My most important memory from the storm is the fact that the Saturday night before Katrina rolled in I was in costume with hundreds of other revelers marching through the neighborhoods of Uptown with two brass bands, a fire dancer, and police escorts in the Krewe of OAK\'s annual summer Mardi Gras parade. We all should have been evacuating. The event at once demonstrated how lightly many New Orleanians took the storm (myself included) and that the party spirit of New Orleans carries on no matter what.