Wednesday, December 29, 2010, Bridgett helped me load my life into her car and drove me to meet up with Jordan so I could stay with her in Birmingham for the night and leave early in the morning for our New Years adventure! After saying goodbye to my sissy (who I won't see again until MARCH), Jordan and I made our way to her house. We left early the next morning to make our way to NOLA! After a slightly directionally dysfunctional start, we corrected our course and made excellent time to meet up with Emily in Pearl River, LA.
The three of us got lunch at the Speckled T's in Slidell and then ventured across the bridge into the city. After meeting up with Jordan's brother, Matt, and his friend, Ken, at the Royal St. Charles Hotel, we decided it was time to hit up Bourbon Street. The music and atmosphere is always a good time, and the people you see provide plenty of conversation topics. After grabbing dinner, we met up with the rest of our group (Amanda and Turtle) and continued in the fun festivities! Once we made it back to the hotel, Emily and Katherine said goodnight and went home, and the rest of us settled into our room.
At 3:45am a loud buzzing sound filled the room and we all thought to ourselves that we were gonna seriously injure whoever had set an alarm for that hour. However, then the loud buzz was followed by a voice telling us that there was a fire and we had to evacuate the building. Naturally we all thought this was a drill, and I know
realize why people die in burning buildings. None of us were in a state of mind that contributed to rational calm thought in this particular situation, so once we determined this was NOT a drill, we frantically moved in 100 different directions grabbing necessary clothing to make our way out the door. Once in the hallway, I announced to my room, "OMG! There's SMOKE in the hallway!" At the time I honestly believed that the haze I was witnessing was indeed death coming for us, even though I couldn't detect the slightest hint of a smoky scent. My announcement definitely put a pep in our step as we all then began to walk (very briskly) to the exit. Once we made it outside and across the street, we realized that Matt wasn't with us. Ken then ran back into the building to find him (terrible idea). While the guys were in the "burning building" which had no smoke or flames anywhere to be seen, the rest of us looked around at each other and for the first time realized the items everyone had chosen to grab before fleeing the building. Below are the items we each grabbed.Turtle: Went to the bathroom and exited in his boxers and a white t-shirt, but no contacts or shoes.
Amanda: Grabbed shoes and a purse.
Jordan: Put on slippers and got her phone AND matt's phone (convenient when he was lost in the building and we couldn't call him to see where he was).
Ken: managed to find shoes, a phone, and was already sleeping in sweats and a sweatshirt.
I put on a bra, scarf, jacket, and boots because firemen were coming! :) And wish I had gone to the bathroom like Turtle.
Matt...never made it out.
The reason Matt didn't make it out was because the idiots in the room next door to us thought it would be funny to set off a fire extinguisher in their room. While the rest of us were freezing outside, Matt was listening to the drama shake down on the 6th floor. The "smoke" I had seen was the leftover remains of the extinguisher foam that filled the hallway when the guys opened their door. Apparently the culprit responsible for our early morning drill fled the scene and his buddy was taking the fall when the firemen were questioning them. They were asked to leave the hotel at 4am, and I'm sure received a hefty fine. We spoke with a cop the next day and the latest fine amount was around $800, but who knows how much more they had to pay in damages and other fees. SUCKS to be them!
I will admit that we had a little too much fun on our first night in town. The next day was a bit of a struggle, but we managed to grab something to eat at the Checkered Parrot and then hit up the casino. By that evening (NEW YEARS EVE) I was ready to go again, and we all got dressed up in our New Years attire and loaded up the cars to go to dinner. Dinner was AMAZING!!!
After dinner, back to Bourbon Street we went! We started at Pat O's, and unfortunately we sat outside in the rain for the first part of the evening. There was a table under a tree in the corner that we snagged and made due until we were ready to go party. Earlier before dinner, we were chilling at The Beach on Bourbon and were highly entertained by the girls attempting to ride the mechanical whale. That's right, you read it correctly, A MECHANICAL WHALE. There were too many people there to make fun of and the temptation to return later on was too much to resist, so we left Pat O's and ventured down to the Beach!
The Beach was PACKED! Everyone was dancing and having a great time. Once we arrived, midnight was approaching so we all made our way to the dance floor and set up shop. At this new location we managed to find the creepers, or as usual they found us. I made the mistake of making eye contact with a tragically drunk and unfortunate soul who preceded to attempt dancing with me for the hour leading up to the big countdown. There was so much going on all around us! A girl was dancing half naked on the stage with the ropes around the mechanical whale. To this day I still cannot figure out what in the heck she was wearing, or WHY SHE was the one hired to do the dancing on stage. Disturbing is the only thing that comes to my mind to describe her. Then the bouncers were passing out headbands, hats, and horns to blow once 2011 finally arrived. Mr. McCreeper was still trying to show me his classic dance moves, he wasn't exactly blowing me away until he invaded my personal bubble to tell me, "Looks like you're the lucky one!" With a wink and stumbling backwards I burst into laughter and realized that this was real life, because only in real life would something like this happen to me. Several other creepers made their way past and at least asked for a dance while trying to convince me how beautiful they thought I was. Unfortunately I just wasn't feeling them, and besides, I was McCreeper's "lucky one". BAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHA!
Once I realized that Mr. McCreeper wasn't going anywhere until that clock struck midnight, I began wishing I was Cinderella or that he would at least turn into a pumpkin. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, ohhh no here he comes, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, insert horn in my mouth and blow it as loud as I can in his face! He smiled the creepiest smile I've EVER encountered (and you should all know that I've encountered some Creeeeeepy smiles in my 25 years), and I just shook my head NO!!!!! Apparently he did not like the reaction of his chosen one rejecting his 2011 love offer, but I was PERFECTLY fine with this! His friends then made fun of him, which I took a small amount of pleasure in, because who is he to think that I would kiss him just because he wanted me to. I've got news for you Mr. McCreeper, I have standards and I don't care HOW single I currently am, you sir do not meet these standards!
Soon after welcoming the new year, and dealing with Captain Creepy, I was OVER the Beach. On top of being done with the bar I was hungry! Krystals was obviously a first option, but when we walked past we quickly decided we'd rather stand in line elsewhere. McDonalds was the next option, but get this.....McDONALDS WAS CLOSED!!!!!! How does that even happen!?!?! We were in complete shock and just stood at the door looking in. As we stared longingly through the windows, I saw on the board the quarter pounder with cheese meal and I wanted it so bad. Jordan made the comment, "What are we going to do without happy meals in the world? Now they're just gonna be sad, sad meals." We all agreed, but needed to move on to find something else we could eat. I remembered that Dominos was around the corner from our hotel, because we had been there on previous trips to NOLA. There was a big crowd inside, so Shug and I went in to place the order while Emily and the Turtles waited across the street. When I walked in Shug informed me that everyone had been waiting for about 30 minutes. This was NOT OK! We were the only two girls in the place, and I asked them how long they'd been waiting. One dude started to say 30 minutes, but another guy quickly said only a few minutes! He told the other guy to not run off the girls, and started to say something to us and called me sweetheart. First off, I'm not a fan of pet names, and even if I was, this man had definitely done nothing to deserve the honor of calling me sweetheart, so I told him my name was Becky. Shug and I were next in line and as we approached the counter I asked Phil if they had anything hot and ready. Phil has a sense of humor and replied, "Well I'm hot but won't be ready for another 4 hours when I get off work!" HAHA CLEVER, Phil! During the time Phil was making his jokes, a wrong order was made and he offered the 2 pizzas to us for $15. I could care less what was on the pizza at this point, so I said, "We'll take it!" Handed Phil our money and as we turned around with our pizzas every guy in the place just shouted, "Ahhhh Beckkkky!" HAHA point girls!
We skipped across the road and told the others what had just happened. When we made it to the room to eat our feast, we thanked Dominos for messing up Julia's order and enjoyed our chicken and bacon pizza, as well as our olive and ham thin crust pizza! There were no alarms or emergencies to wake us up that night so we all got a good night's sleep. On January 1st, we went to Emily's house for the traditional New Years meal of black eyed peas and cabbage! We enjoyed some football during the afternoon, and as night approached we loaded up the car to try out the new daiquiri place, Daiquiri's Gone Wild. Let's just say that we couldn't quite figure out where the "Wild" part comes into play. The door was open and inviting, but as we walked in there were no tables or chairs anywhere! There was country music playing and one guy behind the counter that kept forcing samples in our faces. Emily ventured to the back of the store, because surely there was more to this wild place than what laid before our eyes! But no....this was it!
We took our daiquiris and got in the car before bursting into laughter and recalculating our plans for the evening. As a last resort, we decided to go to another daiquiri place which did indeed have chairs and tables. In order to not appear sketchy by bringing in our large drinks from another business, we opted for a table on the patio with a view of the game on the outdoor tv. Soon we decided this was a TERRIBLE idea, because we were drinking frozen drinks, and sitting outside in January while the ceiling fans were going full blast. We quickly finished our drinks inside, and went to dinner at the Speckled T's! There are absolutely NO words that can describe the band playing that night at the T's! Their name was the BTU's, and it was composed of a hippie chick with no rhythm as the lead singer, the guitar player who was hippie chicks husband (who wore sunglasses inside even though I don't believe he was blind), a chatty drummer, and a bass player who had a pony tail and never said a word! After finishing our meal, we peaced out of that party and drove back to NOLA.
Amanda, Turtle, Jordan, and I went out to Bourbon for one more night and at that point we all realized our age. I am not exactly cut out for that lifestyle anymore, and all I wanted to do was go to sleep. We made great efforts to have a good time, but the drunk people around us were on a level that we had no chance of reaching so we called it a night. The next morning everyone went their separate ways, and Jordan and I went back to Emily's to stay for the night. We watched the Saints game at a restaurant, and then went to a bar for the rest of the game. As usual we managed to make friends! It all started when we walked into the place and were the only people younger than 40. We made friends when we need to know where the bathroom was, and this kind gentleman kept sending over kamakazi shots and pitchers of beer. After the second round of shots a lady walked up to our table, asked if we were gonna take those shots or let them sit there, picked up the glass as I was telling her they were empty, and then she turned up the glass to drink the drops in the bottom! The three of us exercised all of the self-control in the world to keep from laughing! From this point in the day (and I mean day, probably 4pm) she was then referred to as Drips. There was a kind man who was an Auburn fan (and he did graduate from Auburn) who kept offering to buy us drinks. I don't think that anyone there had any concept that it was a Sunday afternoon, and as soon as we could make our move we ran to the car and headed back to the daiquiri bar from Saturday night(I can safely say I have reached my daiquiri quota for the year! However, I will probably exceed that quota during Mardi Gras). My sissy Bridgett stopped by to say hi on her way home from mom and dad's(it's so weird that she lives in Louisiana now). After this point in the evening it was high time we went home. Monday was an early morning catching a flight to get back to Indiana to start work for IU's recruitment, and Jordan had a 5 hour drive back to Birmingham.
So much happened that weekend, and I know I left out tons of details! With the way this year started, I can guarantee that 2011 will be one for the books! I had a successful New Years trip, a very successful recruitment with the chapter at Indiana University, got to watch the Auburn Tigers WIN the NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP, and it's only January 12th! I can't wait to see how everything will play out for the rest of the year!
p.s. WAR EAGLE!!!!
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