Just got back from a conference in New Orleans (however you pronounce it.) The city is permeated with the strangest sense of elegant decay. It felt a lot like visiting Venice -- like the city is sinking and all the people are determined to party until it goes under. The food was fantastic, shrimp and pork at every meal. By the last day I was a little tired of shrimp (and I've been sick of pork for months) so I tried some goat. It actually wasn't bad! The highlight of my trip was stepping into a bookshop in the French Quarter and being given a tour of the whole house by the bookshop owner. What a life that would be, living in and restoring a gorgeous Napoleonic townhouse while collecting rare books and first editions for sale! But by the end of the weekend I was ready to go back to my own nineteenth-century house restoration project, my freezer full of pork, and my small collection of two sweet children with their own stories.
