Laissez les bon temps rouler, y'all

http://www.nola.com/paradecam/index.ssf?video

Parce qu'aujourd'hui c'est Mardi Gras!

It's so hard to even ponder going back there after the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina. I haven't been back since the summer of the year before it hit. I just don't know if I can stand seeing the lingering profound changes.

...although my former love and I had planned to honeymoon there when we married next August. It's closer than Venice, he'd never been there, and he was a great fan of Louis Armstrong and other New Orleans jazz musicians.

I didn't even make a King Cake this year!

Oh, and I forgot to say about Kate Winslet...

I was overjoyed she got the Academy Award for Best Actress. I haven't seen The Reader yet. She was superb, as I wrote before, in Revolutionary Road. She pulled a Bette Davis, didn't she? More than one movie in a given year for which she deserved a nomination.

But I have to say how goddess-like she was, and how I approved of her speech and her dress and her hair and makeup. She's beginning to somehow remind me of Julie Andrews -- that kind of class and grace. Meryl Streep's another woman like Julie and now young Kate who I sometimes aspire to channel depending on the situation. When I'm not aspiring to remind everyone of Catherine Deneuve, that is.

Yes, Kate's a rising goddess and definitely on my Essential Women list these days. Maybe she's her generation's Meryl Streep?

It was great to see Sophia Loren and Shirley McLaine on last night's show also. (But Sophia scared me a little, I will admit. Too much plastic surgery or Botox? She seemed afraid to move!)

Beaucoup de photos

http://www.flickr.com/photos/diebuechsepics/

I spent some time this weekend FINALLY uploading all the photos from my roots journey in May and June to Bavaria/Switzerland avec ma mère if you want to see some images finally. Also Sicily and a couple from Paris. I know I must have a roll of London somewhere, since that's where I started out from...

That's me at my desk at work before Christmas wearing the dirndl I bought in Bavaria with my mother.