Vampires Keeping Me Up At Night

Last night was even shittier. The O's blow a 9th inning lead to the Yankees, and their fans cheered me right out of the Yard--right out of my own ballpark. That home run hurt, Koji. Today I've learned that life is rough in the service industry. It was a lesson that I had perhaps forgotten over time. The only thing that has gotten me through the day is the fact that I will soon be walking along the old Oaks of New Orleans. Perhaps I'll visit a murky swamp stuffed with creeping cypresses. Or maybe spot a ghost in Jean Lafitte's... Well, it's back to the Yard tonight.

Last night I witnessed the grittiest football game ever. The Ravens barely won a defensive grudge match filled with tempers worthy of a Superbowl. I'm exhausted from merely watching this game. But Baltimore's purple birds won, and I feel somehow much better for it... Oh yeah, the O's knocked in a walk-off run in extra innings nearly the same moment to win, again. New Orleans looks to be a reality, though we should miss Halloween by one evening. Regardless, we will once more be staying on St Charles Ave. Perhaps my last visit to New Orleans for a while, I vowed to read the final Vampire Chronicles book, BLOOD CANTICLE once and for all. Years ago, when I learned that Anne Rice would not continue these novels, I promised not to finish the series, fearing some finality in completing them. But as I read BLACKWOOD FARM now, I remember how I fell in love with her stories in the first place. And it seems fitting that I finish the possible final book in the series in New Orleans. My

New Orleans is calling out to me like a siren's song, tempting me with her striking, ancient beauty with promises of a glimpse of something special, something supernatural. I don't know what it is, this feeling, but I felt something like it after I left the city. Once home, I had this feeling in my gut that I had just lost a friend, abandoned a sibling. And I say this with the utmost sincerity. I truly missed walking along St Charles Ave or Bourbon Street. Sitting in Cafe Du Monde or the Garden District Book Store or sitting on the banks of the Mississippi. The food, the smells, the architecture, but there was something more. It was feeling that underneath all of that fiction there was something in New Orleans that transcends this reality. There was a child-like hope that things that go bump in the night exist, here. The very first New Orleanian we conversed with was at our hotel on St Charles Ave, and he implored us not to touch the cats, for they would steal our souls, trappi