Mardi Gras Pt. 3

Sunday night:

Flu moving into a different stage. Sore throat, shakiness. Apart from a few minutes out on St. Charles to deliver my rent check to my landloard, I was indoors. Beautiful, beautiful day: 70-plus outside, sunny and breezy all day. I sat at my desk and worked with the windows open, so I heard, once again, several parades from a distance. I did take myself out to my front porch for a little while in the afternoon, to eat my lunch and people watch. Lots of families going to the route and back to their hotel rooms, lots of people wandering around with ice chests to spend the day on the Avenue drinking for both Mardi Gras and, judging by their t-shirts, the Super Bowl. I also saw one fight and one traffic accident, motorcycle versus pedestrian.

A few stories in the news today mentioned parade route shootings:

http://www.wdsu.com/news/15207497/detail.html?rss=no&psp=news

That’s all much more major than even I had envisioned as a result of Mardi Gras, and I’m a bitter paranoiac, let’s face it. But it makes me glad I was at home. I felt creeped out last night locked in when I could hear all the stragglers heading back to their own homes, drunk, yelling, out-of-control excited, or tired and grumpy, or angry and wound up and out to punch anyone who crossed their path. So not my scene, mixing with the general populace. I feel like an imperialist, I think.