It's actually snowing two days before Christmas. In Little Rock!
As soon as it started, everybody downtown decided they needed to leave work and go home. They got in their cars, and it was worse than rush hour traffic. It took people 20 minutes to drive 4 blocks, and 2 hours to drive 3 miles. They probably bought the stores out of bread and milk, too, for a 3-inch snow that'll be gone tomorrow.
On days like this (and there aren't many) I'm glad I live a four-minute walk from where I work!
This photo is from last Saturday's Race for the Cure in Little Rock. It had been raining, so there weren't as many people as last year, but still a lot. The view is right after the start line on Broadway, heading toward the Broadway bridge over to North Little Rock. Even with fewer walkers, it still took an hour and a half to go a measley 5k. That's some slow walking, people!
Visited lovely Pine Bluff, Ark., last night. First we went to dinner, and saw a woman wearing fur-lined boots with her mini skirt and bare legs. Let me remind you that September in Arkansas, and especially in Pine Bluff, is about the same weather as late July/early August in Massachusetts. Not cold enough for fur-lined anything. I suppose some people would disagree.
Anyway, then we went to the Pine Bluff Film Festival and saw Thoroughly Modern Millie, followed by an interview with Carol Channing. She's still funny and told a bunch of hilarious stories.
After the interview, Ms. Channing (who is 83, by the way!) performed some songs from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Hello, Dolly. That's her wearing the red suit and pigtails in the photos above. She even did a little dance with her husband, Harry.
The theater, an old, somewhat-restored one, only held 180 people and it was packed--we sat 3 rows from the back. By the time we waited in line to get our programs autographed and our photos taken, then made the drive back to Little Rock, it was 2 a.m. I was ready to just fall into bed and go to sleep, but no...Sydney had left a little present on the bed. Two yummy fur balls in a puddle of puke that soaked all the way through to the mattress. That was a fun mess to clean up in the wee hours of the morning!
Well, I never did put up those photos of Bourbon St., did I? Basically, I just had my friend Linda take pictures of me with every "interesting" person I could find.
The above photo is of the Little Rock skyline as seen from across the Arkansas River, in North Little Rock, which I took last week. I figured, I started this journal with a Little Rock cityscape, I might as well re-start it with one, too.
I'm going to try to keep this up now. Really.
Tomorrow I go to Pine Bluff for the old movie festival. We're just going to see one movie, though, and hoepfully get our pictures taken with Carol Channing. I'm bringing my camera, anyway. We'll see what happens.
Went to New Orleans last weekend, for Mardi Gras. I drove down there Friday with my friend Linda, who is from New Orleans, and we came back Tuesday. Free room and board--her brother and sister-in-law live there and were kind enough to invite us to stay at their VERY nice house.
Basically everybody goes to all the parades to get beads, which the people riding on the floats throw to the audience. I don't know why anyone wants beads, but I came home with a bag full of them anyway. They make good cat toys at least.
For the kids, families have these ladders with a big seat on top, so the kids can sit up higher and have a chance of catching some beads. A lot of people (not just the kids) dress up in costumes too, but more so on the actual Mardi Gras day than on the weekend before.
The parades, which went all day every day that we were there, had performers and high school bands marching between the big floats. A variety of people watch the parades, from little babies in strollers to grandparents in lawn chairs. And they all want beads, doubloons, or other "throws." I still don't understand why people want that stuff, but they do. Some people even buy houses or rent apartments specifically because the building is along a parade route, and they watch from their balconies.
The best thing was, it was about 70 degrees out, and the trees already had buds on them. Then I came back to Little Rock, and it snowed again yesterday. Blech.
Next entry--Bourbon Street.
Yep, our one week of winter has hit. It snowed today, a whole two inches, and I saw people walking down to the hill with cardboard boxes to use as sleds. That's the Little Rock version of a Flexible Flyer--open up a cardboard box so it's flat, and try to slide down a hill on it. The snow was so wet, I can't imagine they even made it to the bottom of the hill before the thing fell apart. I tried to take some photos of it, but they came out blurry--I guess I was laughing too hard.
It's 76 degrees out today. On January third. Now you know why there are no snow plows in Little Rock.
The "happy" fellow in the picture above is the guy who sits next to me at work. He's been working at the newspaper since 1956, or thereabout. Don't let this happen to you.
I tried to make the picture look like a comic book page, but I think I just succeeded in making it look like there was something wrong with the camera. Oh well.
Finally, I'm able to update this! Geez, I don't know if it was my computer or AOL, but I couldn't update the normal way, then all of a sudden it started working again.
So, my goal for the lovely new year is to get all my photos organized. This entails scanning in old photos for which I have no negatives, sanning old negs for which I have no photos, sorting through all the photos and negs I do have, and getting a grip on all my digital stuff. So far, I'm up to 1972. Ha!
The photo above is one of the ones I don't have a negative for, that I'm trying to restore. As you can see, the emulsion is turning yellow and disappearing, not to mention the cracks and specks. If you click over to photo number two, you can see what I've done so far. Which isn't much, I know. But I have the rest of the year to finish it, right? :)
So, did everyone eat their black-eyed peas for good luck today?
What? You don't know what I'm talking about?
Yeah, it's a southern thing. Something about confederate soldiers only having black-eyed peas to eat or something. Seeing how the war turned out for them, I don't exactly understand where the good luck part comes in. I've heard some people put a dime in the peas, and whomever is served the dime has extra-good luck. If he doesn't choke on it, that is.
Pass the hog-jowls, Jim-Bob, I'm hungry.
