Diary 1|26, 27|2017: Checkers With Phone Company. New Acme Look.

Thursday, January 26, 2017. Waiting For A Repair.

The Marys are spending the night in ML's apartment. I am dealing with the phone company, which told us that they would arrive to fix the internet connection at the Cool Water Ranch. It went down on Sunday, and has come back and forth from the dead every day since. The tech was supposed to have arrived yesterday between five-thirty and eight in the evening. Instead, he came at four, found nobody home, and left. Another guy comes today and discerns that the problem was not on my side of the line, but somewhere in a cable about a mile away. Although this tech is helpful (and used to be in the restaurant business, so we had a lot to talk about), he says that the remote issue was the purview of a different team of techs. They show up at around one in the afternoon, which places my radio show in danger. I either have to head out for the studios on the South Shore right then, or I can hope that they reconnect me by two at the latest. That cuts it too close. I ask Mary Ann to go to the studio and guest-host the show, as she does so well. If all were normal, I would have a third option: I could do the show from the Ranch on my remote unit. But that uses a telephone connection, and both the internet and the hardwired phone connection are down. The techs begin rummaging through dozens of possible connections in order to find the one that's creating the issues. They find it at around two thirty. I jump in my Beetle and head for New Orleans. Mary Ann begins the show at around three. A half-hour later, I arrive, run upstairs, and she and I host the show together. I thought it would be fun for us to stage the process by which we decide which restaurant we will attend that night. It is even more absurd than what we've experienced at the hand of the phone company, and goes something like this: ME: So, where would you like to have dinner? MA (and ML too, if she is present): Any place is fine with me. ME: How about Mac's on Boston? MA: No. ME: DiCristina's? MA: No. ME: Zea? MA: No. . . . ad infinitum. How is it possible that two people who claim that any place chosen by the other would be fine for dinner reject every option on the table? That's what usually happens. But today, this shocking opinion arises in the first iteration: ME: How about the Steak Knife, since we're both on the South Shore? MA: Okay, that's fine. I was figuring this ping-pong match to go on for most of the show, thereby to give us good material. But this once, she bites for the first lure. And we sit there wondering what to do next. The radio show plods along until its finish. We indeed go to the Steak Knife. The place is quite busy. I stand there waiting for Mary Ann to arrive so we can be seated, because the hostess holds to the rule that the entire party needs to be there before seating can occur. Fortunately, Guy Roth--who with his brother Bobby owns the restaurant--sees me and gives me a great table. [Note to those who think (rightly) that it's wrong for a restaurant critic to get this kind of special treatment: other people who are regular customers are equally mollified.] I have crab and corn bisque while MA eats a salad. I have a New York strip, with an interesting semi-sauce: a mixture of hot butter with a kind of broth. It does the job of keeping the steak tender and adds flavor. Love it. MA has a grilled salmon that she enjoys. Purely by coincidence, Peggy Scott Laborde and hubby Errol Laborde show up with a friend of theirs who says that she once fixed me up with a date with one of her friends. She says that both her friend and I failed to connect in any way. I don't remember the date, but she mentions a few set pieces for this drama that tells me it occurred during one of my more obnoxious eras. [Note from real time: twice in the paragraph above, the spell checker in WordPerfect changed Errol and Peggy's married name to "LaBored."] When I left for town hours before, the techs were still working on the cable. It is working when I get back to the Cool Water Ranch. I never was able to get today's edition of the NOMenu Daily on the line, and it wouldn't make sense to send it now. This is the third time this week I failed to get the newsletter out. All at a time when I'm making a big pitch for new subscribers. I am livid.

Steak Knife. Lakeview: 888 Harrison Ave. 504-488-8981.

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Friday, January 27, 2017. Renovations @ Acme Oyster House.

The phone company has the internet and my regular phone service working once again, except for one particular: now the television, which has been fine all along, is not working. I almost never watch television, but Mary Ann does. And so I enter another round of calls to Repair Service. The man I speak with tells me that I have an "open ticket," noting that there are still some disconnections in my internet service, and that a long cable still lies on the ground (and over the gravel driveway from the telephone pole to the house). And they know about the television massacree, as well. I do finally manage to send a newsletter to my subscribers, which is a relief. Mary Ann is once again spending most of her evening at our daughter Mary Leigh's apartment. As for me, I go to dinner at the Acme Oyster House. I am surprised to find that it is in the middle of renovation, but not at an intolerably degree of construction. They've replaced the black ceilings with silver-painted tin ceiling tiles. Looks good. The walls are undergoing similar changes, but make the place look a little stark. I have oysters two ways: a half-dozen raw, and a dozen fried with remoulade sauce fo dipping. Next, a soup of tasso and lima beans. That's pretty good. But I was hoping for the stuffed artichoke potage instead. Today was one of the days that had been circled for the radio station to flip the format and fling me onto my new platform: HD2 radio. We still don't know when we'll begin the much-enhanced audio, but that's typical for matters like this. But there is happy news from our engineer Dominic Mitchum, who says that the new WWL-FM signal--which will carry my show on its HD2 facilities--will be so powerful as to make an impression. Can't come soon enough for me.