I'm still in a bit of a New Orleans induced haze; wishing I could still be eating chargrilled oysters and drinking sazeracs. Feeling like something in life was a little fuller, a little darker, a little more romantic (not in the Paris way, in the vampires way).

I'm trying now to figure out what it is I miss and what of that I can bring into my life here. Because, as sometimes happen, I go on vacation and decide I really ought to move. It hasn't happened in a while, but it happened in New Orleans.

I decided I want more and better cocktails. That city has bartenders. Bartenders who know things about making a good drink. Bartenders who pour heavy and still make an excellent cocktail. Bartenders using fantastic ingredients who will also hand you a plastic cup if it's time to walk outside. Paul & I used to keep full liquor cabinets, but since we moved, we have not. Moving made us get rid of those bottles of obscure ingredients that you only use for one or two drinks, and we haven't felt pressed to re-buy them. Until now. I don't want to keep a FULL bar, and I don't even want to keep a half bar. But the current state of our liquor cabinet is sad. I want to get in the practice of making a fantastic old fashioned. I want to have a few drinks reliably on hand. A house drink, maybe.

I want to opt in more. It felt, in New Orleans, like I could always opt in and out at my leisure. I could go see if I felt like it and go back if I didn't. It's considerably tougher thing to do in Los Angeles, city of cars and parking problems, but it's also…not. There's a front door on my house. The world outside my door is every bit as magical and strange as the world of New Orleans if I let it be.

I want better clothes. Admittedly, most people I saw in New Orleans dressed like crap. I mean, tourists, on Bourbon Street. It's okay for them to look terrible; I'm just happy if they're not expelling human waste within a few feet of me. But there was more than flip-flops and tank tops. And the clothing for sale in New Orleans was spectacular. I tried for a hot minute to get into the Contemporary Conformist look, but I am done with chambray, forever. The problem, which has existed since we invented the mass produced clothing industry, is that it's so damn easy and cheap to get clothes that fit like crap. Our tastes have evolved to like crap because it's easier than trying to go back to wearing fancy stuff all the time. I don't want to go back to wearing fancy stuff all the time; I can barely keep all the balls in the air as it is. But I do want to be a little more intentional and maybe a liiiiiittle more fancy. Prince and David Bowie have something to do with this, too.

I want more dancing to music, more tap dancing, more jazz. That's pretty much it.

I want more ghost stories. I may be going through a horror-related personal renaissance. I have never been super into horror movies, books, etc. But lately I've started watching American Horror Story. I went on a cemetery AND a vampire tour. I am now reading one of those truly awful self-published ghost story books that are written about every last place on earth. I don't really get it, but I'm sure you'll hear more about it. The power of the story was strong in New Orleans. The tour industry is huge there, and you basically are paying someone to walk around and tell you stories. No clue if any of what they told me was true. But any building has dozens of stories. Any place has ghosts, of whatever kind you like. I've never been much of a storyteller, but I've always wanted to be. So perhaps more stories. I don't think I'll share much fiction here, but maybe.