the meat in the 3-day weekend sandwich

Mom and Phil went to New Orleans, as planned, but I bowed out. The forecasted high was 90 degrees. Dude, come on now. No. Ask me again in 6 weeks.

So I stayed home and enjoyed having the house to myself (well, mostly: David was home, but asleep, as he works nights). I watched all 4 hours of If God Is Willing And Da Creek Don't Rise, Spike Lee's follow-up to When The Levees Broke. There was a lot in the second half about the BP oil spill, and some stuff about Haiti. Someone, I forget who, made a really interesting point about Haiti: that without it, Louisiana might not be part of the US, because Napoleon sold it to recoup his losses after losing Haiti after years of fighting.

There was also a segment with Brad Pitt, where he talked about the houses he's helping to get built in the Lower 9th Ward. The thing a lot of people don't realize about that neighborhood is that, while yes, it was low income, a lot of the people who lived there pre-Katrina were home owners, not renters or people living in government subsidized housing.

I gather some people are saying about Brad Pitt the same thing they said about Sean Penn when he was in New Orleans in a boat, pulling people off of roof tops: that he's doing it for publicity. Even if that's true, do you think the people who have been able to move back into their old neighborhood and buy raised, well-constructed, energy-efficient, beautiful houses (seriously, how cute are some of those homes!) give a shit about his motivations?

When Mom and Phil got home, they presented me with a café au lait mug from Café du Monde, to replace the one I broke on the tiled kitchen floor a couple months ago. This thing is big enough to bathe a baby in. In the catalogue it's called "colossal".

I also started a new cross stitch project for the first time in months, since last Christmas I think. Sometimes I go through fallow periods where I'm just not in the mood. It's just a simple little dragonfly kit (all my pattern books are in storage), but it feels good to feel the floss drawing through the fabric again.