Don't talk to strangers

Alternative title: The rule right after look both ways before crossing the street.

You may remember a post of a long time ago where I bitched about music.

You may also remember the warning about how this blog is about what I like and music happens to be one of those things.

However, I never indulged to you readers what instrument I actually play.

I play the most amazing, manly, testosterone building instrument of them all:

The flute.

Duh.

Anyway, because I decided that last semester I had FAR to much free time and fun, I decided that this semester, I'd try to take flute lessons from the 2nd chair flautist of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra.

Operative word here is try. I fully expected her to read my e-mail, laugh a little bit then turn me down. This way, I'd get points for trying, and could still spend my semester at my leisure.

So, I figured the fastest way to get rejected was to be totally honest.

Flute Tutor to-be: "I'd love to teach you! You said you play last chair in both the Wind Ensemble and Youth Orchestra, that's great!"

Trust me, no one was more shocked than I. Talk about a backfire.

So, today, I plod up the street to her house, convinced I'm not nearly good enough to be her student, that I should never have come, etc. etc.

In a nutshell, the usual.

Anyway, I notice one house on the block is particularly worse than all the other ones. They all are in pretty bad shape. (rather, pretty bad shape for the standards of any other city on the panet, the people down here like their houses listing to one side)

However, this one house looks like it would violate some humanitarian act if it was used to house people. I assumed it had been abandoned before New Orleans had adopted the phrase, "Bring Hell Or High Water" and our very streamlined and great political system down here had simply forgot to tear it down.

So, I ring her doorbell, and after dealing with one of those tiny, yapping, somehow-more-annoying-than-the-you-forgot-to-dial-the-area-code-beep dogs, we moved upstairs.

Also, I've seen the LPO in concert several times, and swore her hair was BLONDE blond. Like bright yellow. Like blond back when blond was cool.

Inside Relimited's head: "Her hair is brown. Does she bleach it for all the concerts, or die it when she isn't on stage? Am I going crazy, and only thought it was blond? I never knew hair color could be so distracting..."

So we talked, I thoroughly screwed up Mozart's Flute Concerto in D major, which I practiced, but did a lot better on a slower piece that I hadn't looked at in over a year. Yeah, the correct answer is, "The Hell?"

We talked a bit more, she showed me how a) My tone was good-ish, but my technique was total crap, b) that I had been cheating on several fingerings for my entire life and c) I had one fingering outright WRONG.

(Fingering: which buttons are pressed down for a certain note)

My task: Unlearn all that stuff you've been doing for 7 years and learn it right.

Fun!

However, overall, the first lesson went a lot better than I had anticipated, and I left feeling pretty good.

Then, from the house I thought was illegal, a voice hails me: "Hey sugah! How 'bout you come 'ere and lemme get ya somethin' cold to drink?"
It belonged to a large black woman.

To my credit I did not run back to my car yelling "STRANGER DANGER!".

At least not all the way.

I think its pronounced who dat?

For everyone that does not live in New Orleans:

The Saints are in the Superbowl. Its apparently pretty big news.

My Geology Professor gave everyone 10 bonus points because of it, and ended class 20 minutes early. He teaches a 50 minute lecture. He also spent the first 10 minutes talking about how awesome the game was.

that's only 20 minutes of rocks vs 30 minutes of Saints, in a geology class taught by someone with a Very Thick Accent. i.e. this man is not even a native of New Orleans.

p.s. Tech Writing got out 15 min early, and almost pushed back our first paper when our professor thought it would conflict with the Superbowl. Luckly, we managed to stop her from shifting the date, beacuse the new date would have actually conflicted, and the old date was just fine.

hmm? Whats that? Oh, you want to know what I did for this historic occasion?

Well, I watched the game in a little no-name tavern off of St. Charles.

Yes, they had big TV's. Any place that had any sort of TV was packed.

And, wow, was it a game to remember. It was so tense, I took the entire game to eat a Philly Cheese Steak and some fries. I was going at a rate of like one fry every 5 minutes.

And, New Orleans Saints fans being the crazy, insane, yet somehow lovable batch of people they are, where naturally following the game very closely, and trying their best to feel like they where in the dome.

Which, of course means that when Sean Payton was trying to pump out the already sonic-weapon-grade loud croud, we yelled and cheered along too.

Yes, I am aware the TV is not 2-way.

It was good times. Afterward, I called up the parental unit to see if they had survived the amazingly close game (after all, their risk of heart attack was higher). The cell lines where full. The city had actually managed to place so many calls, I couldn't get an open cell line Finally, I managed to call home, find out that yes, my family was still alive. And also, planted the seed for what I would do later.

I drove back, listening to the post game reports on WWL 870 AM, looking longingly over at the French Quarter. I got back to my dorm, put my stuff up and heard something amazing. Something almost magical.

Someone was honking out Second Line on a car horn. At that moment, I knew what I had to do.

I needed to celebrate, geology in the morning be damned.

I dove right into the mob of black and Gold that was Bourbon street. Impromptu refrains of "Who Dat say they gonna beat dem Saints!" Where being sung out on every corner. There was a guy with a trumpet playing "When the Saints go Marching In" off of a balcony somewhere. The Cafe Du Monde was filled to capacity with people in shock and awe of what had just happened, eating their doughnuts with powdered sugar, whispering, "Did you hear how quiet the dome was before that field goal kick? It was silence, then as the ball rose flashes of light, then pure sound as it went right through the uprights."

I impulse bought a Saints T-shirt. I danced to some kickin' jazz at the Royal Sonesta. I met up with a bunch of college friends at some time, and had one hell of a night.

I was called the "Nerdiest Who Dat I even seen, and I love ya for dat" by a passing large black woman riding mainly outside the passenger seat window of a pickup truck.

I can't wait for the Superbowl weekend now.