2003-08-26 15:23![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
digitaldiscipline
digitaldisciplineI'll spare everyone a need for The Bell [1] and leave the kinkiest bits of the weekend out. Maybe.
I managed to escape the office at 3:00 on Friday, so I could get home, get the car loaded, and be ready when K got off of work. Between various things happening & needing to be done, we got rolling around 4:30. Rush hour in New Orleans is a pathetic joke, but when you want to make 360 miles as quickly as possible, it's still a nuisance. Freshly-minted mix cd's in hand, we rolled west.
I'd never driven beyond NO Int'l in a westward direction, so discovering that all of a sudden, the land basically ends immediatly thereafter for quite a way and the highway turns into a long, low, flat causeway a dozen feet above either Lake Ponchtartrain or a swamp was quite a surprise. I managed not to veer into the jersey barriers while attempting to see my first wild alligator.
One thing I will say that southern roads have that I don't miss up north is the rumble-strip dotted line. In Texas especially, y'all must have spent a fortune on the fucking things. However, I do rather like the "long, flat, wide, straight" thing you do with the freeways - up north, no matter what Ike decreed, that "one mile straightaway" doctrine is barely hewed to. Makes for very low-fatigue transit, even with rednecks in outsized pickups, lane restrictions, and intermittent rain. However, the one and only exit closed was the one we needed to take [we missed the window of opportunity by, oh, twenty minutes] - thankfully, the detour was well-marked, and our hostess had given us excellent "if there's a train stopped at Point X, do this" directions because, unfailingly, there was a train stopped at Point X.
[insert lots of drinking, some other adult activities that may be frowned on by local law enforcement, and the men in attendance taking some nice cheesecake pix of the ladies before hitting the club, followed by a midnight drive through one of the roughest neighborhoods i've ever seen]
We eventually made it back after clubbing [minimal dancing, a police-tape cordon in a mens' room stall, and lots of pretty people] and stayed up to chat and whip up a big 3am breakfast [see above "unspecified activities" for probable cause]. I died early, but apparently the ladies had much to say, and were up enjoyably until the wee small hours. I thought K came to bed about 20 minutes after I turned in - it was more like two hours. D'oh!
Saturday involved some kickass mexican food, a lot of fetish clothing, and Jaws. There was also a professional massage, a really, really good homecooked dinner [fresh herbs on grilled chicken, a side dish known as "corn stuff" that was just phenomenal, and plenty of wine and other intoxicants], and more conversation late into the night.
Sunday, our host and hostess showed off their town - we hit their sushi place [good, but ours here in NOLA are a lot better], took an abbreviated tour of the Houston Opera House and Buffalo Bayou [too.hot.to.walk.around.outside!], then checked out the art and architecture of the city before hitting a cozy little dive bar to get our b33r on in the middle of the afternoon. We then were taken for some superb pizza, but were 20 minutes early, and had to find an alternate interim destination, beer being something only temporarily possessed. The four of us took over an upstairs lounge in a cocktail bar and had Heavy Conversation, most of which I, for various reasons, zoned out of for the most part.
So, to the pizza joint! Other than a topping snafu, it's darn hard to complain about $5 pitchers of beer, especially when, in light of the topping snafu, not only were the pizzas, but the beer itself was free. Not only was this the finest free pizza I've ever had, it's a legitimate contender for the second-best pizza I've ever had, period. Steak, garlic, some other stuff, great sauce, the right thickness of crust. . . and garlic butter to dip in. Ohhhhh, yeah.
Back to the house for some extremely adult activities, which are not only not suitable for younger viewers, but are probably too intense for most of the adults, too. Envelopes were pushed, horizons expanded, and let's just suffice it to say that Yours Truly wants to get one of those electronic muscle stimulation rigs [2] for more than back-massage and gut-reduction purposes.
Monday, K&I did the dishes [3] [okay, she did the dishes, while I collected them and stayed the hell outta the way by typing a thank-you note]. Breakfast [WAFFLE HOUSE!] was procured a half hour out, and, other than minor construction delays, the drive back was relatively uneventful.
K will undoubtedly have her own travelogue and news to share. The other thing I learned is that, at 80mph, with the A/C on, Zim will still pull 32-35MPG.
[1] - L & M have a hotel-desk style "ring bell for service" bell on their coffeetable, whose function is to be a clear signal when someone has veered into TMI or other inappropriate conversational territory. It not only goes *thud* like The Curtain of Propriety, it also acts as a very stern brake on most of my more disturbing oral musings and observations. . . . I take it as a high honor to be able to make a dominatrix twitch at will. *chuckle*
[2] TENS machines, I believe they're called
[3] Apparently, L told M not to let us do them after they'd left for work - I don't know if we missed the message, or if K simply ignored it in the interest of being a supremely considerate guest.
So, now work is the modus operandi, and it's annoying. Nothing like walking in to find a note that says, "Mail server blocking all first-time traffic" [incidentally, it doesn't - the afflicted client-to-be is in Brazil, and is using a known spam relay.
I managed to escape the office at 3:00 on Friday, so I could get home, get the car loaded, and be ready when K got off of work. Between various things happening & needing to be done, we got rolling around 4:30. Rush hour in New Orleans is a pathetic joke, but when you want to make 360 miles as quickly as possible, it's still a nuisance. Freshly-minted mix cd's in hand, we rolled west.
I'd never driven beyond NO Int'l in a westward direction, so discovering that all of a sudden, the land basically ends immediatly thereafter for quite a way and the highway turns into a long, low, flat causeway a dozen feet above either Lake Ponchtartrain or a swamp was quite a surprise. I managed not to veer into the jersey barriers while attempting to see my first wild alligator.
One thing I will say that southern roads have that I don't miss up north is the rumble-strip dotted line. In Texas especially, y'all must have spent a fortune on the fucking things. However, I do rather like the "long, flat, wide, straight" thing you do with the freeways - up north, no matter what Ike decreed, that "one mile straightaway" doctrine is barely hewed to. Makes for very low-fatigue transit, even with rednecks in outsized pickups, lane restrictions, and intermittent rain. However, the one and only exit closed was the one we needed to take [we missed the window of opportunity by, oh, twenty minutes] - thankfully, the detour was well-marked, and our hostess had given us excellent "if there's a train stopped at Point X, do this" directions because, unfailingly, there was a train stopped at Point X.
[insert lots of drinking, some other adult activities that may be frowned on by local law enforcement, and the men in attendance taking some nice cheesecake pix of the ladies before hitting the club, followed by a midnight drive through one of the roughest neighborhoods i've ever seen]
We eventually made it back after clubbing [minimal dancing, a police-tape cordon in a mens' room stall, and lots of pretty people] and stayed up to chat and whip up a big 3am breakfast [see above "unspecified activities" for probable cause]. I died early, but apparently the ladies had much to say, and were up enjoyably until the wee small hours. I thought K came to bed about 20 minutes after I turned in - it was more like two hours. D'oh!
Saturday involved some kickass mexican food, a lot of fetish clothing, and Jaws. There was also a professional massage, a really, really good homecooked dinner [fresh herbs on grilled chicken, a side dish known as "corn stuff" that was just phenomenal, and plenty of wine and other intoxicants], and more conversation late into the night.
Sunday, our host and hostess showed off their town - we hit their sushi place [good, but ours here in NOLA are a lot better], took an abbreviated tour of the Houston Opera House and Buffalo Bayou [too.hot.to.walk.around.outside!], then checked out the art and architecture of the city before hitting a cozy little dive bar to get our b33r on in the middle of the afternoon. We then were taken for some superb pizza, but were 20 minutes early, and had to find an alternate interim destination, beer being something only temporarily possessed. The four of us took over an upstairs lounge in a cocktail bar and had Heavy Conversation, most of which I, for various reasons, zoned out of for the most part.
So, to the pizza joint! Other than a topping snafu, it's darn hard to complain about $5 pitchers of beer, especially when, in light of the topping snafu, not only were the pizzas, but the beer itself was free. Not only was this the finest free pizza I've ever had, it's a legitimate contender for the second-best pizza I've ever had, period. Steak, garlic, some other stuff, great sauce, the right thickness of crust. . . and garlic butter to dip in. Ohhhhh, yeah.
Back to the house for some extremely adult activities, which are not only not suitable for younger viewers, but are probably too intense for most of the adults, too. Envelopes were pushed, horizons expanded, and let's just suffice it to say that Yours Truly wants to get one of those electronic muscle stimulation rigs [2] for more than back-massage and gut-reduction purposes.
Monday, K&I did the dishes [3] [okay, she did the dishes, while I collected them and stayed the hell outta the way by typing a thank-you note]. Breakfast [WAFFLE HOUSE!] was procured a half hour out, and, other than minor construction delays, the drive back was relatively uneventful.
K will undoubtedly have her own travelogue and news to share. The other thing I learned is that, at 80mph, with the A/C on, Zim will still pull 32-35MPG.
[1] - L & M have a hotel-desk style "ring bell for service" bell on their coffeetable, whose function is to be a clear signal when someone has veered into TMI or other inappropriate conversational territory. It not only goes *thud* like The Curtain of Propriety, it also acts as a very stern brake on most of my more disturbing oral musings and observations. . . . I take it as a high honor to be able to make a dominatrix twitch at will. *chuckle*
[2] TENS machines, I believe they're called
[3] Apparently, L told M not to let us do them after they'd left for work - I don't know if we missed the message, or if K simply ignored it in the interest of being a supremely considerate guest.
So, now work is the modus operandi, and it's annoying. Nothing like walking in to find a note that says, "Mail server blocking all first-time traffic" [incidentally, it doesn't - the afflicted client-to-be is in Brazil, and is using a known spam relay.
