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For the past 16 years or so I have been living my own life, control my own personal schedule, eat when I want, sleep when I want, live the life of bachelor so to speak. When the gardening season was over, I had more time around the house, but didn’t feel like staying in between the living to watch TV or slave in the kitchen to bake. Life was getting way too routine for me that when I come home from work, it’s just dinner and TV around me. I could use something lively around the house, so it’s time to consider to look for pet. Almost everyone that I know have some sort of pet, mostly dog.

I grew up with up to 12 dogs in my house, back then we treat dog like guard dog, not much affection or play time. Since I was the youngest in the family, I was the only one that play with the puppy and other dogs. Just out of curiosity, I checked out Craiglist almost on a daily basis to see what the community has to offer in term of give away dog since I refuse to pay hundred of dollars to a pet store. After all, I’m a practical person.

In early November, I spotted a listing about this guy who saw a stray dog in his neighborhood, and asking if there is anyone want to take the dog in as he already has 3 dogs. The moment I saw the photo of the listing, I knew that’s the dog for me, why? The dog is goofy looking and just about the right size!

I have a few preference when come to dog, of course cute is the biggest factor besides good temper. What make a dog cute to me is short leg and long body, kind of like a Dachshund or what most people refer to as the wiener dog. I had one when I was growing up, and I remember her name was “Monica”, and she was my favorite.

Being furry and fluffy is another cute criteria for me, but Dachshund don’t normally come fluffy, not to mention they tend to have back problem. So I looked and looked for weeks in Craiglist until that post. I committed to the list, and waited for the guy to catch the dog off the street. By Thanksgiving, the guy finally got my dog, and he put the dog to the doggy hotel where his sister works to get the dog up to condition, like neuter, vaccine and heart worm prevention.

About two weeks before Xmas, the dog was ready to go home.  They dropped the dog to my house just to make sure the dog doesn’t freak out. I bought a doggy mattress just to make sure the dog will have a dedicated area to rest. For a good half day, the dog didn’t stay at the mattress because he just feel out of place. As days go by, the dog started to feel more comfortable with the mattress and started to go there to sleep without me encouraging him.

By the way, I decided to name my dog Oreo because of his color, and I think he will be as sweet and enjoyable like Oreo cookies, besides, I think the name is cute! In a few days, Oreo started to show his personality as he got comfortable. I started to notice he likes to lay on his back, especially when he sleep! I don’t think I have seen many dogs that like to show their belly all the time because it’s not a defensive position for them.

Oreo probably was on the street for a few months, his hair was very very long almost to the point that he looks like he had fur jacket on top of his usual coat of fur. He’s fluffy like a walking fur ball!

I tried my best to make sure Oreo settle into my house as soon as possible since I need to leave for my New Orleans trip soon. I tried to start off with his name just so that he will get use to it and will be easy for me to get his attention, I didn’t get any progress in the first few days at all:

I didn’t do much with Oreo the first few days since he’s not open to me nor want to play. He basically just walk around the house look at stuff, laying around and sleep, occasionally he might chase the ball and lick his toy.

Before you knew it, Xmas was over, and I left for my New Orleans trip. I put Oreo back to the doggy hotel where he got fix up after he was off the street. I requested to have Oreo be groom the day before I pick him up. I have to say, it’s a total transformation! I thought I would miss his fluffy long hair, but turns out he’s just as cute when he has shorter hair, and it makes him look younger, and it should because he’s only about two years old.

When I pick Oreo up at the doggy hotel, he went crazy after seeing me and wouldn’t sit still in the car. When he got home, he felt more relief and just want to lay down at the hardwood floor area where he can see me whether I’m in the kitchen or in the living room.

Occasionally he will walk around the house a bit but that’s it. He still didn’t want to play much.

Oreo has a few unique thing about him. First of all, his eyes are brown, which is quite unusual as most dogs have black eyes. When staring into his eyes, it remind me of staring at a tiger’s eye, but his droopy ears and open jaw just make him look harmless.

When I have my camera close up, Oreo gets a bit alert.

Since we had extreme cold winter around the New Year days, Oreo like to lay in front of the door as the hardwood floor could get cold.

As I had chance to stay home for the holiday break, I can monitor Oreo’s every move. I have to say, he has unique sleep posture!

As days went by, Oreo started to show his true self such as playing with favorite toy.

I walked Oreo every morning and evening to make sure he does his business. He started to understand who I am. Before you knew it, he wouldn’t leave me alone and became my shadow. He follows me everywhere, and when I sit down, all he wants is my attention:

If you stop padding Oreo, he would use his nose to push your hand. And if you just ignore him, he will go to next tactic:

I don’t let Oreo onto my sofa, but it’s not comfortable to bend over to play with him all the time, so I some times use my leg to play with him. Who knows, Oreo started to like my foot so much, he wouldn’t leave them alone either.

Oreo became more and more relax every day. He would just lay in front of me, show his belly and lay on his back, hold his arms to his chest. I can’t help but to try to mess with him a bit some times:

Having Oreo around means having unexpected moment any time. I have to have my video camera by my side as I’m still learning his behavior everyday. I have to say, this is probably one of the funniest thing he every done:

Oreo some how change my schedule a lot, I have to make sure he’s not out of my sight for too long worry that he will do things that many puppy does, which is mostly bad thing like chewing stuff, or peeing around the house. Oreo is house trained that he don’t pee in the house, but one think I learn that when he get too excited from playing with me and my roommate, he needs to pee, and if we miss the sign, he could pee in front of the door. So far he had only two accident of doing that.

My morning routine is a bit hectic now that I have to walk Oreo, so my gym routine has not been consistent. My evening schedule is quite manageable as I don’t have to stay at office until very late so I can get home in time to walk him and prepare dinner.

Having a dog is a big commitment for a foreigner bachelor like me. When I leave for Malaysia, it will be quite challenging, but I have plans about it. For now, I’m just enjoying Oreo’s every silly moment as well as the strange thing of human being talking to a dog even though you know they won’t understand what you said……

So, after our brunch and very very slow and lazy tour to the Aquarium, we figured out we still have time to go to the Mardi Gras World tour, which is a place where the company makes Mardi Gras parade props. The Mardi Gras World tour location is in a warehouse that’s not too far away from where we park our car. They have free shuttle bus that stops at different location to pick up and drop off tourist, so we took advantage of that.

Once we pay our entrance fee, we went into a room where they show the documentary about Mardi Gras history, explaining different the parade etc. We then left the room and were led by the narrator to walk around the warehouse to see all kind of work in progress as well as finished Mardi Gras parade cars and all sort of things.

An artist was working on her piece.

They never throw away the old props. They recycling them by either put the head of some other characters to the body of another characters, then add or repaint the new piece.

The parade car always start with sketch as blue print.

New pieces are start with stacks of block Styrofoams.

I think this is something from “Alice in the Wonderland”.

I think this is from the story of “Bean stalk and the Giant” inspiration.

You can see recycle items all over the place.

Once the decoration items are finished, they get put to the area close to the entrance of the warehouse, where they have like 2 stories tall of garage doors.

Smaller items are arranged together.

Different parade cars show different theme, I didn’t pay much attention to the narrator about how they choose the theme, like is it the client’s request, or based on what’s going on with the trend.

The car that show New Orleans.

The ware house is big! And they actually have a few of this kind of warehouse.

I wish I can have two of this at my house, you know, like the Chinese guardian lion statues found in many Chinese places.

Not everything are beautiful or scream its theme by the way.

I think this is for the swamp/wet land representation.

From symbolic representation of the surrounding area to the fantasy world.

This is definitely not a Chinese dragon.

You can’t miss Greek legendary creatures.

The expression of the Love Goddess is very good.

The detail goes into making the dress look like the real thing is impressive.

The parade car is quite big, and did you know they have toilet built into the car?

This kind of remind me of Bon Jovi for some reason.

This character is kind of awkward, may be they want to hide his pee-pee so ended up make his hip and pelvis too tiny.

It’s hard to peel my eyes away from this piece, it’s so colorful, disturbing yet doesn’t feel harmful or that evil.

Now that’s a big head!

Not sure if this is Conan or Tarzan, anyway, he’s tall!

Many more parade cars just laying around.

If I were to be standing in one of the car, this would be the one!

After Mardi Gras World tour, they dropped us back to where they picked us up, right in front of the River Walk.

It wasn’t late, but it felt that way because the moon and the chill of the night time temperature.

River Walk is a shopping mall area where you can hang out at their river front area to look at the river, and get on the ferry.

We didn’t spend time shopping at the mall because we just don’t have anything to buy. We didn’t plan to hang out on the street for long as we had to get up early the next day to hit the road. When we were at the City Tour, someone mentioned Fulton Street, which our bus passed by and it looked colorful.

After checking our map, we realized Miracle on Fulton Street is just two blocks away from where we were, so we decided to swing by and check it out.

From the outside of Fulton Street, you can’t tell what’s going on inside because the light inside is so bright it just blow your view into the street.

As you walk in side into the street, turns out they have decorated the street with countless number of lights, large ornament and many Xmas trees.

At the end of the street, which is right after that path of many Xmas trees, is a big Xmas tree.

There is no snow in New Orleans, nor overwhelming Xmas decoration and music around the downtown area of New Orleans, but once you get here, it just hit you that it’s Xmas season and it’s very festive!

After Fulton Street, we headed back to our resort and called it a night. The weather for the following day was not a good day for tourists, it didn’t affect us as we were heading out of the city that day. We decided to use a different route to get out of town, which is through the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway. Why? Because it’s the longest bridge in the world!

The bridge runs 23.8 miles, when you’re 5 minutes on the bridge, the GPS just show that you’re in the middle of water.

The bridge is not mean for tourist hangout place. They have stop area for police and emergency parking every now and then, but there is just nothing interesting about the area that when you look at both side of the bridge, it’s just muddy water!

The rest of the journey home was slow, 16 hours of straight road trip back to Kansas City just take a toll on you mentally and physically. There isn’t much I can do in the car because it’s hard to read book in the car, my netbook doesn’t have enough juice to power up to watch movies because I don’t have a car charger for it. I did sleep a bit through out the journey, but not enough to get rid of the boredom. I think if I were to get on any long distance driving trip again, I might have to either break down the driving part, or be prepare to squeeze in some entertainment for the car ride. Needless to say, my trip to New Orleans did bring some closure to me curiosity about Cajun food. I tasted some not top of the line but still fine cuisine, seen the place that I didn’t have vivid memory about during the first time I was there. Would I go back to New Orleans again? No! Why? I just don’t find that place extraordinary, well, outside of Mardi Gras season anyway. There is no way I would go to Mardi Gras because everything is super expensive, safety could be an issue and the crown will be super frustrating to deal with when come to getting around town. So yeah, it’s safe to say I won’t go back again, unless some body treat me then I will definitely go back to Court of Two Sister, gosh I love that place!