Sunday, August 8. No Vacation For Me After All. The Cousins Part. This is the hottest summer since 1998, when Jude and I withstood daily temperatures in the hundreds during two weeks at Boy Scout camps. It was a hundred three, according to my car's thermometer.
I have been corresponding with the producers of the Today Show for the past several days. They want me on the show from New Orleans just before the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. If I understood them correctly, they want to send a crew down this week to shoot some advance stuff.
I have also been going back and forth with Christoph von-Marschall. He's a reporter from Der Tagesspiegel, the major newspaper in Berlin. He is also working on a Katrina-Plus-Five story, and was so intrigued by my book Hungry Town (he found it in a bookstore in Berlin!) that he wants to do a full piece with me about the recovery of the New Orleans culinary scene.
I conferred with Mary Ann about this. If I do these interviews, I will be out of the family vacation this week. We agreed that I couldn't pass up these opportunities, even though the meetings on Wednesday and Thursday would make it ridiculous for me to fly out to L.A. either before or after. Here we go with the airline change fees again!
I ferried Mary Leigh over to the home of Mary Ann's brother Tim and his wife Desiree. Mary Leigh wanted to spend some time with their daughter Hillary, who is about to head off to college in Memphis. These same-age cousins have been the best of friends since they were babies. Their parting of the ways is fraught with the knowledge that they're also embarking on adulthood. They will spend today shopping for furnishings for Hillary's dorm. (Mary Leigh has long since overdone that preparation.)
Desiree, Tim and I sat around drinking coffee and scratching their dog's ears for an hour or so. Desiree goes back to school tomorrow--she teaches second grade--and she was relaxing with the exact same music I'd be listening to if I were at home. Same satellite station, even: Siriusly Sinatra, hosted at midday by Jonathan Schwartz, the great old disk jockey and knowledge bank of the standards.
That music played for me alone at home later. I still had a dozen or so commercials to record before I go on vacation. Even though I won't be going anywhere now, all the guest hosts are set up, and I can use the time off.
I took a break for supper. The great house salad with anchovies, and a Board pizza at Pizza Man of Covington. This was one of our favorite spots to go when the kids were little. Paul "Pizza Man" Schrem and his wife were out celebrating something across the lake. His son was running the show tonight. The pizza was as great as always.
Pizza Man Of Covington. Covington: 1248 Collins Blvd. (US 190). 985-892-9874. Pizza.
