| Current location: | home |
| Current music: | Hispanic lawn-mowers next door |
When I come out my front door...
...what I don't want to see is four news helicopters hanging in the air. This is particularly unnerving as I live close to one of the largest metropolitan airports in the country (handy when there's a power-failure, of course, since I think I'm on the same power-grid and the lights come back on really fast). In this case it wasn't a terrorist attack, but a horrendous - though accidental - explosion at a building on the main drag leading to the airport (one killed, several injured). Choppers were up all afternoon - well into rush hour - so I can only imagine what the traffic tie-up was. Made me glad I was only outside to walk the dog.
But, it didn't help with an already-awful case of Travel Anxiety. I leave for New Orleans at, God help me, quarter to six in the morning, which means getting up at two for a three-fifteen shuttle. (I pick up my traveling companion at the train station at eight tonight). Travel Anxiety keeps me from even thinking about the trip until the day before, so today is all about packing, and prepping the house for my parents, who will be house-and-pet-sitting, bless them. (I think my Dad particularly likes keeping an eye on the Big Screen TV to make really sure nobody steals it...) Once I'm in the shuttle to the airport I calm down, but it's preceeded by many nights of bizarre dreams, and days of fretting.
The Tennessee Williams Festival is the big literary deal in New Orleans, and I look forward to re-connecting with a number of other writers that I knew there, plus lunch with one good friend I made in the city, a woman who, oddly enough, I went to High School with -- though we didn't know each other in the mid-sixties when both of us were actually in Montclair High. We only stumbled onto that fact in the course of a conversation. (She was a senior when I was a freshman). She now runs one of the loveliest bed'n'breakfasts in New Orleans (so if you're going to New Orleans, check out The Chimes - marvelous hospitality, wonderful breakfasts, a butterfly garden, and they welcome pets). (Look 'em up online: they've got a website).
I'll write a trip report when I get back.
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
barbara_hambly) wrote,
