Friday, March 8th

A cooler day, but the sun eventually came out and it was quite pleasant.
  One of the guys stopped by to say we are not riding today.  Good thing, because I hadn't planned on going as it was a cool and windy.  It was a pretty casual day for us, Marg said laughing.  You were in your jammies until 10, oh yes that was me alright.
  After lunch Marg had a meeting with the Entertainment Committee to deal with the last minute organization stuff around the Mardis Gras event today.  Then they decorated the hall and tables, then made 5 different kinds of soup, putting it in large slow cookers to keep hot.  I think that took most of the afternoon.  I went and played pool for a couple hours.  There were two tables going and the one I played at we had lots of laughs.
  The parade assembled a bit before 5 and there was a pretty good turnout for it.  We were fortunate as the weather forecast had a 40% chance of rain, but it held off and was sunny.  Some of the people really got dressed up in the spirit of the event.  Having never been to in New Orleans, I can only assume their dress was similar to what they saw there.  There were lots of masks and beads.  Most of the golf carts were not decorated like the Christmas parade and Marg went in it, while I took pictures and then went to work in the clubhouse.  We got the hot dogs and buns out and started them on the grill.  I think we cooked somewhere around 100.  This was a free food event served after the parade, so we always get good turnout.  The ladies ladled the soup and helped handout the hot dogs.  We also had a couple of cakes that Jerry had sent here from New Orleans.  His son live there and had them shipped here.  They even had the baby hidden in the cake.  Its a small plastic baby and if you get the piece with it, you will have good luck.  The only problem was they didn't ship well, so Marg came to the rescue and made a chocolate ganache she put on them.  They looked quite presentable and in the announcements she got credit for saving them.  Not certain how many we had but there was no food left.
  After the food was cleaned up, we had a dance with recorded music.  There was a pretty good group for the dance and the ones that came had a good time.  The women sure out-partied the guys tonight, although a few of us tried it wasn't enough.   Maybe next time.