Saturday, January 17, 2009. Geek Work. Thai Spice.
The girls left early, but not as early as they thought, and just late enough to make it impossible for me to go back to sleep. I just got to work. Saturday mornings, I spend most of my time with computer-geek stuff. Today, it was programming my database to kick out web pages with very little intervention on my part. I've used this program (Filemaker Pro) since its DOS years back in 1984. It was on my very first computer, in fact. But I'm still discovering capabilities I didn't know were there. I made a big strike this morning. It can reproduce one of its records as a pdf file in a keystroke. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with that, but it seems promising.
What an exciting life I lead!
I stopped at nine to have breakfast at the Courtyard. Some management guy said there were too few people in the hotel to warrant setting up the whole buffet, so they served a la carte. That's the problem with hotel breakfast cafes, even this very good one. They don't want to advertise it so well that the hotel guests can't be served quickly. But they don't want to give away a ton of food, either. (The hotel staff indulges in the buffet at the end of service.)
When the Whitney Bank took over Parish Bank, it created a surplus of branches on the North Shore. They closed a few of them on Saturdays, including the one I use most. I tried two others before I found one open. That one forced me to drive through the LA 21 construction zone--a real mess. An extra ten miles or so. Well, if these are the worst problems I have. . .
At the second of the closed branches, I ran into Fraser Bartlett, who runs the American Coffee Company. They make French Market and Union, the two best coffee and chicory blends. Fraser said that the merger with William B. Reily Company (which makes CDM and Luzianne) is working out great. He also wants to buy a sponsorship of the radio show. Can do. I've brewed his coffee every morning of my adult life.
Fraser went on to tell me about the farming he and his son perform at his North Shore home. Organic vegetables, flowers for sale, chickens. As if to prove this, he showed me residue in the back of his pickup truck from a load of manure he just moved. I knew he lived over here, but not that he was a gentleman farmer!
When I called the girls, they told me of a plan they'd kept from me. (What else is new?) They would try to drive all the way to Savannah today--eight hundred miles. That's insane, but not the first time my wife has undertaken such a grueling ride. I'm glad they changed their minds about that later.
I had a radio show for two and a half hours starting at noon. It passed quickly. I remained at my desk to finish that computer-geek stuff that was on my mind. I was afraid that if I left it until later, I'd forget what I was doing. It's a good idea to get things done when the concept is glowing. 
I went to dinner at Thai Spice. This is the place opened by Ricky Seubsanh--the most celebrated Thai restaurateur on the North Shore--after he had a falling out with his sister. But Ricky has now moved back across Causeway Boulevard to the original Thai Spice (now called Thai Thai, after a Ricky-less run as Thai Flavor, and yes, this is confusing). His nephew owns Thai Spice now, which has Ricky's name still on the sign, even though Ricky is no longer there.
We now apply the more understandable principle, "If it tastes good, it is good." Even without Ricky, Thai Spice has remained excellent. I started with the tom yum shrimp soup, a clear broth with big shrimp, pineapple, galangal, and no small amount of red pepper. I followed that with Thai red curry with chicken, coconut milk, and lots of vegetables. No flaws in that. Wonderful, light, nicely inflamed, and satisfying. So now we have two excellent Thai restaurants at a single intersection in Covington.
If I watched television, this would have been the night to do so. Instead, I read The New Yorker with Sinatra and his ilk singing in the background. The girls arrived safe in Atlanta, and will spend the day there tomorrow to wait out a nasty line of rain that passed through here last night.
Thai Spice. Covington: 1531 US 190. 985-809-6483. Thai.
