angledge | Halloween in the Quarter.

Brace yourself, people. Today I am going to totally spam your LJ-friends page with photos.

Saturday night was a truly EPIC night – Halloween in the French Quarter! My co-worker E* had an inspired idea for a costume, & he transformed me from my normal status as a mild-mannered FEMA bureaucrat...

By day, Blue Roof Girl is known as angledge, mild-mannered Project Officer for FEMA.

By day, Blue Roof Girl is known as angledge, mild-mannered Project Officer for FEMA.

(

katieledge: note the sweater!)

...to my superheroine alter-ego, Blue Roof Girl!

Yes, I'm trying to sneak out of the left side of the photo.

BACKGROUND: one of FEMA's many programs is called Operation Blue Roof. FEMA installs blue tarpaulins as temporary patches on damaged roofs. They are a very common sight down here.

Roof Girl and Blue Roof Man head into the French Quarter. TO THE ROOFS!

We were so damn BLUE.

Quite a stunning pair of low-budget superheroes, don't you agree? We even had our little superhero act: E* would point at me & shout "Blue Roof Girl!" then I'd point at him & shout "Blue Roof Man!" then in unison we would point to the sky & shout "TO THE ROOFS!!" We did that about every 20 seconds, all night long. The more we drank, the funnier it seemed.

All good superheroes need an arch-villian. We found ours at a costume party. She was KATRINA, Evil Hurricane Monster. We fought:

Submit to blue-colored justice!

We won the costume contest, collected a very odd collection of prizes, & moved on down Bourbon Street into the Quarter proper.

MPs in the FQ.

You can't say that things are exactly back to normal here, since I rather doubt the MPs are usually patrolling the city streets. However, the entire street was full of drunk, costumed partiers. Emmanuel, who is a NOLA native, was genuinely moved by the sight. "This gives me hope that the city will survive & be like itself some day."

Partway down Bourbon Street, we met another arch-villian, Toxic Mold Man:

Toxic mold = toxic politicians.

This was the point in the night where things started to get a little hazy. We bar-hopped for several hours, then I lost Blue Roof Man. Then I lost the rest of our support team. I decided I had had enough, so I began making my way back toward my hotel. On the way, I walked smack dab into the middle of a gay street party, where I reunited with Blue Roof Man & a bunch of my other co-workers (always interesting to learn who's Family). At some point, I traded my Blue Roof Girl wig for a NFL referee's cap & penalty flag – so now I have something to throw at the TV when the Eagles are stinking up the place like they did yesterday *grumble*

When I got home I called

funkyplaid &

evilfb & shouted at them on the phone for a while. I also emptied out my pockets, which contained the following:

four fung shui magnets;
an eight-sided charm of some sort that is supposed to repel evil (heh);
a tin of merlot-cheddar spread;
two strings of beads; and,
my new penalty flag.

Thank God for Daylight Savings Time, because I definitely needed an extra hour of sleep before undertaking Sunday's adventures. But that is a story for another photo-laden post.