Diary: Breaking Away From The Routine, But It's The Same.

Sunday, September 24, 02017. Among the most absurd regular routines in which my demi-family gets stuck entirely too often, there is one that involves, in order: 1. My singing at mid-morning Mass in Abita Springs 2. A trip to the supermarket to pick up the items I forgot while I was there yesterday 3. The Marys taking ML's dog Bauer for a swim at the Mandeville lakefront 4. The Marys moving to the Mandeville location of La Caretta, and from there inviting me to join them for lunch there 5. My thinking that they mean the La Caretta in Covington, which is much closer to our house, and my going to the wrong one 6. My final arrival at the right location just as the Marys finish the last remaining scraps of food, my trying to get my lunch order in, and the Marys allowing me to pick up the check That's how it all went down once again today, but with one dash of figurative Tabasco: an intense thunderstorm forcing the Marys to move from their patio table to the indoors, but our staying outside anyway. I think it would be good for my mental health for me to refrain from these Sunday lunches forever and a day. After the Marys disappear, I get to work on my CityBusiness column, this one about New Orleans Food & Spirits. Its three restaurants around the city continue to improve, and as an attractive price structure. Monday, September 25, 2017. It's a poor boy day. Hurray! But first, I have an early-morning exam scheduled with the doctor, and it's finished before the hour is up. Mary Ann tells me that she will have lunch with me today, but that this will be the only dining we will have together this week. I don't know what that's about, and I don't ask. She tells me that she'd like to take this lunch at Pontchartrain Po-Boys, which I think is the best on the North Shore. I get a fried oyster loaf with just butter, pickles, and generous squirts of Tabasco. I eat the entire thing. Mary Ann gets a salad and a side order of red beans and rice. They not only cook a great plate of beans at Pontchartrain, but also white beans and butterbeans and other common colors of legumes. The radio show is reasonably busy. The HD matter is playing about a little better every day. Following that, it's rehearsal time for the NPAS concert coming up in a month. I must practice these songs more than I do. I feel rather amateurish lately. Or could it be my being wedged etween the basses and the first tenors. (I am a second tenor lately. Someday I will figure out the difference between first and second. Making it more interesting is that the first tenor closest to me sings with a light falsetto. So I can follow him but with a slightly different melody.) My favorite part of choral singing is in having something the think about other than work.