record "only in New Orleans" moments for when I question why I live here

New Year’s Eve fireworks over the Mississippi from the Bywater, didn’t even get kicked off the wharf this time

candy apple red streetcars running on the Canal Street line

palm trees on Canal Street lit up with snowflakes

New Orleans from the air-looks so tiny and vulnerable to the water surrounding it as you fly in over Lake Pontchartrain

riding the streetcar home from work on a beautiful late-summer day
waving hello to the woman painted all in silver as Joan of Arc as she bikes past you along the river, hopefully full of the double-chocolate cookies you donate to her artist’s camp on a regular basis
city lights off in the distance when driving home along the Causeway, at 24 miles the longest bridge in the world
the first days of fall make the 6 months of sticky sweaty crazy summer worth it

Only in New Orleans do you have a half hour discussion with your future car insurance agent about neighborhood bars and ways to eat and cook crawfish.

When I went to open a bank account less than a week after moving here, we had a lengthy discussion about how her daughter was studying abroad in Denmark and studying engineering at Virginia Tech but hoping to move back to Louisiana to study coastal engineering.

It takes forever to do anything around here and I love it that way.

parking my bike near Jackson Square, then returning several hours later to find a pink balloon flower in the bike basket