Sunday, June 27. Hamburger Day. The first tropical storm of the season--Alex--is in the Gulf of Mexico, after crossing the Yucatan during the day. The experts say we will have more hurricanes than average this year. My prediction, based on absolutely nothing, is that we will have one big scare but no damaging storms in the New Orleans area.
If I had the time, I would start a website called something like Pollyanna.com. It would specialize in glowing but realistic reports about everything. A lot of people would characterize it as a vehicle for denial. For example, I had that word denial hurled at me quite a lot in 2005 and 2006, when I said that the restaurant community would shortly return to its former state. That prediction proved to be an underestimate. But like the one above about hurricanes, it was fueled by a certain amount of wishful thinking. One gets beat up for that, but not for gloomy thinking, which usually has no more to back it up. I think it would improve people's moods and make us all more productive if there were a source of information that always took the brighter side. But maybe not. Reader's Digest--which does exactly this job--is watching its circulation sink year after year. Maybe we want to be anxious.
The Marys decided that hamburgers and fresh-cut fries would be the perfect thing to satisfy all our meal needs today. I never say no to that. Besides, if I get a lot of work done today, I may finally catch up with my backlog. I am very distressed that a couple of projects I wanted to work on this summer are as yet not begun.
The burgers were great and the fries brought the family together. Who can resist fresh-cut fried potatoes right out of the pot? Mary Leigh created a photographable specimen of her standard burger, which could be called a Hamburger Napoleon. The layers are meat pattie on the bottom, an insane layer of shredded Cheddar on top of that, slightly melted, and thick tomato slices uppermost. No bun, no dressings.
Mary Ann got back to work on disinfecting the house for Jude's impending visit. But she received a reprieve. She thought he was getting in at half-past midnight tonight, but it's really tomorrow night. Must be a time-zone issue.
