Lagniappe

I really appreciate that unlike Microsoft Word or Google Docs, if you open a brand new "compose" window on Blogger and then abandon the browser without writing a word, it never saves it automatically as a blank post. In other words, it doesn't make me feel guilty about being unmotivated to complete a thought when I had a false start, or two, or three.  As a writer, I hate it when Microsoft freezes the screen, just to say, "Do you want to save changes to Document1?" and there's nothing in the doc at all.

Last Saturday, I succeeded at keeping my butt in chair but I couldn't get past four sentences on any particular topic.  So I wrote all my four-sentence ideas down, saved them all on my Shitty Draft Saturdays google doc, and hope they will, like so many scraps of ideas I have left in the margins of notebooks of 35 years, find their place in my memoir someday!

So far my 2016 has felt, at both work and at home, like successive moments of life saying "nice try!" when I put the key in the ignition. Each morning, the best intentions of what I wrote in on my calendar keep getting postponed to deal with pressing needs or distracting requests instead.

One thing that's kept me mentally grounded is a new addiction to following artists and photographers on instagram. One of my favorite photos I reposted in March was from the 24 hour project, an initiative started to "document the human condition of multiple cities during one single day".  This photo was taken probably where you would least imagine it, in Tehran, Iran.  It reminds me of the Peace Factory's brilliant little idea (if you're never seen his Ted Talk, you'll love it).

On Monday, I was proud I accomplished one thing that I thought I might not get to until July which was creating mini laminated post cards of favorite locations in the world to send to my friend Kate's daughter Scarlett for her 2 year old birthday.  I have an old playskool wooden mailbox I sent her (used in our wedding reception) but needed some mini 2 x 1" post cards that she can "mail" in the mailbox.  These came out really great! (pictured)

Another small success (in progress) has been a weekend project of updating the wordpress site we used for the wedding, beach-feet.com, with photography galleries instead. It's coming along!

Below are a couple of my favorite pictures from our New Orleans album.

This house with a spraypainted X from Hurricane Katrina repainted it into a heart. We decided to go down to Jazzfest again this April 20 - 25 and are pretty much freaking out about Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings headlining the Blues tent Friday.  Van Morrison on Saturday will be a pretty once in a lifetime, too, since the man hates touring.  Most of the rest of the time you'll find us at Fais Do Do, the Cajun stage. I'm looking forward to Taj Majal, Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats (a new artist who's on Stax Records!), Rhiannon Giddens (of The Carolina Chocolate Drops) and of course others we don't know yet!