the great vacation: part 2

i wrote an entry awhile back about how i was going to be seeing an old friend from my time in texas while on this trip.  old friend #1 (of1 from here on out) is someone i hadn't seen since my last trip through louisiana nearly 10 years earlier.  i was a little nervous about seeing someone i hadn't seen in that long and stressed about it a little going into the trip.  well, leaving oak alley the stress level jumped about 100 levels because it was time to finally go meet up with of1 in baton rouge.

to give you an idea of how i was feeling, let me tell you a little about this phobia i have.  i don't really like crossing bridges.  especially bridges over water.  even more especially bridges that get really high when they go over really large bodies of water.  if you put some crazy iron work over the top of those really high bridges over very large bodies of water and i pretty much have a heart attack before we even start driving across.  on the way to see of1 i had to drive my car over such bridges spanning the mississippi river no less than 3 times.  that alone made my pulse race, my blood pressure sky rocket and my palms start to drip sweat.  add into that the stress of seeing someone who was important to me 10 years ago for the first time in that many years and i was pretty much a basket case.

but we made it.  i managed to ring the door bell, his dog didn't eat me and we managed to settle pretty quickly into the same easy friendly friendship we had living in texas all those years ago.  and that starts phase 2 of the great vacation...

this is the part of the vacation that probably bored my friend to tears and will do the same to anyone else who wants to hear about it so i'll leave you with just the highlights:

1. a great time was had.
2. i ate my first crawfish.  they taste awesome, but i hate working for my food so i was really glad to be only mildly hungry when we ate because if i had been starving i would have hated trying to get full while eating crawfish.  nothing like having to bust the silly little thing open to get a tiny amount of meat to ruin an appetite. that being said, i would totally eat them again as just like crab and lobster, ultimately the fight is worth it for some pretty yummy shellfish meat.

my dinner looked a little something like this

 3. i learned what was necessary to get a future mother-in-law to like me...all i need is a goat, some chickens and some crazy voodoo nonsense....oh! and a great love of blood.
4. semi-automatic weapons are heavy...at least of1's is.
5. mailing something in baton rouge is difficult on a saturday.
6. the best time to have a serious conversation with someone you haven't seen in 10 years is while watching the movie idiocracy.
7. authentic louisiana pizza taste an awful lot like tony's pizza from your local grocery stores frozen food section.
8. corn whiskey is a lot like drinking rubbing alcohol
9. maddie is the coolest dog ever. (i'd post a picture of maddie, but her owner might not like it so much)
and lastly...
10. i want a samsung smart tv.

basically, we didn't do much while in baton rouge...at least not anything overly touristy.  we had dinner, we watched some tv, we slept, we talked, we laughed, we mailed stuff, we slept some more and then we moved on to new orleans and phase 3 of the great vacation.