Sunday, April 10, 2011.
Duck Poor Boy.
Mary Ann is hellbent on getting me started on the pile of food she brought home from the French Quarter Festival Friday. I will not be able to avoid this. I asked that she leave the duck poor boy from Jacques-Imo's in a refrigerated place that I could find. (She was predictably furious about the loss of the big wedge of shepherd's pie that fed the fruit flies in the microwave a couple of days ago.)
Mary Leigh came over for a visit, and to ditch her car. I'm glad of that, after the $200 booting she got with it last week. The Marys went to lunch at La Carreta, ML's favorite Mexican place. I thought about joining them, but my presence would put a damper on the girl talk.
The duck poor boy that Jack Leonardi created at Crabby Jack's (the casual arm of Jacques-Imo's) is one of his most brilliant ideas. From a distance, it looks like a roast beef poor boy, made in the debris style: brown meat in chunks, flakes, and strings, with a brown gravy. At the French Quarter Festival, they served it with a spicy, mayo-free cole slaw.
In mid-afternoon, I heated half of one of those six-inch babies in the toaster oven until the French bread crust had that delicate, easily-shattered quality. After eating it, there was nothing for it but to heat and eat the other half. Two days old, yet still very satisfying.
The day was nice up to that point. Then it went down when I started in on my tax return. I listened to the Sirius 60s channel while I did it, to keep my mood up. It almost worked.
While digging through my records I found that we paid AT&T $1133 for our wireless service last March. My first thought was that Jude bought two or three new iPhones. He was the culprit, all right, with $800 of the bill on his phone. But the reason was that he was in Belize shooting a movie. He thought his phone was on an American carrier, and would not cost extra. Wrong! He doesn't even work for that outfit anymore. I told him to try to recover that money anyway. I think it's completely insane to begin with that the wireless bill is routinely over $300. It's little consolation that my phone incurs less than two percent of that.
One more rueful note: this ripoff occurred almost exactly at the same time I was mugged in Belize City, while we were on a cruise. I was taking a walk (alone--what a dummy!) after having a great lunch in the Smokey Mermaid, a fine courtyard restaurant in the Great House Inn. Belize City is a place I will never visit again. Can't afford to!
