Monday, February 20, 2017.
I Am Plugged In
For reasons I don't understand, I have become obsessed with arriving at appointments not only on time but early. That is the reverse of my lifelong habit. I was famous for sliding onto the chair in the radio studio just as the producer opening the microphone. I don't do that anymore.
I get an early start around the thick traffic on LA 21, the jam that runs from Old Covington to New Covington. It is complemented lately by construction on the bridge across the Tchefuncte River. To get from the north side of the highway to the sleep clinic on the other side, I must seek and find a passageway around the mud, rocks, and bulldozers. I loop around this complex for a half hour before I could find a way across the mess.
I was there a minute early for my appointment. A lady shows how to don the test equipment. It's a little box with a belt that will cross my chest and measure my breathing tonight as I sleep. Then there is an antenna-like, thin tube that goes a little way up my nostrils. Finally, a space-age thimble measures my pulse and the amount of oxygen in my breath. I wonder if there's a similar gadget that tracks the number of starlight mints I consume in a day. (About five.)
I will wear all this apparatus when I go to sleep tonight. And I do indeed fall right to sleep, belying the warning that I might not with all this stuff taped to my body.
More cheerful activities keep me busy. I have a lot of writing to do today, since all deadlines advance when we have an extra holiday like Mardi Gras. And President's Day.
Before she departed last week for Los Angeles, Mary Ann bought and left for me an assortment of salumi from Aquistapace. I have prosciutto, peppered salami, and a number of cheeses. This is part of MA's campaign to wean me from carbohydrates and replace them with proteins and fats. The vogue in healthful eating has taken an unexpected turn in that direction lately. I wonder what the next lurch in style will be.
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Cobb salad. Notice the bands of the topping ingredients. [/caption]
And does my lunch today fit in? Its'a a Cobb salad at the Fat Spoon. Classic: greens, avocados, blue cheese, hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes, radishes, bacon, and (if you're trying to make this into an entree) grilled chicken or turkey. It was well more than I can finish. I wonder if all the fresh vegetables in the layered glass bowl will offset all the salty, fatty salumi from Mary Ann.
A guy at the adjacent table says he knows me from many years ago. I can't place him, but he knows a surprising lot about me. I plumb his depths out of curiosity. He says that he bought a large spread of property in the Florida Parishes. On it he found an antenna tower about eight hundred feet long. "I say that's how long it it, not how tall. The whole thing is lying flat on the ground." This captures my interest. When I was trying hard to get into radio in my late teens, I took some courses in electrical engineering, specifically as it related to radio.
I ask him whether anything was attached to the structure of the antenna. Nothing, he said. Sounds like an AM antenna. Having spent all forty-two years of my broadcasting life (except for the last two weeks) on AM stations, I wonder what this could be. It's in a part of St. Tammany Parish that is not well populated--not a good choice for a radio station site.
I find out that this man's name is Jake. . . something-covich. He says as he leaves that if I ever wanted to look at his tower I should call him. "Maybe I can back you up in a radio project, if you're sick of driving across the Causeway every day."
Something told me that either I will never encounter this man again, or that he would turn up again and again for many years. I feel a little relieved to realize that I didn't get his business card.
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Rehearsal is going well for NPAS tonight, in what I think is a good program. We're only three weeks away from our performances. I think I can hold my own in the chorus. I feel even better about the duet Carol E. and I have learned. We each muff our share of lines, but the energy of the stage will fix all that. And I never feel better than when I'm singing.
I wrap myself in the breathing experiment and hit the rack at eleven. I will awaken only twice before six: once to let the dogs in, and another two hours later to let the dogs out. I hope I passed the test.
Fat Spoon Cafe. Covington: 2807 N US Highway 190. 985-893-5111.
