st. james cheese company

after marty finished his last exam of the year yesterday (!!!), we headed over the st. james cheese company for sandwiches.

i encountered this beautiful tree on the way there... moving on:

st. james opened about a year after katrina. the owners, "cheesemongers" as they call themselves, moved to new orleans from london with their son to open this shop in uptown.

the incredible selection of artisanal meats and cheeses aside, the menu boasts delicious pressed sandwiches, huge salads, cheese boards and charcuterie samplings put together in the kitchen on the chef's whim. this time i tried the beecher's cheddar - smoked turkey, basil, tomato and avocado on ciabatta.

just looking at this picture of yesterday's sandwich makes me want to go back! it's raining today in new orleans so i'm guessing people might be turned off by st. james' primarily outdoor seating. this might be wishful thinking.

p.s. st. james has a blog! i am DEFINITELY signing up for their cheese school. stinky cheeses, here i come!

garage sale!

the lil bee posted yesterday about the yvestown blog; i took this as an invitation to get lost in a new blog and ignore my responsibilities for a little while. the proprietress of yvestown, yvonne, recently posted these awesome pics of a garage - ahem, garden - sale she had in her front yard (of her 1896 BREWER'S HOUSE IN BELGIUM!!!). now i totally want to have a garage - garden district - sale once i'm all moved in!

i think this is a far cry from the garage sales i'm used to

obviously my garage sale would never be so adorbs, put-together or matchy

seriously? this is too cute for words!

is it bad that i totally want to buy all of yvonne's unwanted stuff?

images via the yvestown blog

wednesday at the square

starting in march and going through june, the young leadership council organizes wednesday[s] at the square, a weekly concert featuring local musicians, food vendors and artists which takes place in lafayette square. yesterday marty and i went as part of a mini study break and to get our minds off things for a while.

queso con crawfish and freshly handmade tortilla chips from lucy's = 5 tickets and SO yum!

one ribmeat taco and one brisket taco = 6 tickets

i cannot attest to their taste as marty shared but one bite of each

what's great about wednesday at the square is that it's a wednesday - so you know it's all locals. a lot of time people will come straight from work!

balancing precariously on a statue* and nearly tearing the back of my dress to get this picture was totally worth it

next time, chairs and blankets are a must! unfortunately there are only 2 wednesdays left before it gets too hot in new orleans to stay in one place for too long. but the last week of the series always features galactic and this year they're coming with soul rebels! we won't be missing that.

*i almost wrote STATUTE! gag.

apartment hunting

so, becky has arrived in new orleans for some interviewing and apartment hunting! i have to say, the entire process is exhausting, especially because it consists largely of looping around the city and looking for "for rent" signs. yesterday we repeated that process and followed up on some craigslist finds. here's a peak at our favorite so far:

the apartment comes complete with plenty of four-legged neighbors, including this weird stickbug

afterward, becky, bryan and i went to bridge lounge, our favorite place to go for yummy drinks. bridge lounge is in the lower garden district on magazine. it's a dog-friendly bar, so becky and i plan on coming with our future pups. until then, we'll continue to enjoy the candlelight, low ceilings, diverse playlist and great people watching.

my first drink was a maker's mint julep, followed by a margarita.

all of the drink selections written in colorful chalk

it was 4 pm on a tuesday. of course we were the first people there.

after bridge lounge, we stumbled into another apartment. i was too distracted playing with the current tenants' puppies to truly appreciate the apartment. after i bent over to pick a puppy up and spilled half of my margarita on the carpet, i knew this wasn't the place for us. we ended our day of hard work at baru bistro & tapas in east riverside. it was super delish AND a byob! (you know i love those)

bryan was a dear and ran to breaux mart to get us wine and came back with natty light.

only in new orleans

not for the faint of heart!

first friday in nola

this weekend is marty's friend julia's birthday, so marty, his roommate max, and some others (beneficiaries of birthday parties orchestrated in part by julia) returned the favor last night by organizing a small get-together at a po' boy shop and a walk over to the bayou boogaloo fest in mid-city. it was such a great way to spend a friday evening!

in the backseat of max's car, as usual. but in a convertible, i couldn't complain

max speeds, so my triumphant first view of downtown new orleans was hard to catch

we ate at the parkway bakery & tavern, which is the oldest po' shop in new orleans (unfortunately, the restaurant resolution was not satisfied - i've eaten here once before). can you believe the size of these po' boys? marty, the glutton that he is, had to order larges for us both.

we tried to walk off our food comas by heading over to the fest on bayou st. john

no new orleans festival is complete without live music. brother tyrone performed (go here to preview and buy his cd!)

all of the sweetest, most kidnap-worthy dogs were within my sight, of course

marty tried especially hard to proposition these two. their leashes were too short, unfortunately for me

i hope everyone's having a great weekend!

p.s. i didn't catch julia's surprise on camera because i think we'd met all of one time before last night. my creep-dom has its bounds, you know.

murphy's [aka margaret's] law

those of you who know me or have traveled with me can attest to the fact that bad luck tends to follow me around, especially when i'm in a new place. whether it's getting mugged in montevideo, walking pneumonia in barcelona, food poisoning on a train from budapest to warsaw, or getting broken into 3 weeks after moving in to my new apartment in chicago... i am truly murphy's law incarnate.

you know where this is going...

rewind to a few days ago, when i asked a friend moving to new orleans to throw my bike in her uhaul and bring it down; she obliged. after class today i walked to her new apartment to pick it up. her place is just over a mile from the law school, and i was fully prepared to sweat my way there and breezily bike my way back. no big deal, right? well, of course things could not be so easy. i put the front tire back on (after it was taken off to fit in the truck) and drove about a mile away from my friend's when it promptly deflated. thankfully i'd seen a bike shop near her house so i walked the bike, dejected, the mile back and got it fixed. following a reprimand for not keeping the tires properly inflated, i triumphantly drove away (but not before throwing my backpack on my back and tearing the strap off my dress).

i made it halfway home before the other (clearly over-inflated) tire popped.

[cue sobbing phone call to marty]

so here i am. drinking a pbr with a deflated bike locked to the front porch feeling sorry for myself. based on my past experiences, however, i know that after i get my one bad luck ordeal out of the way, things tend to look up. until then, i might just use some retail therapy as a mood-booster (starting with this... after all, i have to make peace with my bike if things are going to get better).

image via we heart it

that's why god made mexico

the day i've been dreading for the last 3 years has arrived - bar review started today. well, ok, i guess i haven't dreaded bar review that much; really, it's the actual bar i've dreaded. and ever since i chose to take the longest bar in the country in the only state in the union that follows the civil code, my dread has increased exponentially, making bar review (i use that term loosely) of a type of law i never actually studied quite terrifying in and of itself. all in all, the day wasn't too terrible, minus the fact that the class started half an hour earlier than it normally will start AND we had to show up even earlier to register! not cool. to add insult to injury, all of my illinoisan compadres don't start review until monday - which is why two of my fellow grads are currently in mexico getting sunburned as i organize marty's socks to avoid studying. such is life.

image via we heart it

and i quote...

"you can't move to new orleans without gangsta rap and fried chicken" - marty. and so i was greeted at the airport in a ford taurus and raisin' caine's chicken.

wicker park

marty's friends are neighbors with this incredible SINGLE FAMILY home in wicker park in chicago. isn't it amazing?? i'm lucky no one was looking out the window as i discretely snapped these photos like the creep* that i am.

*can i just pass as an admirer of the beautiful gothic architecture? probably not. honestly i don't even know if this house qualifies as gothic.

homemade sammies

yesterday after my dad and i slaved over moving me out of my apartment (with a lot of help from renay!), we came home and he made one of his famous sandwiches, modeled after a "zapiekanka." zapiekanki are hot, crisp sandwiches you buy from street vendors in poland, and usually have ham, cheese, ketchup and mushrooms on them (i know it sounds so weird, but after a day of sightseeing, it really hits the spot). mark's version had prosciutto, tomatoes, mushrooms, scallions, cheese and of course ketchup, all on a fresh baguette and toasted to perfection. YUM. definitely going in the "miss" folder.

the 100th

well, it finally happened! graduation, that is. i think it is incredibly appropriate that my 100th post is also the one where i finally get around to sharing pictures of my graduation! like any other ceremony, it wasn't terribly exciting. having to stand in my new shoes while all 322 graduates were named, hooded and walked across the stage was a very pleasant surprise. i shared the day with my family, however, and that was all i needed.

ela and casey, my parents' best friends, marty's mom and my mom

father and son, as if you couldn't tell

hooded! i am a juris doctor now

on our way to my graduation dinner at carnivale!

thank you to my wonderful family for making this day so special!