Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2004 - 1:43 p.m.
Greetings,
Monday night is Mystery Night at Crescentwood. I can’t wait to get home, make myself a cup of Earl Grey tea (steeped in my Harrods teapot) and settle under the Pooh/Tigger blanket with cats disposed all over me to tune into BBC America.
First off there’s “Murder in Mind” an hour-long drama set from the killer’s point of view. Will he get away with it or will he be undone by his own over thinking or just bad luck? Some of the scenarios these people get themselves into. Like the landlord who rented a flat to a cute, young college girl only to find her dead of carbon monoxide poisoning the next morning. He discovers the heating unit is faulty and he panics – sure he’ll lose everything if he’s investigated and it’s discovered the heater was faulty and he didn’t fix it properly. So he comes up with this elaborate scheme to dispose of her body by making it look like she committed suicide in her car. Only the car’s owner shows up the next day with the claim that the college girl didn’t know how to drive. Or the one where the loud, rude, obnoxious neighbors move in and make a heretofore harmonious, quiet, unremarkable life absolute hell with drunken parties, adulterous affairs in plain sight in the outdoor Jacuzzi pool that they don’t even take the trouble to conceal decently. What’s a man to do? Perhaps electrocute the bastard in his own Jacuzzi? That does sound good, doesn’t it? Then the neighborhood will be back to normal, but what’s this? Wifey turns into the Merry Widow and it’s the same frustration all over again? How about getting rid of her without drawing suspicion to the husband’s death, eh?
After that, it’s two hours of “Wire in the Blood” which chronicles the cases in a clinical psychologist’s life and the life of a female Detective Inspector. There are an awful lot of serial killers living in this northern town, but what the hell, suspend belief for about two hours and be transported into the mind and motivations of a serial killer, a clinical psychologist and a policewoman. Plus the music is kick ass, the editing is superb, and the camera angles are provocative. Add the requisite sexual tension between psychologist and the detective and you’ve got Mina’s favorite show!
So anyway, can you guess what I did last night after work?
It’s butt freezing cold here today. By “butt freezing cold” I mean temps in the 30s overnight and not warming up much past the upper 50s during the day. Sounds not so bad, but somehow here in New Orleans with the humidity, it’s damn cold.
Certainly not as cold as much of New England suffered last weekend (or even today for that matter), but when you live in a city that’s built to attract every stray breeze, when it gets cold, brrrrr!
This morning Thomas and I both suffered through rather tepid showers in our rather chilly bathrooms. There’s no heat vent in our bathrooms because why would anyone want to air-condition or heat their bathroom? (I don’t remember this phenomenon in Connecticut. I remember the bathroom being the same temp as the rest of the house for the most part – except if you didn’t have central air and then it was hotter in the summer. But it was always warm in the winter. )
Most New Orleans bathrooms have their own, separate heating units. This could be anything from a horrid, most likely illegal, gas heater circa 1920 (as was the case in Magazine Street when you couldn’t pay me enough to fire that sucker up), to totally inadequate heating “fans” up in the ceiling of the bathroom like you sometimes find in hotel rooms, but not as hot. Especially when your ceiling is 12 feet high and that’s the only source of heat in the room.
My bedroom may be hovering around 70 degrees, but my bathroom in the morning has got to be 20-30 degrees cooler. And with two people taking showers at the same time, the hot water gets a bit stretched out.
I do love New Orleans and Crescentwood, but I have yet to live in a place here where the bathroom isn’t freezing on cold winter mornings.
I have spoken.
Until next time,
Olrun
