My thumbs are sore

I'm back in New Orleans.

Metairie, really- but it's the Greater New Orleans area, so it still counts in my book.

We got on the road about 9:30 this morning. It seems that I can no longer make a road trip without drama, so I have an amusing anecdote.

Rumor control has it that traffic in Baton Rouge is awful horrible and very bad. As such, we veered around BR and took a side highway to the city via some smaller cities, notably Morgan City. We stop there for a drink-snack-gas-and-pee break, and I manage to lock the rental car keys in the car. Of course, they fell out of my pocket onto the driver's seat in plain view, and of course I'm locking the back door and only notice them as I'm slamming the last open portal into the chassis.

Before you ask, yes, Cat did have her locksmithery tools with her. And yes, they were now locked in the trunk.

First we called Pop-A-Lock. The less-than-sympathetic phone lady told me that their last guy in the area was gone for the night. She suggested I call another local company, Quality Glass and Lock. I did so- they were closed and the answering machine gave a slightly garbled six-digit phone number to call. I tried the other five listings in the phone book, but all were closed with answering machines. I paged on company, but still haven't heard back from them. (A single pager number as one's only listing in the yellow pages is a bad idea, I think.) Josh had the idea to call AAA, and they told us they would have someone there within an hour. Twenty minutes later, we got a call back from AAA saying they couldn't dispatch anyone. My mom suggested we call the cops to open the car- later we find out that Morgan City police no longer provide that service as people sued the city for damages to vehicles.

Eventually, Cat was able to decipher the after hours number with Quality, and the guy came by in less than fifteen minutes. He got us on the road about as fast as it takes to say it. All told, perhaps an hour's delay.

Coming home this time is so familiar it almost hurts. My driving human skills put me exactly where I need to go with none of the usual mucking about and map-consulting.

After a dinner of pot roast, mashed potatoes, and peas, Cat adn Josh wanted some drive-through daiquiri. Yes, we have drive-through daiquiri joints in New Orleans. We even got a sample handed to us. I'm given to understand that this sort of thing doesn't happen in other places. Cat got strawberry margarita and Josh got Jungle Juice. Later, Cat and I went to visit with Bennett and Leslie. We found them playing Bang! (A cool western-themed card game) with Mike, Daniel, and Kat. We visited and I got to play some Halo 2 and practice my cursing. This is why my thumbs are sore- a few hours of semi-intense console gaming after not playing for some five months.

And now to catch up on my sleep- we are safe and sound and back in the swamp. (Well, a suburb of the swamp, but it's still home.)