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You may note that there is no day 2 post – I got tired. We got up, drove to Vicksburg and toured the battle ground and the museum of the Cairo (a riverboat/battleship that sunk during the battle) and had a lovely time. All my pics, though, are on my real camera and my iPad’s camera connection kit is being fussy. I’ll post ’em when I get home. After that, and much driving, we got into NOLA around 5ish. We went to the LITA get together where we ate, drank and made merry while also spotting the sign above. Gotta love a town that will make librarian jokes…
Day 3 involved getting up, getting to the convention center and walking up and down aisles of vendors until our feet hurt. We got some information, some swag and some good conversations, though! After that, we met a woman I’d met at Internet Librarian some years ago for lunch at a brew-restaurant (where I had very tasty fish tacos and a light, summer beer) and then headed to the French Quarter. We walked all around, marveling at the sights:
(this was from the Jester daiquiri bar, where I had an electric lemonade and Mike had a strawberry daiquiri – yum)
After all that walking, a nap was in order, so we took one, then hopped in the car, picked a couple of other folks up and had ourselves a little FF meet up at Squeal BBQ.
That was some damn fine BBQ. I’m still full… So full, in fact, that the FB meet up on Bourbon street was skipped in order to go back to our hotel (did I mention that we have a 2 bed, 2 bath suite? I think it’s bigger than our house.) so that I could unbutton my pants in private.
Tomorrow is a tour of the city, in some way, a second run through the vendors and dinner at Emeril’s. For now, it’s bedtime!!
The day began with a quick loading of the car, saying goodbye to the boy and the dogs and taking off. We went down 63 to just outside of Memphis and then I-55 into Memphis, before we got off on the Elvis Presley Blvd and out to Graceland. We did that in one single push – we didn’t stop for anything – no pee breaks, no food breaks (we packed a lot of munchies – that helped), no lunch break. We did stop right outside of Graceland and ate burgers at Checkers, but that was a drive-through and we ate in the Graceland parking lot. That was fun… 😉
Once we got to Graceland and unkinked our poor, abused bodies, we went in to see what was what. We got the platinum tour – it was $4 more and included a bunch of the little museum bits around the grounds. The first thing we did was head for the mansion. That was an interesting tour – the rooms weren’t *quite* as tacky as I was expecting, though the gold shot mirrors and dining room table was pretty bad, as was the shag carpeting on the walls of the stairs. When we got to the Jungle room, Mike found a chair that he decided would go nicely in our house…
Following that tour, we looked through the Auto museum (Mike audibly gasped when he was confronted with not one but two Rolls Royce Silver Clouds – one white, one black as we walked in) and dropped some cash in the gift shop (the auto one – we walked around the other shops, but my snark was in full force and I was too busy making comments to buy anything else…), we were done and ready to head out for the last leg of our day.
We made it to Bally’s in Tunica within 30 minutes and got checked in quickly. The room is smallish and a bit grotty, but it was $20 and there is a jetted tub that looks clean! We rested for a bit, then headed to the casino to pay for our room (and we did…) and eat. The buffet was nice, the casino was not at all busy and the video poker was moderately generous. I still walked out with less than I walked in with, but it could have been a lot worse! Now we’re back in the room, getting ready for bed and a full day of driving, touring Vicksburg and checking into our hotel in New Orleans. The LITA happy hour will be a nice end to that day!
I’m getting ready to head out to the Big Easy this weekend. It’s a vacation combined with a bit of work-related socializing. This weekend is the beginning of the national ALA conference (the American Libraries Association, for those of you who aren’t in libraries but are still reading this blog…) and I’m heading down to tour the town, see folks that I only see once or twice a year and get wined (maybe?) and dined (definitely) by Neal-Shuman. They are taking all of the authors of the Tech Set books (those of us that will be in New Orleans, at least) to Emeril’s on Sunday night. Sort of a celebration for winning the Greenwood Publishing award for best library literature of 2011. I’m looking forward to the whole weekend, but that will be a lovely cap for my trip.
We’re heading down there Thursday and coming back on Monday, so it will be a quick trip and without any ALA-related blogging, probably. I’m not registered for the conference, so I won’t be attending any sessions, but I will be hitting the Exhibits (free stuff!!) and will be taking pictures of both my touristy stuff and my ALA get-togethers. Those will show up here, I’m sure!
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Library Mashups, the book to which I contributed a chapter on the LibraryThing API, has been available on the Kindle for a while now. I just got an email yesterday announcing it’s availability on the Nook! You can now read my words of wisdom about programming with the LibraryThing data in paper, Kindle and Nook formats. Exciting!
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