Mardi Gras '07: part one

H.R.M. Queen of Oshun '07

big-ass unicorn float at Pygmalion

decidedly my new favorite picture of Whitney and me

Maids of Sparta

H.R.M. King Pegasus '07

Miss Molly and me at New Bruno's

Esteban and his bull's-eye

roommates - and everyone over our shoulders

Nicole, Mike, and the gold people at One Eyed Jacks

Hermes float and riders

Tuesday

Terrorism midterm wasn't too bad.

I went over to Adrian's, and we caught up for a bit. He brought me some special deliveries from home. He also showed me his new Polo Rugby wardrobe. (Their "skull and crossbones" insignia coincidentally matches with Sig Ep's. How lucky/convenient for Adrian because now he has an excuse to buy all that PR stuff besides just liking it.)

I met for lunch early with Tara (and Rachel today too). I missed Alison and Frazer by just a little because I had to make a deposit at the bank and print screenplays at the lab.

Lots happened in screenwriting class today. We reached a consensus on how we should spend our provost-awarded "entertainment budget." (Dinner and drinks, naturally.) And we had class for the first time in three weeks. And we canceled another upcoming one. This would be exciting, but if I had it my way, I'd have screenwriting every day and my other classes combined into a one week three-hour session. It's my favorite course thus far.

Chick: "Have you guys ever seen that movie Maria Full of Grace? The main character there, this girl who's smuggling drugs, and I can't for the life of me remember her name--"
Me: "Maria."
Chick: "Oh! Yeah. That's it."

The most (horribly) sensational part of the day was when I returned my father's phone call during a break in screenwriting class. (He called during the first half.) He told me my grandfather called to let him know there was a passing in the family. Unfortunately he didn't specify that it wasn't my grandmother but another "Letty" (my great aunt) right away. And then I asked if Adrian knew of and the correct identity of the death, and he said I should double-check.

After the break, we convinced the teacher that for our last assignment we should analyze the screenplay of and have a screening of the great Eddie Murphy film Coming To America.

Ben and I had our weekly dinner and caught each other up on the past few days. And now I should be writing a screenplay or doing other work or sleeping, but I'm going to push to get these other two Mardi Gras photo albums up.

other people's pictures

Krewe du Vieux with Shan - photo courtesy of Gabriela Molina Schleusz

Miss Molly's after-party for Sparta and Pegasus - photo courtesy of Katie Austin

girls on shoulders get more stuff - photo courtesy of Brooke Hansen

with a perhaps (yet unlikely) sober Lizzie - photo courtesy of Meredith Robinson

Peter, Cosmin, and I lookin' tough - photo courtesy of Paul Murphy

Carter's departure - photo courtesy of Will Southerland

5:48 a.m. on Mardi Gras - photo courtesy of Reshelle Smith

Where'd the weekend go?

Friday was classes then groceries. Then began the back-to-back laser tag nights. Yeah. Apparently when you turn 22 you want to reaffirm your youth, so you decide to play laser tag. Ryanne and Ben, indepedently of each other, both wanted to play laser tag for their birthdays. Friday was Ben's night. We went with Katy&Co. After that I had made a raspberry tiramisu for Tara since she wasn't at Italian Night, so she and Ian came over. They approved. (Personally I prefer the strawberry version, less tart and less sweet. The raspberry version looks better though because it's a burgundy color and the berries require no chopping and distribute more uniformly.)

Shannon came over to have tiramisu also and convinced me to go to Beaux Arts Ball, the architecture party, at the last minute. I didn't have a costume ready. The theme was ConNEXTion. So she wrapped me in packaging tape because tape connects things? Whatever. Beaux Arts was fun. All the architects were drunk as usual.

The rest of the night is a bit of a blur: The Boot, J(ai)L Hall, The W Hotel, and then some French people's party somewhere.

Saturday was pretty chill. Laser tag again that night, Ryanne's "party." We had to split up into two groups of four because there weren't enough slots for all eight of us. Stephanie and I were on the red team and were assigned the code names "Cinderella" and "Aladdin." I had a lot of fun shooting the bitchy old couple who made two kids give up their vests and guns 'cause they accidentally let too many people in.

After that was a quick trip to the Big Easy because Lauren was hungry, and I just hung out at home the rest of the night. Mommie Dearest, which I'd never seen, and Bram Stoker's Dracula, which is one of my favorites, were both on TV. MD is a fucked up movie.

Sunday I made "macaroni" (really penne) and cheese from scratch to tide me over until Mexican Night. I'm never going to make the orange crap that comes out of the box again.

Mexican Night was a huge success although apparnetly "Mexican" is synonymous with "dip" because we had at least four of them. But one of them was Stephanie's guacamole, so I was automatically satisfied with our menu. We also had chicken and vegetable fajitas, Mexican lasagne, beans and rice, various forms of corn chips, a cake decorated with a Mexican flag, "Dos Amigos" ice cream (Mexican vanilla and Mexican chocolate), and of course, the strawberry tiramisu that we pretended was Mexican.

Just like Thanksgiving and Italian Night, we all said what we were thankful for (but Mexican things this time.) I guess that went succesffuly and unoffensively.

Some of us stayed after to watch The Oscars, but by the end only Becca, Leah, and I were left. I was happy because all of my predictions (Babel, Little Miss Sunshine, Helen Mirren, Martin Scorsese, Pan's Labyrinth, and THE DEPARTED) won except one.