Saturday, June 30, 2012.
Normal North-Shore Days.
It's hot. Hot and sunny and dry. It's the weekend before the Fourth of July. The slowing down is palpable. The day is filled with default activities, and not even all of those. No breakfast, for example. Just the run to the dry cleaners--not the grocery store too. No lunch. The sports world could not work up enough energy to budge my peripatetic Saturday WWL radio show, and it aired on its allegedly regular schedule from noon till three.
That the thought crosses my mind to write, "Just a typical Saturday," and end this entry.
But we did go out to dinner, the Marys and me. To N'Tini's, which is sort of a routine North Shore eatery, though we only go there once every two month or so. Mary Leigh had a wedge salad. Mary Ann ordered nothing, and didn't even pick that much from our plates. I had a cup of black bean and shrimp soup, then a beautiful but underripe Caprese salad, then a big soft-shell crab topped with crabmeat. It sat on a pile of not-quite-dirty (dingy? lightly soiled?) rice. That was good.
Dessert: a pretty slice of key lime pie. I wish I had remembered to bring my camera so I had better pictures than these, taken with a telephone. (Think how funny a line that would have been in, say, 1980.)
The name of the restaurant moved me to get the first martini I've had in months. (I'm not teetotaling, just drinking other things.) Smart choice for a name, strange though it is. We were served with the usual good-natured hospitality of our regular waitress Helen. Mary Ann should have given her a Suzie Homemaker book.
I could have gone to the wine dinner at Carmelo tonight. Looked like a good menu with good wines. But the girls aren't interested in such repasts, and I'd rather be with them.
N'Tini's. Mandeville: 2891 US 190. 985-626-5566.
