A Hamburger Kind Of Day.

[title type="h6"]Monday, September 2, 2013.[/title] Labor Day may be catching up with Thanksgiving as the day when people are out and about less than on any other day of the the year. It's a closed day for most restaurants of substance. Even Chef Andrea--who I think would be open twenty-four hours, 365 days a year if he could--shuts down entirely on this day. It's the only day of the year he does so. Labor Day is the Fourth of July without the sizzle or expectations. Everybody's back on the grueling school schedule already, and use the day to get caught up on behindedness they've already allowed. So you might barbecue, but it will be burgers, not whole briskets. For me, most Labor Days have involved my getting a hamburger somewhere. In that, it's an imitation of July 4. But Mary Leigh doesn't give a hang about my traditions. When she and The Boy decided they were hungry, I cut to the chase and said we ought to go to The Chimes, where I would get a hamburger. She gave me a look as if I were kidding. But I wasn't. The Chimes is the kind of place you'd go on Labor Day, and it was packed. I noticed, however, that the many screens that somehow find football to play 365 days a year were busy with things like high-school soccer. So even the college and pro games take the day off? Now that's a holiday. [caption id="attachment_36305" align="alignnone" width="480"] Hamburger from Chimes.[/caption] The Chimes has a few good items on its menu, and one of them is its hamburger. They grill it to crusty and juicy--a spec so appealing and obvious that I've always wondered why only a tenth of one percent of hamburger cooks even bother to try. The kids ate their usual crap. Cheese fries with jalapenos and bacon. A salad with fried chicken. Not that I was much higher on the gourmet scale with a hamburger topped with pepper jack cheese. But give me a break. It's Labor Day! I didn't put out a Menu Daily, nor did I have a radio show. Reading and listening are too much work to expect from the audience today. However, I spent nearly the whole day jamming on the enormous website renovation. I got a very large chunk of it done. Jude is also working on it, with the assistance of two guys in Pakistan who are loading into the new site one or two million words and tens of thousands of photos. That I produced all of them myself doesn't make facing them any less scary.