Welcome To Mardi Gras [Thursday Update]

What a day.

The job site was pretty standard today.  Everyone kept trucking along, and by the end of the day we had all walls up and studs reinforced.  As for me, I spent the bulk of my day re-aligning a wall beam.  One of the studs was bowed, and it was the front corner of the house, so obviously it needed to line up as a flush corner.  So as usual, after harassing Catfish & Elissa for constant consultation, I took out a bunch of nails, recruited John to help me out, we clamped the pieces of wood together, and hammered that baby in.  Sounds pretty simple, but it did take us all morning.

Then for our lunch break, we drove to another H4H site where there were Julliard students working.  The students had arranged for a lunchtime performance for all the H4H teams in the area.  So many volunteers gathered at this one site and watched for an hour while the students gave performances including drama, monologues, singing, and instrumental.  It was quite the show...a littttle long for my liking but still good - the ended with a group rendition of Lean On Me...fitting for the culture down here.

We then had a lite afternoon of work, as we had to end early to avoid parade traffic.  Yes, they started Thursday.  So Mardi Gras apparently starts the Thursday before.  They had three parades that night that went down St. Charles avenue (the home of our bead tree, if you remember).  They came highly recommended from Andrew, Elissa, John, and Mark, so of course we had to check them out.  We went there straight from the work site so that we could get parking, which worked out perfect.  The parades were awesome.  They came down the street one after the other, with only a few minutes of a pause in between parades.  The last one was called Muses which is the one everybody seemed to be talking about ahead of time.

These parades are so interesting.  They come down in these floats pulled by tractors, and everyone is decked out in costumes and they just throw stuff at you.  Predominantly beads, but also cups, toys, hats, and even shoes!  I actually got a pretty good view for some pictures, as I made a friend named Beth, who allowed me to use one of her ladders.  Oh yea, about the ladders - so whereas most of us prepare for a parade by bringing folding chairs...these people bring ladders.  Tons of ladders.  So anyway, I got to use one of Beth's many ladders to take some great pictures, and get tons of stuff thrown at me.  It was neat to meet her, as she told me how there are parades literally everyday from Thursday to Tuesday.  Each day has scheduled parades, except for Tuesday which just has parades all day long.  Also, these people in the parades belong to what's called "The Crew" and they pay dues throughout the year, just to have a chance to win the parade lottery and be on one of the many floats.  Such a wild tradition.

Getting home was crazy, between traffic, closed streets, and trash everywhere, it took us 2 hours to do a 25 minute drive.  Definitely worth it.

Me & Carol - she was also a first time Mardi Gras spectator.  We were ladder neighbors.

Day 3 family photo.

Fire!

One of the many floats during the parade, Knights of Chaos.

Julliard students performing a fight scene with levels.

The lead float for Muses.

Just two of the hundreds of ladders.

Wow. That's a lot of people.

We found our tree again.