1. that's a pretty accurate portrait of me at the moment. midway through finals!
2. i got my bike tuned up this week, and it rides like a dream now. i've been trying my best to bike as much as possible-- driving is so crazy here, and i can tell it's hard on my car. i'm trying to bike as much as i can before it gets too hot (to even go outside, that is).
3. coda watching over me as i study epidemiology out on the deck
4. i've been enjoying the mulberries from my backyard. my favorite way to eat them is mixed with oatmeal, chia seeds & brown sugar in the morning. that combined with lots & lots of coffee is how i'm powering through finals!

1. celebrating Sarah's citizenship at a BBQ in our backyard with lots of friends. highlight of the Springtime (it felt like August in PDX). I'm soaking it up as much as I can before the real summer weather starts.

2. birthday week! i got so many emails, calls, FB messages & cards yesterday. felt so wonderful, especially because i'm so far from so many people i care about! i had a paper due & and exam yesterday, but it still felt like a special day. we went to dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant, where they served tacos on hum boa (they looked like this). Sarah bought me a red velvet cake & i blew out the candles as the tornado raged outside (but more on that later).

3. Sarah & I road tripped out to Tibodeaux on Tuesday night so she could check out a place to live this summer. she'll be working for the office of public health out there, doing disaster preparation. Tibodeaux is only about an hour and a half away, but it feels like the middle of nowhere; the drive is really green (and it's this tropical, bright green that is so different from the PNW). we saw lots of trailer parks, farms, armadillo road kill, roadside daiquiri stands, and lots of houses floating on swamps and set up on stilts. we looked around the place, ate fried chicken & then headed back home.

4. i've been doing crossfit for the past two weeks! i'm enrolled in the fundamentals series, which teaches you how to do all the movements. i've been doing lots and lots of squats, lunges, and pull-ups. it's in a warehouse in mid-city, and the class is at 6:30 AM twice a week. it's totally weird, but i always like trying something new.

i'll post again about yesterday's crazy weather when i have more time! Happy Thursday!

busiest week ever! finals time is heating up. lots more to share, but i wanted to post about yesterday, which was Tulane's annual Crawfish Festival!

1. started the morning with yoga at Audubon Park with Sarah & some friends from Lululemon.
2. from there, we headed over to Crawfest! it was 70 degrees & sunny, a perfect day. Crawfest is on the Tulane uptown campus & free for Tulane students. there's tons of food, and live music at two stages from noon till 10 PM.
3 & 4. about 12,000 people attend every year, with 20,000 pounds of crawfish dished out, from giant red canoes.
5. Sarah, Roger & I taking advantage of the scenery.
6. so packed!
7. Sarah & I
8. just in case you forget you're in the South, there are sorority girls dressed like Scarlet O'Hara, wandering around in hoop skirts. just to remind you of the fact that you are in the deep South.
9. i picked up on red velvet cupcake on my way out of the festival (& into work). i mean, how could i not?

these are just a few updates from Mike's trip. we did our best to eat our way through NOLA & see everything we could. definitely made up for lost time that i've been buried in books & away from my sweetie :)

1. Mikey's first crawfish. we took a picnic up to the Fly (the grassy area on the banks of the Mississippi, behind the zoo / Audubon Park. we ate crawfish, corn, potatoes & french bread to our hearts' content.

2. Spent one day at the WWII museum, which was amazing (also very depressing). the NFL Experience is still in the lobby, left over from the Superbowl, so we got to see some bonus exhibits after making our way through the museum.

3. & 4. French Quarter Fest was going on Thursday - Sunday. it's the largest outdoor music festival in the South, and considered Jazz Fest for locals (although tons of tourists come to town to enjoy it too). we heard lots of music, did some quality people-watching, and tried all kinds of foods: 12-hour roast beef po boys, red beans & rice, gater sausage, and bread pudding with brandy sauce. the last photo was taken Saturday evening, while an incredible brass band played Nirvana covers.

i'll put up a longer post later this week, including lots of photos from our mini road trip to plantation country! first i've got to get back to work!

1. it's always a more fun Girls on the Run practice when the Hornets show up
2. study fuel with the roommates: beet & brussels sprouts pizza
3. getting ready for Mike's visit!

another good week has come & gone! highlights included seeing John Ayers speak at Tulane-- he was so interesting, not to mention warm and happy to meet me. it was so great to finally make that connection. he has a lot of interesting ideas about revamping the school system here-- some of those ideas are in light with public health principles, some were not, but it was great to hear his perspective.

another highlight was the Girls on the Run midseason coaches' dinner. it was great to chat with the other coaches and talk about GOTR's role in New Orleans. the program is run (no pun intended) a bit differently here in New Orleans than it is in Portland, with more of a focus on getting families involved and passing on the lessons from practice to a wider circle. it was valuable to hear about how responsive the program has been to the unique needs in this community-- i just can't say enough good things about the program. also my co-workers at Lululemon have been super supportive, and they'll be running the 5K with my girls, which is really exciting.

i'm off to do in-store yoga at my work, work the rest of the day, and then it's soccer tonight! hope y'all are having a good weekend.

1. a Southern tradition: pecan Easter eggs. made right here in Louisiana.
2. Vietnamese food at a bar in the Bywater for the Game of Thrones premiere
3. studying in my room this morning

it rained all night last night. poured rain, for ten hours straight. high winds, with intermittent thunder and lighting. i've never heard storms like i've heard since i moved here: big, violent, loud. the kind of storms that wake you up in the middle of the night, and don't let you go back to sleep. it's scary, it's dramatic, and it's cool, too. i woke up this morning because my window panes were rattling, went outside, locked the shutters and gathered the trash cans that had migrated across the street. the city was dark, and the streetlights stayed on all day. i've never seen April showers like these before.

i've got another exam tomorrow, and then i'm working all weekend! can't wait for Mike to get here.