A perfectly cromulent Mardi Gras

Ash Wednesday for us can be one of two things.  It can be CLEAN ALL THE THINGS DAY or it can be the beginning of a long deliberate process of recovery.  It looks like this year we are leaning toward the latter approach.

This year's Carnival was.. pretty good.  For the most part, everything worked the way it was supposed to.  This means there were none of the huge dramatic disappointments that sometimes happen. But also there were none of the fantastic cathartic surprises we always hope to run across. Still, what that means is it was a regular Mardi Gras and regular Mardi Gras is pretty great.
 
Carnival time is the ultimate casual excuse to just go outside with little purpose other than to just see people. During parade season, I see pretty much every person I know at least one time. Some of them I see at my house party. Some of them I see at other people's house parties.  Some of them I see at the parade. Some of them I see in the parade. Some I see from the parade.   All of this is to say that every year we celebrate a weeks-long city-wide party that serves to reestablish and reinforce our connections with our friends, family, and neighbors, and what could be better than that?

Well, for me, at least, it could be better if I made the time to write it all down as much as I used to. One regret I have about Twitter is that it has become my go-to place to talk about the fun things that are happening (most especially during Carnival and during football season) and so I'm less likely to end up blogging about those things. And that sucks because these are the good times and I'd like to remember what was good about them.

This blog exists in the first place so that I can have an easily searchable record of the things that are happening which I'd like to talk about with people.  Twitter is great for talking to people about what's happening but it's also great for tossing those happenings down the memory hole. For whatever reason I tend to toss the happy moments down the Tweeter Tube and keep the heavy stuff over here.  So what ends up getting posted here looks more and more like a depressing catalog of this city's terrible politics and seemingly hopeless long term environmental situation.  Those things are important, of course, but they aren't the whole picture.  

Anyway, I'm going to try and fix that by re-capping Carnival in a series of posts I've already kept some notes for anyway.  So, if you're sick of that stuff by Ash Wednesday (and who wouldn't be?) consider this a word of warning that there will be some tl;dr stuff upcoming.  Don't worry, though. I don't expect it to interrupt the regular griping too much.  

The good news, from a memory hole standpoint, is that I took more pictures than ever this year.  Menckles bought me a new camera recently and I brought it to almost every parade.  So at least I have some evidence that the past several weeks actually happened.. even if some of that evidence is in the form of battle scars.