few more little lychee saplings that I planted after I bought lychees from Amazon.  And in the far back right is another little mango sapling.  

Here's the mango.  I know these fruit trees will probably never bear fruit, but it's fun to plant them.  

The closer banana tree is a regular dwarf banana tree, the farther one is a red dwarf banana.  The red one had some kinda little critters eating the leaves at night.  I googled it, and I read that they hide at the base between the fronds during the day.  So you're supposed to hose out between the layers to get them out.  I did this several times in a few days, and it seemed to work.  There are little newts that live in the trees, but they seemed fine.

You probably can't tell the difference from plant to plant, but these are lychees that grew from lychees that I got less than 2 months ago.

So in the foreground are all purchased plants.  There's lemongrass.  This has probably tripled in size.  I had tried to bring a lemongrass plant from Florida, but it died. 😢 ☠️ . 

Moving on, there's sunflowers, a flowering plant with purple flowers, and grapefruit mint. 

The back part of the garden has pineapple tops that are very slowly growing, more cayenne peppers, tomatoes that aren't doing much, Thai basil, cucumbers, more cantaloupe that are much slower to grow because they are in more direct sunlight, and then a lot of black eyed peas. The plant in the middle of the photo climbing up is one of the black eyed pea plants.  I wrapped some twine around the fence boards for the vines to cling to.   The black eyed peas were just grown from dried beans from Whole Foods.  They are doing so well, but it's funny, because are we going to harvest 6 bean pods and cook them?  I guess they would feed a mouse?

When I was planning the garden space, I was going to buy concrete blocks and do a really nice border and stuff.  Then I got tired and didn't want to lug all those blocks or spend the money.  This wooden border stuff cost much less and it was much lighter to carry!  Anyway, that's the end of my garden tour.  You can wake up from your nap refreshed and ready to do something more interesting!