fun

New Orleans ⛪️

| patmcg

I had long promised to take the kids to New Orleans, one of my favorite cities and a place I thought the girls would really like. With Claire almost off to college, this spring break was one of the last chances to take both girls on a trip, at least as “kids”.

Moly has turned into a bit of a Francophile, learning French in school, so New Orleans should be extra fun for her.

So off we went on a five-day road trip to the glorious crescent city.

We decided to stay in Houston for a night on the way since Molly had wanted to see the Galeria shopping center, which was apparently famed at her middle school. Despite many visits to see my parents in House, we had never set aside time to really “do” the Galleria. So we did it right this time – dinner at La Madeline (to match the French trip theme) next to the skating rink and taking our time to gawk at all the fancy stores. We all agreed it was certainly the most celebrated shopping center in Texas, at least. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Once in NOLA, we enjoyed some surprisingly cool weather and settled into our AirBnB on Magazine Street in the lovely Lower Garden District. I told Molly that New Orleans had a New York feel to it, and she was happy surprised to see how diverse and cosmopolitan it was.

We caught the swamp tour south of town. Despite the non-swampy, we saw more than a few big gators, who were friendly enough. The tour guide recruited Molly as a “volunteer” to jump into the swamp and find some small gators for everyone to bring home. He promised we’d come back to get her in an hour. 😆 Molly was a good sport about the whole ordeal and calmly stayed in the boat.

We explored the Lower Garden District and are a lot of delicious food, including Korean BBQ, Vietnamese, old-school and pizza in our neighborhood. Somehow we discussed World War 2 during our entire pizza outing. It started with, “Dad, can you tell us about World War 2?” 😆 And of course we hade the long-promised beignets in the French Quarter. The beignets took about an hour, but it was worth the wait.

As we ate at the chef’s counter at St. John, I was sitting between Claire and Molly. Somehow they invented a game where Claire spoke Spanish and Molly spoke French, and I had to translate between the two. Claire kept getting stumped on the phrase “slow metabolism”. 😆

We also enjoyed a crowded streetcar ride down St. Charles to Canal. Claire was drawn to the paranormal on this trip, first hit a voodoo store, which was more of an Apothecary & Botánica store. I almost bough some Tabasco cologne but didn’t quite feel it. Claire got her tarot professionally read in the French Quarter while Molly and I had a coffee and Italian soda across the street. Claire’s results were apparently helpful but not discussed with us. 😉

We left with plenty more to see in New Orleans, but I am so happy to have brought them to this beautiful and unique city just the next state over. Molly added it to her list of possible places to move because she liked the active, urban vibe. 🙂

Not bad for a quick trip. 👍

Blazer Tag

| patmcg

Molly and I love Blazer Tag but got out of the habit of going during the pandemic. We kept saying, “We’ll back back after the pandemic.” We today, like General MacArthur’s return to the Philippines (well, sort of 🤔), we returned triumphantly to Blazer Tag.

The actual laser tag crowd was sparse but lively – we got our butts kicked by a 10-year-old girl. 🤷🏻‍♂️

But we had fun doing it! And we did alright at the arcade games. This time, instead of saving up for some big prize that costs 50,000 tickets we got a few handfuls of candy and some cheap bracelets, enough to share with everyone at home.

Bye bye, pandemic. It was (not) nice knowing you.

Endless Uno

| patmcg

Molly, Kari, and I had the world’s longest Uno game. It lasted well over two hours.

Molly and Kari both “almost” won several times, just to be dashed by a wildcard or a +2. It got ugly at times. When I betrayed Molly with a +2 card, she said, “I thought we were friends, Dad.” with that perfect Molly deadpan delivery. 😆

We played songs on the HomePod to reflect the mood. I asked Siri to play, “I Don’t Care Anymore” by Phil Collins. We all just wanted it to end.

We ate Tootsie Rolls to keep our strength up.

Eventfully Kari won the night with a sneak run and a small mistake on Molly’s part (or was is mine?).

Maybe next time we’ll play Ticket to Ride. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Hamburgers and Philosophy

| patmcg

With Claire off at a camp, I had Molly to myself tonight. We stopped by Wataburger at her special request and took it for a picnic on the way home.

At the Whataburger, Molly launched two riddles at me.

The first was “Are there more wheels or doors?” I asked, “Do you mean, like, in the whole world?”. “Yep!” she said.

Looking out at the parking lot and street, I initially said, “It’s got to be wheels.” But Molly pointed out that while every car has four wheels, it has four doors too. And the office building across the streets easily had hundreds of doors. And cabinets. Also, something about legos. 🤷🏻‍♂️

I was convinced. Doors it is!

At the park, Molly asked if water is wet.

Again, my initial instinct was wrong. 😆. “Of course it’s wet. It’s water.” After some discussion and demonstrations on the picnic table and sidewalk, we decided that water is not wet because “wet” describes a liquid sticking to a solid. Since water is already a liquid, it cannot be wet.

We googled it and found that “Liquid water is not itself wet, but can make other solid materials wet.” 🤯

Finally, I attempted to “get” Molly with the Dichotomy Paradox, which basically says that in theory, you can never walk from one point to another because no matter how far you go, you always still have halfway to go. 🤷🏻‍♂️ Real-world experiments showed that this is obviously false in the real world but true in math. Hmm. 🤔

Anyways, it was fun goofing around talking philosophical 💩 with Molly on this beautiful spring evening.

Swimming on SoCo

| patmcg

Today was our first real swim since before the goddamn pandemic hit.

We’re easing our way back to “normal”, in this case meaning a more fun summer than last. ☀️ I jumped on a pool pass at the Austin Motel (“So Close, Yet So Far Out”). This hotel pool turns out to be less crowded and more fun than neighborhood social club the High Road, which we tried the summer before last.

One thing I love about Molly is that she’s not trying to be an adult yet. She made a “sea raft” out of swim noodles, held together with goggles. We played with our pool toys, Sammie the Seamonster and Ollie Octopus.

And we took lots of underwater photos, using my iPhone as a bit of a pool toy itself. I guess it could use a cleaning anyways. 🤷🏻‍♂️