Monday, July 5. Everyone Off, Even Me--Sort Of. Pad Thai At Thai Spice. Now, this is really bad news: tar balls are showing up in Lake Pontchartrain. I would have guess that the lake, connected with the Gulf as it is by a couple of tidal passes, was safe from the BP oil spill. The word is that the tar balls are rolling along the bottom. They sank there after the dispersant used on the billowing oil from the broken well made it heavier than water.
On the other hand (as I look for light at the bottom of the sea), BP is saying that they'll finish drilling into the defective well sooner in August than they thought.
The radio station had to run a baseball game over two of my hours today, and suggested I just take the whole day off. It's the first time I wasn't on the air for a Fourth of July holiday since the show began in 1988, but I see no reason to hold onto that string. Nobody's listening anyway.
For the sake of symmetry, I also took the day off from publishing a newsletter. This slack in my day was nice. At last, it let me catch up with all the miscellaneous projects that have waited for my attention since ML's graduation festival over a month ago. And a little free time, too. I thought about going for a walk on the Tammany Trace, but it wouldn't stop raining long enough for me to do that.
Lunch at Thai Spice. This is one of the two distantly related Thai cafes--both excellent--on the corner of Three Rivers Road and Causeway Boulevard in Covington. I was surprised that they were having a very busy day, with a table of some twenty Asian people having a feast.
I started with the Chinese-style hot and sour soup and a spring roll (those come free with the lunch), and finished with pad Thai (below). I eat Thai food once or twice a month, but even though pad thai is to Thailand what gumbo or red beans are to New Orleans I rarely order it. It seemed the perfect thing today, and was. Too much food, of course, but I ate it all. The check was ten bucks. The price of a new-era hamburger, and incomparably better. No wonder so many American restaurants (Zea is a notable example) are borrowing idea from the Thai cuisine.
Thai Spice. Covington: 1531 US 190. 985-809-6483. Thai.
