New Orleans

My weekend-part 2

So after my date with Justin Bieber and a very small amount of sleep later, I headed to the airport for my first flight ever. I was headed to New Orleans to meet up with my Lyndon's Salon family who had flown up the night before. I was really nervous and my stomach was in knots. Have you ever heard Alanis Morrissette's song "Ironic"? There is a part in the song where a man had gone his whole life without flying and the one time he decides to go it crashes. Yeahhh.. I was positive the plane was going go all Alanis on me. But I survived. Thank goodness- because NOLA was one heck of a weekend.

As soon as I got to the hotel I was greated by a massively hungover staff. It was great hearing about the night before. However, it fueled me to get the party started early.  We all got dress and ate at this oyster house and started drinking of course. It was 11am by the way. But hey- it's 5:00 somewhere. After that, we headed to the French Quarter to be touristy. We grabbed an alcoholic slushy for the walk. After I purchased a new wire ring, I headed to the casino with another stylist. Naturally we picked up a hand grenade for the walk back. It's supposed to be made of a bunch of liquor and nothing else but really it just tasted like sweet tarts. So I'm sipping on that when I come across Big Sexy. Big Sexy is a pretty large man in a cowboy hat with a leather bra on. He has a skirt on with fish nets and platform heels. And that's when I knew I was getting drunk. We stopped by the hotel to get some more drinks and continued to the casino. The best part of Nola is that you can walk around with alcohol all day long and not get in trouble. My group of friends would love life here.

We get to the casino and we grab a seat at the penny slots. I'm hooked. I spent $25 and won $100. Then about 5 minutes later I lost it all. Then I got up 60$ and I kinda lost count from then. We were in there 6 hours. I had no idea. I thought we were there for like an hour and a half. When you're gambling you get free drinks. Oh my goodness, we defiantly utilized that.

After we finally left the casino we met up with the rest of the salon staff and headed to see the first official mardi gra parade. Lucky for us they moved it up a week because of the Super Bowl. Pretty much every floats theme was derogatory towards the Super Bowl. I have never in my life seen so much penis and vagina related things- and I've been to PCB for spring break four years. I got my first set of beads there along with some Jell-O shots (gross- who would take those from a stranger in the street) and some marry Jane candy. After that my voice was pretty much a gonner.

While everyone else went to bed, I was still ready to go. So I stayed out with one of the other stylist who is gay. We head all the way down Burbon street, rightfully collecting beads on the way, to the gay bar.  This was also a first for me. After we got in we headed straight to the bar. On the bar there were tons of male dancers in very tight underwear. One made eye contact with me and started coming towards me. Naturally, my hands started sweating and I just stared and the ceiling yelling "I can't" until my drink was delivered. We drank and danced and finally decided we should probably head back to the hotel. Not before one final drink though, right? We were sitting at the bar when one of the little underwear men walked up. Crap. So I decide to get my picture with him because I felt like nobody back home would understand what was happening. Let me tell you...this man put his weenier on my leg. ON.MY.LEG. yes- I have the picture if any of you would like to see. On the long walk back to the hotel I suffered from Post Tramatic Stress Dissorder.

The next day the conference started. So the party didn't start til later that night. We decided not to eat dinner. Good idea, huh? We had some drinks in the room and talked about some uh.. Recreational..activities. After that we headed to my new favorite place in New Orleans, the casino. I didn't do well at all. Finally when I broke even I just stopped. Thank goodness for those free drinks or I would've been really pissed. We headed down Burbon again catching beads as we go when the best thing ever happened. One guy asked us to show our boobs when one of the other stylists yells "no, you show me your boobs". GOLDEN.  She got some beads for that. We kept making our way down and went back to the gay bar. We met some awesome people from Murfreesboro and danced all night with them. Before I knew it, it was just me and one other person from my salon there. So I decided to head back. Good thing the Murfreesboro people wouldn't let me walk alone. I took two different turns before I figured out where I was. But I stopped by the Krystal near our hotel and decided some chili cheese fries would be good. I can testify- chili cheese fries do not mix well with a beer and vodka diet. My insides were all twisted.

Over three nights I had only gotten a total of 9 hours of sleep. So Monday was a little delusional for me. As fun as New Orleans was I was excited to get back to Nashville and see my sweet cat and perfect roomie. I can honestly say, I came home from NOLA a changed woman. So many firsts or me: First plane ride, first casino, first gay bar, first set of beads, first PTSD experience. I had so much fun being there with my Lyndon's family. It really brought us so much closer and I'm so thankful for the opportunity to go. It's always nice to see the people who write your paychecks drunk as hell.

We weren't just there to party though. We were there to attend a conference called Serious Business. It was very inspirational and motivational. I'm going to tell y'all about all the wonderful things I learned there too very very soon. So keep checking in with me.

Until next time,
KND