Saturday, slept in. Bill went out and got the papers and bagels as I slept, giving me a kiss before he headed to the city for his class. I didn’t get out of bed until around 9:00. Took a shower and made a weekend breakfast, reading the papers and eating a bagel. An easy lazy morning, watched the morning news and checked for email. Not much to report, no financial requests from Nigeria. A beautiful day beckoned outdoors. The phone rang, or rather vibrated and it was El Rey who was climbing the walls upstate and wanted to come down to the city.

Sounded like a good plan. I was in the idle of a lot of laundry. I found a lot of clothes when I cleaned the bedroom last weekend and some of it was clean, but dusty so I washed it. Three loads, clothes and sheets hanging on racks and chairs in the kitchen. Walking around negotiating wet clothes drying off. My sister called and asked if I opened the box. I didn’t dare, not without her go ahead. I opened the box and there was a beautiful card with a quote from Kahlil Gibran, as well as some chocolate chip cookies and brownies and an iTunes gift card.

She hit a home run again. She knew I loved her cookies and brownies and the gift card was a brilliant idea since with all the music I have, she might’ve taken a chance and gotten me a birthday present that I had already. This makes it easier and since the future is in mp3s and not cds I could just download whatever I want and I do have quite a few items in my shopping cart. Items that I had in one format or another at one point only missing them these days. Laurie Anderson, Lene Lovich, versions of Armageddon Time by the Clash. So many choices, what to do?

I went out around noon to run some errands, to the library, dry cleaners and shoemaker. It was a bright and beautiful day and decided to forego my original plan to go for a bike ride and head into the city to hang out with El Rey. I came back home and hung out some more, eventually getting tired of sitting around and figured I’d just walk to the waterfront and sit there and wait for El Rey’s call. I sat and read the New Yorker and listened to Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros.

There was an Italian feast going on and I slipped off the headphones and listened to some tenor sing some popular arias. The phone rang and it was El Rey who sounded frazzled from driving so much and looking for parking that he wasn’t going to hang out, just get whatever he wanted to get and go back upstate. So no hanging out, which freed me up to do nothing really. I went to the supermarket and did some shopping, came home and napped, only to be awoken by a group of Italian musicians playing in the street as part of a procession for the Madonna del Martiri or something like that.