Gregory M. Ledet

Dear East Coasters,

Hi.  It’s been a while since we’ve talked, so let me reintroduce ourselves.  We’re the people of the Gulf Coast.

Six years ago today, we went through one of the worst times in our history and we hear that y’all are going through some of the same issues on our anniversary. Some of you may have lost your homes or may be without power.  It may be a while before you can sleep comfortably at night.  Hell, there’s a good chance that some of us are with you right now, as many of us never had the chance to come back home after our storm in 2005.

Sure, while your storm was bearing down on you, many of us chuckled and made remarks like “you call THAT a hurricane?”, but we watched our news channels intently to see what was going to happen.  We know that these sort of things can never be fun and we want to help.  We’re now scattered across the United States and with the help of the internet and social networking, we’re friends with many of you.  We would like to return the generosity that you showed us in our time of need.  Because of our experiences, we’re in a very unique position to help, and because of the way we were brought up, we know that it’s hard for people to ask for help, so you don’t have to ask.  We’re going to help anyway.

We’ll be donating to the Red Cross.  Our insurance adjustors are already on the way.  Our construction crews are in route with blue tarps in hand.  And because of that history we have, we’ll get you back up and running in no time flat.  In the meantime, should you need a place to stay until you can get back to your home, may we suggest a visit to our home.  From New Orleans to Mobile, AL, we’re open and waiting for you.  Our beaches are nice, our food is better and our hospitality is second to none.  Just tell us that you’re here due to Irene and you’d be surprised just what we’re willing to do to return the generosity and hospitality you shows us in our time of dispair.

We hope to hear from you soon and we hope you are safe. Keep your chin up and if you need anything, just mention it.  The Gulf Coast has your back.

There was a time, barely remembered today, when the idea of bipartisanship really seemed reasonable. There was once a kind of Republican, now driven to the verge of extinction, called the “Eisenhower Republican.” Today, the equivalent beast would be called a “Moderate Democrat.” The Republican Party itself has largely purged itself of Eisenhower Republicans like myself in its radical shift to the right.

I have always been a Republican. But even the earliest President I remember, Ronald Regan, though a crazy old actor with a penchant for placating the religious, wasn’t as bad as some of the Republicans of today.  It was Nixon though, probably unintentionally, that began the decline of the Eisenhower Republican. Some of those he brought into government are the very same “barking crazy rightwingers” who have systematically started destroying our nation under Bush. That, combined with Nixon’s spectacular and televised downfall, discredited the reasonable, moderate Republican. The Democrats, then more liberal than now, were ready to take advantage of Nixon’s downfall, and the far right wing Republicans, then marginalized but poised to strike, were ready to begin their plans to take over the nation through lying, stealing and cheating.

One man had a small chance of saving the Eisenhower Republican: President Gerald Ford.

Gerald Ford had been a well-respected Congressman, someone who could work with both parties to get things done. As criminal charges consumed Nixon and his administration, Gerald Ford was the last chance Republicans had of restoring respectability. Centrist, traditionalist and all around nice guy, Ford might have been the only person who could have saved the Republican Party from being taken over by extremists or lapsing into obscurity.

Pardoning Nixon and the stagflation Ford inherited from Nixon pretty much made it impossible for Ford to succeed. In the end, a moderate Democrat (Jimmy Carter) defeated Ford for President, and the right wing fringe of the Republican Party swept in to destroy the Eisenhower Republicans and take over. Those right wing nutcases have not only gone to great lengths to destroy our Constitution and to run up the biggest budget deficits in hitsory, but have also by now alienated moderate Republicans. The death of the Eisenhower branch of the Republican Party was one reason why Democrats won the last presidential election.

Just because the Republican Party is now nearly completely dominated by anti-democracy, right wing fools, and the Democrats are winning by appealing to American moderates, don’t think that the Democrats are doing fine.  As you can tell from the last mid-term elections, Obama has done a good job of alienating many of those moderates because of his extremely left policies.

America has always been and should remain a two-party system. Why? Because we, as a culture, divide pretty solidly into Federalist and State’s Rights camps…strict interpretation vs. loose interpretation of the Constitution… These are very real ambiguities within our system, left ambiguous by those who formed our government, and it is the give and take between these two views of government that has made our nation strong. The big danger now is that one party, the Republicans, have been taken over by a group that believes in neither of these philosophies of government except as a way of fooling voters. Instead, the barking crazy rightwingers have, in essence, thrown the whole Constitutional dichotomy out the window and have tried instituting a one-party, Soviet system of crony capitalism, corruption and war profiteering.

I have always been a Republican and almost certainly will remain a Republican for life. Why? Because I like the fact that the Republican Party represents America’s diversity in almost every way and, by and large, is more representative of the average American than the more leftist, pro-socialist Democrat Party. I’m not talking about Sarah Palin’s America either.

I want a healthy, moderate Republican Party, the Eisenhower Republicans, to balance the two-party American system. That is why Ford’s failure to hold the line against the right wing extremists within the Republican Party is a shame and why I was saddened by Ford’s death the day after Christmas in 2006.

Since Ford’s presidency, the entire track of the Republican Party has been towards more and more extremism, more and more lies, more and more greed, and more and more corruption. Almost every traditional, Eisenhower Republican ideal has been thrown out by the barking crazy right-wingers, as the three largest deficits in our history came from Reagan, the elected Bush and the little Bush and as the idea of “small government” has been thrown out the window in a greedy rush to publicly fund the corrupt military-industrial-religious extremist complex.

I can only hope that the Republican Party can rediscover its Gerald Ford/Dwight Eisenhower side and reject the extremists who currently control our Party.

(This post was stolen from mole333 and edited. http://www.culturekitchen.com/mole333/blog/the_death_of_the_eisenhower_republican)

My relationship with my mother was never the greatest thing on Earth.  While I was the “baby” of me and my brother, and as a young child I remember getting most of the benefits that the youngest child gets, I feel that my teenaged years were overshadowed by my brother and my father.  My dad was in a bad accident while I was only 12.  Just months later, my brother was drafted right out of high school to play professional baseball.  Big brother’s baseball career didn’t last long due to an injury of his own, but he got married and shortly thereafter had my parent’s first grandchild.

My family has a history of PKD and my father’s accident caused him to have back surgery that in turn caused his kidneys to fail.  Trust me when I say it gets complicated as far as his illness goes.  To make a very long and complicated story short, my father died in 1994, in my arms and 11 days before my 18th birthday.  It was one of the defining moments of my life.

A couple days later I was standing outside St. Bernadette Church, waiting for my best friend (who was running late) to get to the funeral service.  By the time he got there, we raced inside to find that my mother had them close the casket, not allowing me or my friend a chance to pay our last respects to my father.  I never got to say goodbye.

A month hadn’t even passed when I heard her say it for the first time.  It was in the heat of an argument we were having over something that I’m sure was stupid.  I don’t know if she meant that my rebellious and rambunctious behavior was causing stress, or if she meant that my CPR sucked, but my mother blamed me for my father’s death.

I had taken dad’s death pretty hard.  After all, he had died in my arms.  I was the one performing the CPR that didn’t revive him, but I also know that my father was dead by the time I got to him.  It was a massive heart attack; there was no saving him, but I take everything personal, including this.  When the thought that my mother blamed me for my father’s death reached my brain, it was more than I could take.  The rebellion that had gone on the previous 6 years as a cry for attention blew up.  Think about it like this… I was a teenager who’s parent’s interest in the jock eldest child and their two grandkids made them so oblivious to my very existence that I missed over 100 days of school my senior year and they didn’t have a clue.  If it was that bad, you can only imagine what was going to happen next.

I made some bad decisions over the next 3 and a half years.  I did things that I am not proud of, most of which involved drugs, alcohol and members of the opposite sex.  Late in 1998, some of those decisions caught up with me.  When my hometown’s finest came looking for me, mom pointed them in the right direction.  She kicked me out of the house and onto the streets.  She refused to let me back into the house to get my belongings without a police officer there.  She disowned me.

Over the years since that time, I have done my best in trying to rebuild a relationship with my mother.  I saw my father and grandmother go years without talking when I was a kid, and I saw how it affected him and the rest of my family.  I didn’t want to go through life with a dead father and a mother that thought of me as dead.  I tried to keep her apprised as to major events in my life.  When I went through a major surgery, my girlfriend’s mom called her to let her know that I made it through OK.  Her response?  “So? I don’t care. Don’t call me even if he dies” *slam the phone down*.  I would try to go to visit, only to be turned away or met with a cold ambivalence that made me extremely uncomfortable.  When Katrina hit, my first thought was the trees in my mom’s backyard and getting there to make sure the house was OK.  I was in the backyard trying to clear things out when she yelled out the back door “get out of my yard”.

Over the years I have tried to call her, to meet with her and try to make things right.  I was a kid when I made those mistakes and had been through a lot, but she still holds those youthful transgressions against me.  I am no longer her son in her eyes, just some piece of shit she would rather never have to acknowledge.  Unfortunately, she can’t get rid of me so easy.

Happy Mother’s Day, mom.  I know you may not think of yourself as my mother anymore, but you’ll never be able to erase the memories of you that I have; bad or good.

Today I shall share my recipe for something I had a dream about and just needed to make.  I shall call it Ami for short, but this thing is definitely a heart attack on a plate.  Let’s get to the ingredients.

• 1lb thick cut Bacon
• 1lb 85% lean hamburger
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup breadcrumbs
• 1/2 cup shredded Sharp Cheddar cheese
• 1/2 cup shredded Colby Jack cheese
• Onion powder
• Garlic powder
• Worchestershire sauce
• Tony Chachere’s Original Creole Seasoning
• Beer

Now, because I’m a Registered Coonass, I’m really not into measuring everything out.  In fact, the only portion sizes I’m sure about are the bacon and hamburger.  Those were actually on the label.

Combine your hamburger, eggs, onion powder, garlic powder, bread crumbs and worchestershire sauce into a mixing bowl.

Mix generously by hand.  You’ll more than likely have to add more breadcrumbs to the mix because your meat is going to get all eggy.  While mixing, throw some Tony’s in for taste.  Everything tastes better with Tony’s, trust me.  Once you reach a good consistency, set the meat aside to “age” for a short time.  We’ve got BACON to work with.  Now is a good time to drink a beer.

Now that we’ve got the beef out of the way, we need to weave some bacon.  I know what you’re thinking… “Greg, you want me to WEAVE BACON?  I’ve never heard of such a thing!”  Well, let me tell you that weaving bacon is pretty easy but it is a dying art form (at least the bacon weavers are dying).  Weaving bacon is a lot like braiding hair, you just need to remember the over-under thing.  My pound of bacon had 12 slices in it, so I suggest you make a 6×6 weave.  Your end result will look something like this.

Bacon weaving is hard work, so I suggest you have a cold beer before moving on.

Take the aging meat out of the bowl and break it into two halves.  Make small little meat bowls and fill these bowls with the shredded cheese.

Once the meat bowls are filled with cheese, gingerly combine them and carefully seal the junction.  If you happen to have a 13th piece of bacon, I suggest you wrap it around the now giant meat monolith.  Place the cheese stuffed beef ball in the center of the bacon weave and wrap excess bacon around beef ball until it is completely encased in bacon.  (I forgot to take a picture at this point, my hands were covered in beef, cheese and bacon).

Place bacon encased beef monstrosity onto a cookie sheet.  I highly recommend something with a pretty good lip on it; things will get messy if’s really shallow.  Place sheet into oven that has been preheated to 350°.  Have a beer or 2.

Let cook for one hour and then start using a meat thermometer to check it every 10 minutes or so.  Once the now lava like cheese filled insides have reached a temperature of 160°, remove from oven.  You will end up with something that looks similar to this…

A little rough math tells me that this clocks in somewhere in the neighborhood of 2500 calories and enough sodium to make Lake Michigan brackish.  Have another beer and Enjoy!

Dear Houma,

As you can see from my previous open letter to New Orleans, I’m a bit nostalgic for things that remind me of home.  I use to run shit in you.  I could walk into any bar in town and be in the list, or know the right person to get me and my party through the door.  After that, the tab was run with no questions asked.  But in the words of Rodney Carrington, “Now it seems to me things have changed, and I think that you’re the one to blame”.  You’re overcrowded, full of people I have no idea who they are, and your bars are staffed with people who have no clue who I am.  Granted, that $1,000 bar tab we ran got people’s attention, but I shouldn’t have to do that to get attention from the bar staff.  I expect to be served quickly and cordially.  Not by some pissed off chick because she has to and miss going on with the girls.

Another thing is the children in that town.  First off, Hooters is NOT the place you should be bringing your screaming brat to eat.  He’s only 2 years removed from the boob, so bringing him into that kind of place is going to put him in withdrawal.  But if you do bring him in, a couple of words of advice.

1. When the staff of Hooters asks you to muzzle the demon next to you, don’t reply to them with “Don’t you tell me how to be a mother to my child!!!”
2. When the good meaning stranger asks you to quiet the child, you’re reply shouldn’t be “I’m not going to tell one of God’s little miracles how to behave”
3. Expect the good meaning stranger to turn into an asshole and tell you to “drag that fuck-trophy the hell out of the bar or I will personally deep fry and eat the little piece of shit”.

Also, lighten up on the cops.  They’re EVERYWHERE!  I swear to God, I couldn’t drive more than 2 miles without seeing at least one cop.

Other than that, while you’ve changed; you really haven’t.  And that’s the problem.  Grow the fuck up Houma.  You really need to.

Love,

Greg

Dear New Orleans,

It’s been a while, hasn’t it.  I promise you that I miss you more than you miss me, but I know that you’d love to see me again.  Trust me, I can’t wait until I can see you again either.

We’ve had a tumultuous go at it together. From me “working” as a poker player in your casinos to you working me over in your bars, it was rough. Then the storm hit and changed both of us forever.  I know you don’t like to talk about “K”, and it wasn’t her that sent me packing from you, but it was a big part of both of our lives.  I’ll never forget crossing the causeway in a school bus shortly after the storm and seeing the destruction.  I still have dreams about it.  It still drives me to drink and do stupid shit, and I know I’m not alone.

I guess you can say I left you for another, but you’re always on my mind.  Every day, without fail, I think about you.  I cherish the times we’ve spent together since my departure and long to have those days back, but I’m kinda in a precarious position right now.  I’d love nothing more than to drop everything and run back to you, but I have responsibilities here.  I have a wife.  I have a job.  I have bills.  And as much as I love you, you’re not very conducive to a long term job and shit like that.  When we’re together I feel like I’m on top of the world, but you’re like a mistress in that sense.  You’re awesome to be with for short spurts, but I know that I have to go home to my wife sooner or later.

I’m planning a trip to see you soon, likely on your biggest day; Mardi Gras.  You know how it is though, I’m only there for Lundi Gras, then I’m off to Houma, but I don’t want you to think that I don’t love you.  I do.  I do more than you’ll ever know.  It’s that whole “responsibility” thing again…

I’ll always love you NOLA, and I’ll never stop thinking about you.  Even if the Saints are getting their ass kicked by the Browns right now.

Love,

-Greg

It’s been a while since I’ve been home and I’m really missing it right now.  Don’t get me wrong, I really like my job and right now you couldn’t drag me away from it, but there’s something about sitting in a hotel room with nothing really to do that will make you think of home.  I talk to someone from back in New Orleans or the outlying areas nearly every day.  I read NOLA.com and HoumaToday.com to keep up with the news.  In a small way, I almost feel like I’m up to speed with what’s going on back home, but I know that couldn’t be further from the truth.  I see posts on Facebook about this one getting married to that one, or so-and-so doing such-and-such.  I’ve never been a big gossip queen and I used to ignore this stuff when it was happening around me all the time, but it’s those little things that I think is keeping me clued in.  No matter how long I spend in Ohio, I still have strong ties to my home.  I can’t get away from it.  Be it the constant thought of my daughter and how I have, and continue to, screw up that relationship or the ever pressing boredom that dominates my life in Ohio.  I almost refuse to get out and make new friends.  Sure, I have those acquaintances that I’ll get together with every now and then for a drink or something, but nothing like I had back home.  I guess that I’m afraid if I start laying down roots, I’ll be stuck in Ohio forever.

I’ve already started laying down roots with accepting my job.  As a consultant, I can just pick up and leave whenever my contract is up; it’s always temporary.  Now I’ve accepted a permanent position with a company.  They treat me great, I’m loving the work (even though it’s a little stressful, but I thrive in the stress) and they are more than willing to continue my education.  I’ve always been one to have loyalty to an employer and I can’t just up and leave them high and dry when they have put so much into me already.  I have to give back, and I will, but dammit, I need to get home soon.  The plan was to fly back for Mardi Gras.  I’ve got a few things I need to take care of and I’ve already started planning everything out, but I may just have to move that trip up a little closer to the present.  The problem is that I’m extremely busy over the coming months.  I’m in Washington DC right now at a class, I’ll be in Cincinnati one day next week, I’m back in DC the following week only to go home to a big day at work the day after I get back.  I’ve got tons of other things to do before Christmas, then there’s another big work day during the Christmas shutdown.  After the first of the year, who knows what’s going to come up between then and March.  It looks like it’s just not going to happen.

I thought that by working full time that I would feel better about living in Ohio, and to an extent I do, but South Louisiana is like an itch that just needs to be scratched.  It calls you.  It calls you from the smell of boiled crawfish at Eastway Seafood in Houma to the ever present pint of Guinness at Ryan’s Irish Pub on Decatur in the Quarter.  From the barking over a pool game at High Tide near my old house to sitting on the Lakefront watching the waves crash on the concrete steps.  I miss being able to use little Cajun French words like “envie” when I crave something or calling someone a “cooyon” when they do something stupid.  I miss looking for a fourth for a game of Pedro.  It’s those little things that are only found in South Louisiana and something that you’ll never find anywhere else.

For those of you that know me, you know that I’m fierce about my heritage, and right now there’s a Coonass in side me begging to be let out.  He wants to have a hurricane party.  He wants to eat too many raw oysters, even though he’s allergic to shellfish, and spend 2 days in the hospital trying to recover.  He wants to drink too much with his friends and spend 2 days in the bed trying to recover.  He wants to play $1 – pot Bourré and take all your money. He wants to sing Cajun music, IN FRENCH, and piss people off.  He wants to ask the cute girl at the bar about her family, only to realize that he’s related to her.  He wants to not care that’s he thinks his new found 5th cousin on his mom’s side the family is hot because dammit, she is.  He wants to start sentences with “mais cher” and he doesn’t want people to take offense when he calls them “sweetie” or “baby”.  These are the things that make me miss home.  They may sound stupid to you, but those are just some of the things that pop into my head when I start thinking about how we do it back in South Louisiana.  And if they do sound stupid to you, guess what?  I don’t give alligator’s ass.

It’s almost hard to believe it’s been 5 years since my whole world changed.  Around this time 5 years ago, I was writing my name on various body parts with a black Sharpie to make sure that if something happened, I would be easily identifiable.  My fiance had evacuated to Houston and I was left home alone with the cat.  Little did I know that I would lost both the girl and the cat and damn near the house in the weeks to come.  The storm itself changed my life, but like the City of New Orleans, it wasn’t the storm itself but the events after the storm that really fucked me up.

Losing the woman that I loved more than life itself really fucked me up mentally. When we were doing cleanup after the storm and the things that I saw there fucked me up even more.  There’s no need to go into detail about what happened between the woman and I, nor is there any need to relive those images in my mind of the devastation and destruction of the city I love.  What needs to be talked about isn’t the things that happened 5 years ago today, but the things that need to happen to make sure that 5 years from now, the city is better than it was 5 years ago today.

We’ve all heard it on the news… “Louisianians are a very resilient people”.  Well, if we’re so resilient, then why is the city’s population only 60% or so what it was before the storm?  Why are there still parts of the city that look the same way they did 4 years and 11 months ago?  We need to quit looking to the government to fix everything and get off our asses and doing it ourselves.

There’s been a lot of work done since the storm and like I tell a lot of people that ask me about it; if you would have went to New Orleans 6 months after the storm and stayed in the normal tourist areas, you wouldn’t have known that the costliest natural disaster in US history had happened.  Sure, you would have seen some places still boarded up, but for the most part, the city had bounced back.  The outlying areas were still badly messed up, but downtown didn’t look bad.  When I go back home now, we don’t even talk about it.  It’s everywhere else that keeps bringing up bad memories.  Sometimes you just want to forget bad things.

5 years from now the city needs to look like the storm never happened.  It should already be that way, but there’s too much laziness and bullshit going on to have it happen.  The politicians need to get off their asses and get shit done.  The media needs to quit airing specials to dredge up old memories and make it seem like we’re helpless still today.

5 years from now I hope to be back in the city that lives in my heart; back to abnormal.  5 years ago today was the beginning of the worst time in my life; oh, and a Hurricane hit New Orleans.

*edit*

It’s now 4:30 in the morning and I haven’t slept all night.  I started to go to sleep earlier, but all the crap on the TV the past few days about the storm have brought up some really painful memories and that’s not very conducive to sleep.  I know people that lost everything they own in the storm.  I saw their homes… covered in mold with a waterline that is 3 feet high in the attic.  While I didn’t lose the possessions that these people did, I lost a lot.  I lost Sarah who meant the world to me.  I lost many friends because I lost my mind after the storm.  I attempted suicide over this crap and ended up in the hospital for a couple of weeks.  I was found to be bipolar and having PTSD.  I even lost my freedom for a short time.

The weeks and months after the storm were hard on a lot of people.  The depression rate sky rocketed, as did alcohol and drug abuse.  We didn’t know what else to do.  You would walk around town and see people with their heads down, just shaking them back and forth… lost.  In typical New Orleans fashion, we tried to make fun of the situation.  I remember seeing a refrigerator on the side of the road and someone had written on it “Do not open, FEMA inspector inside”.  The comedians from NOLA were doing gigs around Houston and Atlanta and doing Katrina material already.  Down in my hometown of Houma, things weren’t as bad.  We had some wind damage and a bunch of rain, but nothing horrible; I guess you can say we were lucky.

I remember growing up and listening to my mom talk about Betsy and Camille constantly.  Never in a million years did I think that I was going to have a story for my kids that would rival, and in many cases beat, the stories my mom told me.  Then again, never in a million years did I think that I was going to go through the worst natural disaster in US recorded history and live to talk about it.

August 29th will always be a day that I will never forget.  9/11 has been drilled into us by the media for 9 years now, but the only thing that had to drill Katrina into my head was being outside in the storm, facing 120+ MPH winds.  I didn’t need CNN to tell me how bad it was in New Orleans… I lived it.  I don’t need Anderson Cooper set up on a street corner in the 9th ward every year “celebrating” something that devastated the lives of so many.  All I need to do is go to sleep at night and the visions of the destruction are there like it happened only yesterday.

When people find out that I’m from New Orleans, I get the same questions all the time. “Were you there for Katrina?” “Was it as bad as they say it was?” etc, etc, etc.  It’s always the same shit, and to be honest, I’m tired of hearing it.  I’m still trying to get over that time in my life and the last thing I need is some moron sitting in front of be and bringing up bad memories.  Sometimes I don’t mind it.  Like today, someone IM’d me because they saw some posts I had made in a Fark thread during Katrina.  They wanted to find out if I was still alive!  It was actually kinda nice to be able to sit there and spill my guts to a total stranger over what happened in my life back then; even the Hep C stuff.  She sat there on the other end of the computer and asked questions to which I replied.  I divulged info that I normally don’t, but it was comforting to know that even a total stranger out there cares.  And it’s not that the stranger cares about me personally, they care about New Orleans and the people that went through hell on earth.  That’s what’s comforting; to know that there are people in this world that still give a damn about his or her fellow man.

I hear all the time from people saying that they should have never rebuilt New Orleans. “It’s too far below sea level” and “it’s just going to get destroyed again” are just some of the shit that I hear spill out of these idiots’ mouths.  I even heard “you should never build a city that close to the mouth of a river!”  What about New York?  Alexandria in Egypt? Hell, ANY MAJOR PORT ON EARTH!  Without New Orleans, we’d all be drinking tea and singing “God Save the Queen” right now.  Where else on Earth can you go and get the culture, food or people that you have in New Orleans?  Where else on Earth would people move back to knowing that it was prone to disaster again and again?  Hell, I’ve met tons of people that had never been there before the storm but came down after-wards to help and they’ve never left!  The City has that effect on people.  Either you love it or you hate it, either way it’s going to create strong emotions in you.  I love New Orleans with all that I am and it will always be “home” to me.  I don’t care where I live or how long I live there, I will always think of it as temporary until I get back to New Orleans.  I will always talk about going “home” for vacation and I will always try to talk people into coming with me.

The people of New Orleans need tourist.  Like a needle needs a vein, like a preacher need pain; NOLA need tourism.  It’s the blood that pumps through the city, albeit with a high blood alcohol level.  The American people should not be writing New Orleans off like I’ve heard so many times being done.  The City wants you and it doesn’t care who you are or where you’re from.  They say that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas… well what happens in New Orleans is something that you’re going to want to tell everyone.  But start with your priest, because there’s going to be some sins that you need to confess.

Man, my knee is killing me right now.  I know it’s been a few months since my last update, but I’ve been a busy bee for a while now.  Let me fill you guys in on the past couple months, then I’ll explain the title of this post.

I finished up with my little contract that I was on at the beginning of July.  I had a good time working at Express and I wish those guys the best with their new network.  As a consultant, all good things must come to an end, but with every ending is a new beginning.  Before I had even left Express I had started the interview process with a new company.  They have a VERY thorough interview process and after 3 separate interviews, one of which was me being vetted by an engineer that actually works for Juniper Networks, they decided that I was the guy they were looking for.  So, I’ll be starting a new job on August 16th!

Now, for the whole “OUCH!” thing.  This past weekend was the Dublin Irish Fest in Dublin, OH.  The Irish Fest is always a great time.  Last year I worked the Utilikilts booth out there and had a blast.  I picked up Stewart from UK at the airport on Thursday and we went out that night, helped setup on Friday and worked all day Friday, then returned on Saturday to work.  I could have went back on Sunday, but I couldn’t walk then.  This year I had volunteered, but they already had a full crew.  Well, my father-in-law, his girlfriend, my wife and myself all went down on Saturday to take in the festival.  The UK booth was right at the entrance that we walked in, so I immediately stopped by (in my Utilikilt, none the less) to say Hi to the guys that were working (I had worked with 2 of them last year).  Well, the 2 guys that had volunteered this year decided to bail and Douglas and Ken were alone, so I stepped in to give them a hand.  Big mistake on Greg’s part.

As you may know, I’m a bit of a desk jockey.  I’m not used to spending all day on my feet, much less while wearing combat boots and thick wool socks.  I stood up without sitting at all from 11AM until about 10PM.  By the time I got home and took off my boots, my ankles had swollen to the point of actually breaking the leather of my boots and my legs had swollen to about an inch bigger around on top of my socks than below them.  I had trouble making it up the stairs.

Because I was walking gingerly up the stairs to protect my feet, I didn’t realize just how bad my knees were.  On the way down the stairs this morning, my left knee gave out and I took a nice tumble down the stairs.  I’d be willing to bet that I’ve stretched out the MCL on my left knee.  I don’t think I’ll be working any festivals again for a while…

If you’re reading this blog, it’s likely because you are a friend of mine; and if you’re a friend of mine, then you know by now that really weird shit has a tendency of happening to me.  You also know by all the stories that I tell (and I do go on, at length, about them) that some very interesting thing has happened to me in my life.  Well, this morning, the most interesting thing to happen to me so far this year occurred.

I finished up with my allotted work early so I cut out of work about 4:45am and was on my way home.  I stopped off in Dublin, OH to grab a bottle of water because I was a little parched.  I pulled up to a pump, jumped out the car and ran inside.  On the way out with a Krispy Kreme in one hand and a bottle of water in the other, I notice that the Transformer Bumblebee had pulled in behind me (a bright yellow Camaro, in case you haven’t seen the movie).  As I’m walking up to my car I notice 2 things that stick out at me.

#1. The license plate on the car reads PMOY
#2. The woman getting out of the car is roughly 6′ tall, blonde, leggy, and drop dead gorgeous.

What Bumblebee and a Playmate of the Year may look like

About this time the little devil and angel pop up on my shoulders.  The devil tells me “Dude, you need to say something. She could be an actual Playmate of the Year!” and the angel says “Greg, just keep your mouth shut and get in the fucking car”.  Of course, the angel is always on my left shoulder and I have an 80% hearing loss in that ear.

Me: “So, is PMOY an actual title or just an aspiration?”
Her: *smile* “You get a +1 for the awesome fedora, but a -1 for a douchey pick up line”
Me: “Well, you get a +1 for being drop dead gorgeous, but a -2 for being a frigid bitch”

At this point she starts laughing heartily. I walk towards the back of my car to where she’s pumping gas and she says:

Her: “You’re pretty quick.”
Me: “I’m a comedian, it’s my job.”
Her: “It’s actually a funny thing about the license plate. I bought the car 4 months ago and within the first 2 weeks of buying it, I got pulled over for speeding 4 times.  I thought about what personalized plates I wanted to put on my car and the first thing that came to mind was ‘Pull Me Over Yellow’. The Playmate of the Year thing never entered my mind at the time”

I went on to explain that I had a yellow Dodge SRT-4 that I had named Amy, after Arrest Me Yellow.  We went on to have a nice little conversation while she finished filling up her car ($47!) and I hopped in my beat up piece of shit and continued home.

I know it doesn’t seem like it was very interesting to the outside person, but you have to remember that it’s been a VERY slow year for Greg Ledet. Up until 3 weeks ago I was on that fucking therapy that kept me locked up the whole time and nothing interesting ever happens in Bellefontaine, Ohio.

Now that I’m off the treatment, I’ll be moving the feeling of this blog back to a basic journal of my life.  The drugs have started to fade and I’m starting to regain full control of my facilities (ie, I’m getting back to being hypomanic), so hopefully I’ll start getting back to doing the crazy shit that makes my life interesting, like staring down category 3 hurricanes while completely shitfaced.

-Greg