Sunday, September 5. Everybody Hard At Work. Off Day At La Carreta. My eye is on Gaston, a small tropical storm following the path of a parade of storms, the leader of which was Category-Four Earl. Earl is going to New England, but that far north hurricanes move so fast they cause much less harm than they do here. This will make New Englanders will be complacent about the next big one. New Orleanians will never be complacent again about any tropical storm. That's why I'm watching Gaston. It looked impressive coming off the coast of Africa, and it's headed to the Gulf of Mexico. Not much of a storm, really. But I'm watching it.
Mary Leigh spent most of her day with us working on a project for her architecture class. She is to build a model of a space involving cubes. I don't quite understand what this is about, and I'm not sure she does, either. Mary Ann is looking on with concern. Her brother Lee is an architect, and she remembers the way he worked on models like this for days and nights on end.
MA is also worried that ML will cut her perfect fingers with the X-Acto knife. ML told her to leave here alone, that she was irritated enough already without a mom's nagging. I told MA that Mary Leigh has some of my genes. I worked with an X-Acto knife (a razor blade on a stick) every day for twenty-five years, and only gave myself one serious cut. But that made her worry even more.
I used the X-Acto in my early job as a paste-up artist. I did Figaro, the program guide of WWNO, the print version of the New Orleans Menu, and hundreds of ads, books, and newsletters. My skills at paste-up were as good as anybody's. Now that skill is worthless. I am learning a new one. Although I've assembled web editions of the New Orleans Menu for thirteen years now, advances in the technology are forcing me to puzzle out a new method. It's called Joomla. I have been working on it for many weeks, and tomorrow the first edition of Menu using that rubric will appear. I hope. I'm still a beginner at Joomla. I will work all day today and tomorrow and hope for the best.
The Marys got hungry and we went to another of Mary Leigh's favorite places, La Carreta. I like La Carreta too. Most of the time. Today, something was wrong there. None of the food was as good as usual. The grilled steak tacos al carbon were nearly inedible; I got down one of three, and gave up on the dried-out beef. ML, who gets this often, said that it clearly wasn't up to par. About the only really good item was the queso with chorizo (below). Fortunately, I had enough of that to make a decent light meal. Our server seemed to be a beginner, and he left long gaps between courses.
Mary Leigh was concerned that my repast was so deficient. Not because she cares about my enjoyment, but because she swears that after I complained about something at La Carreta a year or so ago, the service staff seemed angry at her and MA. That seemed unlikely to me; this place has always been a well-run restaurant. But let's see what happens this time.
La Carreta. Mandeville: 1200 W. Causeway Approach. 985-624-2990. Mexican.
