When I thought I was going to be looking at houses in Slidell I thought things would be easy. I’d only need to see a few houses – they’re all ranches, it’s just a matter of which one is flatter. You know. But then the shift to looking uptown threw a wrench in things. I was driving until 11 pm Saturday, criss-crossing down every street writing down numbers. Today Elise and I drove around for hours, checking out the list of places I made from Latter & Blum’s website, figuring out which ones to call. In the end we only wound up actually going inside one place, primarily because realtors don’t work on Sunday.
It’s amazing to me how many of the houses for rent are being handled by realtors here. The vast majority, to be sure. I have to say, though, provided we find a nice house before Tuesday evening, I think I’ll be glad we decided to stay in the city. I won’t believe the high rents are worth my money, but it’ll be nice to be IN New Orleans. I’m actually going to see a place on Esplanade with some friend-of-the-family realtor tomorrow. She had given my mom the address, so I went to check it out today and am pretty excited to see the inside. It is also a continuance on this whole thing being providential. Kim and I, in our letters to each other (during the early 90s) had this recurring “when we can finally be together…” story about it being a warm Sunday afternoon and we’re lying around or the couch in our apartment on Esplanade. There had probably been some fried oysters earlier in the day.
Oh, I had a Hansen’s snoball today for the first time ever. I’ve been talking to Elise about snoballs for weeks so we’ve been rather gluttonous with them. I promised that we’d get one after lunch, but we were pretty far From Pandora’s and I think they are closed on Sunday. So we went looking for another snoball place and I remembered Hansen’s, though not once have I ever EVER seen that place open. Hansen’s is a pretty fabled place in New Orleans, for those who aren’t aware. Snoballs as smooth as ice cream, they say. It was owned and operated by a couple, like forever, and they got old and they only opened intermittently until eventually they passed away. After that the granddaughter took it over, in homage at first l believe.
I’m certain that all of the facts in that story are wrong but I believe the folklore aspect to it is spot on. I think there was an article about it on nola.com that I read. I don’t just know all this stuff.