March 1, 2026 – Keith Robertson

“Mayas!”

The Monday pickleball alarms alerted as usual. The added excitement this time was that we had no water. A major pipe (3 to 4 feet in diameter) on a main thoroughfare near us had blown, causing the street to buckle and taking out water for the majority of Uptown New Orleans. Several schools canceled classes for the day and I decided there was no point in walking to a local coffee shop with my morning newspaper.

We had a productive morning on Tuesday. I drove over to Metarie, Diana did some Target returns and I bought some clothes for the upcoming trip. Then we stopped by the jewelry store to pick up the ring they resized for Diana – she seems quite happy with it this time.

I made a breakfast casserole in the afternoon to try and use up left over eggs and veggies from the fridge. I think it turned out well – I like to add serrano peppers (with the seeds) and extra red pepper flakes to give it a little more heat.

The boil water advisory was finally lifted on Tuesday afternoon – schools were mostly closed Monday and Tuesday.

I loved this article in the Tuesday newspaper. Keith Spera writes as wonderfully as ever about his Mardi Gras day experience:

Mardi Gras Day as a meerkat

It was interesting to hear on the news that the Tuesday Boston Globe was not published for the first time in 153 years due to the blizzard. No thank you!

We did well at trivia in the evening. There is some confusion about whether we were in first or second place. Tom, the quiz master, announced as winners, and I think he may have miss calculated and another team actually won by one point. This was the final question – put these four things in order form oldest to most recent:

We were confident about the Cuban missile crisis and the fall of Saigon, but less sure about Star Trek and the 26th amendment. We decided the 26th amendment was later as it came about after all the Vietnam protests. The good news is that we worked through it as a team and came up with the correct answer.

I drove Diana over to yoga on Wednesday morning and then enjoyed a walk in the park, meeting back up with her afterwards. The group seemed to think it was a very good class – they do appreciate Kathleen as an instructor.

I saw a story on the news about the “firefall” waterfall in Yosemite national park. In February only, sunset lights up this waterfall to wonderful effect:

We met Kenny and Kara at Cafe Degas for Happy Hour. The two hours passed quickly with good banter and great food and drink at an awesome price. The weather was good and so the side “windows” were all rolled up for a patio like dining experience.

Thursday started with pickleball for Diana. That was followed by an afternoon hair appointment. She laughed because Denny had been slotted into the 30 min time when the dye was in her hair.

It was my turn for a haircut on Friday. Discussion in Aidan Gill with Derek, my barber, turned to the silly behaviour of the actor Shia LaBeouf during Mardi Gras. That led to various celebrities in Aidan Gill stories. My favourites involved Andy Garcia (doing an Al Pacino impression for Derek) and Jude Law looking for a chat with Aidan.

Diana met me at Maya’s across from Aidan Gill for lunch. She was a bit delayed as Fred dropped off a book for me to read on our trip and then his truck brakes weren’t working. Poor Fred – trying to do something nice and then had to deal with a big hassle. Here’s how Maya is described on their website:

I had been wanting to try the very well reviewed seafood tostones – fried green plantains topped with shrimp and crab in a wonderful sauce. This was amazing – why has it taken over two years of living within walking distance of this little restaurant to try this dish?

Diana loved her tuna tartare also – very fresh with a great presentation. She got a “crab caprese” to go – the dish is called crab caprichosa and is essentially a caprese salad with crab added.

We enjoyed an after lunch coffee at Piety and Desire, the fancy chocolate shop next to Aidan Gill. Haircut, lunch, and coffee all in a 50 foot radius – perfect. Diana couldn’t resist having a rose and lavender chocolate called La Vie en Rose. These little chocolates are very pretty as well as being delicious treats.

We looked at another house on Saturday afternoon. This one had a lovely interior, good sized pool, and off-street parking. The area around the pool was too small to entertain more than a single person and the house was likely the most expensive on the street – we decided to pass on making an offer. On to the next one.

Kenny and Kara rode their bikes over to our home on Sunday afternoon and we walked down to Pete’s Out in the Cold for a drink and a snack. The Smoke Dat BBQ pop-up was operating on the patio and we enjoyed several filling snacks.

On the walk back home, we passed a lovely little church. A guy was going in and Kenny asked about the denomination of the congregation. He replied that it was a music studio now. A minute or so later Kara commented that she thought that had been Wim Butler of the band Arcade Fire. We looked at an online picture, and all agreed that had been him.

Those very loaded nachos and skinny margaritas from Rum House were a nice treat on the continued walk home.

I watched the recently released “Man on the Run” documentary about Paul McCartney founding Wings after the break up of the Beatles. I would give it a middling rating.

I’m glad we didn’t go to a lot of trouble to see this at the recent Film Festival.

My book this week was “She’s Under Here” by Karen Palmer. Not for everyone, and I’m not sure how it got on my list, but I did find this a good read that makes one think about how lucky our circumstances are compared to many. An online summary:

“She’s Under Here: A Memoir by Karen Palmer is a harrowing and honest account of her escape from a violent marriage, detailing her flight with her two daughters in 1989 to create a new life under false identities to protect them from her dangerous ex-husband. The book explores themes of fear, survival, and the difficult choices women face, examining the lines between victim and perpetrator, and captivity and freedom, all while recounting her “DIY witness protection” story.”

Here are some passages that I highlighted. I enjoyed the premise of “do-it-yourself” witness protection.

“It might have been exciting, starting over, starting fresh, in a place where we were unknown, but this was do-it-yourself witness protection. Hidden under the driver’s seat was a guidebook on how to create new identities, but it couldn’t tell us who we’d be. We stopped in Boulder, Colorado.”

Something about places that were close to my home in Los Gatos. I have a good picture of Mum and me looking at those pastel houses in Capitola.

“We took the girls up into the forested hills east of town, to the Mystery Spot, a purported gravitational anomaly where balls rolled uphill, and where I towered over Vinnie, who was a foot taller than me. We took them to Capitola, a pastel wedge of a burgh a few miles south of Santa Cruz, where the surf was extra gentle. We swam and walked the shore.”

And then something about my current home town:

“The next morning, driving west on I-10, hours of rain matched our somber mood. In Mobile, Alabama, on a whim we detoured to New Orleans. Approaching the French Quarter, while stopped at a light, a street sign changed direction in the wind. This, I thought, was one of those places where you might lose your mind, your way, your heart. Iron lace, jazz heard through open doorways, a voodoo museum. We bought the girls masks and beads and, hiding from the brutal sun, downed beignets at a café. Across the street a priest strolled in front of the cathedral, black cassock swinging. I licked powdered sugar from my fingers, took out my notebook, and jotted down a few words. I imagined the priest was me, but also, of course, not-me. Where had he come from? What was he thinking? What sort of trouble was he in? My pulse quickened—how I longed to be creative. There was room for that now in my life. I made another note, and another. And in this way, All Saints, a novel about three lonely people who cross paths in 1950s New Orleans, was born.”

“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind” – Plato

Huey Smith plays piano on this deep cut by the Pitter Pats. I have it on good authority (Jon Cleary) that it starts with an arpeggiated dominant 7 with a sharp 5.