gettin' into local life

Dennis hadn't told me anything that 'crazy thing' on the phone but I didn't wonder seeing a possible roommate in our apartment when I came home. His name is Charlie Gu (ya, Charlie is the best name for him) and Dennis had picked him up right at St. Vincent's. He was wondering about that guy looking around a little bit disorientated and asked if he could help him. He could.
Charly is a guy from China who is here to undergo a 2-year PhD program at Tulane University. He had came to St. Vincent's that night but when arriving he locked himself out and his only chance (at least he thought so) was to get another cab and go to another hotel. So Charly had a very cheap $300 night at Hilton - "good breakfest" he said.

We bought one more bike at Cebrt's little garage and afterwards Dennis went to Walmart to buy some cheap kitchen-stuff. We decided to get most of the things (including matresses for Dennis and Charly) at local garage sales. They are usually adverted in Friday-Picayune and held on Saturday and Sunday so I had much better first nights with my airbed than the others had without that equipment. On Saturday we got up pretty early (8 AM I think) and started riding around to get some furniture. We didn't find the first garage sale but the second one was kind of one to us. We got matresses, pillows, slides and even beds (!), kitchen stuff, tools, dishes, a Senseo-coffee machine, and even a great blender. It would take a little long to list all the other things we got there but you can't expect to get all that stuff for almost $50, so we paid them $48. Wow.
The only problem was how to get all that stuff to our apartment. Who appeared that moment? Yes, once again Cebrt the bike guy with his pickup-truck. He had bought some old bikes at that garage sales and we agreed to meet at 12 AM at his garage. So we had some lunch and went to his garage a little late. We helped him to get his "new" bikes out of that pickup-truck and stood there joking around for almost an hour. Later we went to that garage sale and picked up our things. It was the last day of garage sale held by a couple moving over to garden district. The husband turned out to be an old major of the US army who had been to Germany for some years. As he found me out to be an Austrian he kept talking in a pretty-funny German language. Finally the pickup-truck was filled to the top and we had gotten some more things just for free.

Although we hadn't found any furniture like working tables or so we decided to take that day to an loose end. Dennis cooked somewhat he calls "his famous kitchen soup" and we had some beer and wine. As I couldn't find any more clean shirts in my room I took the whole bunch of clothes lying around in my room and went over a place called the 'Laundromat' but had to find out that it already had closed. I can't understand that: 10 PM on first Mardi Gras Season's Saturday in New Orleans and the laundry is closed - What's up with 'em? Right on the way back I made an horrible discovery that may impact my whole life here in a really negative way. I don't want to talk about it but you may have a look at that pics. Has to be told that in turned into a really great evening at that local bar afterwards. There was already live-music when an old man arrived that seemed to be a really famous local musician. He took some shots, then he took an instrument and played together with that band. Suddenly a really big black man who had stood around for maybe hours before got on the stage and began to perform some song. Hey, that was kind of awful! When we got home our new old radio showed a time around 4 AM. As I said: An awful day.

Now it's Sunday, 7 PM. I am sitting here in a well furnished kitchen and Dennis is heating up the coils for that big steak he's goin' to grill for us. We have found a local radio station playin' that great New Orleans style Jazz I never would have expected to be just on the ether. Who would have thought?

Ya! Big Easy. That's it. There's a reason for New Orleans people to be the 2nd happiest all over the US.

PS: all the pics: http://picasaweb.google.com/stephan.schiffleithner/GettinIntoLocalLife?feat=directlink