spicy strawberry meat pies

while i'm rarely one to be at a loss for words, i just don't know where to start.

maybe with the ex-boyfriend brigade. for one thing, i got busted by three different people on friday afternoon while i was wandering around hyde park, clearly not at work where i was supposed to be. one of the run-ins was with an ex-something or other (boyfriend is way too strong of a word) with whom i'd had an extremely unsuccessful summer fling. i was pleased to find that the guilt i've intermittently felt about having not returning his phone calls was substantially alleviated by the discovery that he's moving to california. moving right along... between what i thought were pretty slick dodgings of my real exboyfriend's family and friends i found myself on bourbon street, transiently unable to recall the name of another ex something-or-other, wondering how it was that i'd ever dated such a hippie. i also wondered how someone who was a little bit stinky (in the way that only hippies can be) and alot bit crazy could also seem rather attractive.

fortunately, there was a lot more to the weekend than slightly uncomfortable run-ins with former flings.

there was also gator-on-a-stick (you all know it's coming- tasted like chicken), deep fried strawberries, chocolate covered strawberries, strawberry beer, strawberry wine, strawberry face-paint, and picture of my blogmate standing in front of the ponchatoula seed and feed carrying a flat of strawberries (that's 12 pints). there was mrs. wheat's natchitoches meat pies, the depreciating budweiser in a go-cup (the price started @ $1.25 but dropped to $1 when the barista [selling the beer across his espresso machine] got tired of dealing with quarters), 3.5 pounds of crawfish per person, sadly un-spicy potatoes and corn, splitting a crawfish flavored head of garlic 3 ways... and of course the 25-cent key-lime martinis. i guess i might have warned my blogmate that the whole point of new orleans is eating, occasionally interrupted by drinking and live music.

sadly, there were no spicy strawberry meat pies. to the lay person, such a suggestion may sound rather absurd, but when you've already got a mouth full of deep-fried strawberrry and have spent the last ten minutes at a craft stand dedicated exclusively to the sale of soap bottle aprons (yes, little, tiny, frilly aprons for dish soap), anything is possible. in fact, my good friend tb got ahead of herself when she saw the sign that actually read:

spicy________ strawberry
meat pies _____cheescake
$3 __________$2

so while i learned many valuable lessons last weekend:

-- 3 beers in a hour makes blogmate dance,
-- the more j-lo the sunglasses the better (talk about rose-colored, faux d&g lenses),
-- tired, dirty, pony-tailed, hoodie-wearing chicagoans are very attractive to hippies...

i think my most interesting discovery has been this:

the world just looks better when viewed from a convertible.