Tag Archives: Rita

Ask Me Why

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It’s a dreary gray Friday afternoon. I got out of work around 2:30 this afternoon and rather than walk across midtown enjoying a birthday cigar I took a subway which I rarely do. It was raining but not hard enough to warrant an umbrella since I only had to walk a block or so.

Now I have that ‘I might have napped too long’ feeling despite the fact I didn’t really have a restful nap. Phone calls and phone buzzing kept interrupting. Missed a birthday greeting from Chaz, but earlier I did speak with my sister Annemarie, as well as a voice mail from her and my nephew Earl.

Also heard from Queen Jane Approximately, Constant Connie, Sweet Sarah and Brenda Bubbles, Adorable Adrienne and Lovely Rita and Harpy and Julio and Stine with a picture of that adorable little man, Alexander.

Text messages from assorted nieces and maybe my brother Brian or his son Brian. I just can’t tell. Actually I can tell. I just checked and it was from my brother. My other brother Frank hasn’t called and that means if he doesn’t call later, he will call on the weekend and feel bad about not calling on my birthday.

It’s not a big deal. It would have been years ago. It might have been last year. But this year? Eh, no biggie. Last year Bill gave me a saucepan for a birthday present. I found it an odd present since I’m not much of a cook or a foodie.

I don’t watch the Food Network, or Armenia’s Next Top Chef or Gordon Ramsey or whatever. But since the spot where I get my penne, pesto and chicken in Manhattan, Cafe Fonduta went under I have been lacking pesto in my life.

So having watched the guys prepare the pesto, I think I can do it myself and finally have a reason to break out that sauce pan. It’s still in the box. I figure I can take a teaspoon of pesto, some heavy cream, some olive oil and imitate the guys. Or I can try to look it up online somewhere.

Perhaps there’s a video on YouTube that shows the How To.
Or perhaps you dear reader, would have a recipe to make a nice pesto sauce.

Bill just came home and we’re going to go out for some steaks at Arthur’s steakhouse on Washington Street. Hopefully it will be better than last year, when we went for my birthday after a few other things going wrong earlier in the day.

My churlishness towards the saucepan (embarrassing 365 days later) and the fact that some disgruntled mail room worker wished that I would die since I had decided to smoke a Padron and walk along Park Avenue during my lunch hour.

Birthday wishes also came from some new Facebook friends (Andres et al.) as well as a dear friend, Betti Cola. It’s still raining and my bones are tired after tossing and turning in the late gray afternoon but in a few minutes Bill and I will head over to Arthur’s where hopefully they will have their credit card machines up and running, unlike last year.

Just got back, excellent dinner with Bill. Arthur’s wasn’t too crowded, credit card machine in order and I was caught by surprise with a few waitresses singing Happy Birthday to me with a wonderful slice of chocolate mousse cake with a candle on top. I turned a thousand shades blushing.

A walk around Washington Street followed, me finally enjoying my birthday cigar in the misty evening.

That seems to be it for the day. Loveliness abounds.

Here’s some quite recent snaps as well as something else. Thank you for your good wishes

and here I thought I wasn’t going to write tonight!

I Will

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Writing a little later than usual tonight. Actually went out and did something after work which didn’t involve just going home. No, tonight I had plans to meet Rita for dinner. Apparently she’s just like me, go to work. Go home. Repeat five times a week.

So tonight since she’s off from work Sunday and Monday and I was going to be in the city anyway for work, we decided it would be as good a time as any to meet up for a supper.

But of course, me being me, there’s usually something in the way.

Last night was very quiet. Bill in Stuyvesant Town looking after his mother, me at home watching Where Angels Go Trouble Follows (WAGTF), and I really appreciate all the comments regarding the first movies you all saw for the first time in a theater.

I had no idea that there were so many readers closed off from society when growing up. I mean it was really sad. I don’t know what was sadder, me expecting some responses, (a single response would have been nice not counting Betty who couldn’t figure out how to post after reading the Laughter Yoga link I provided) or no responses at all.

I’m basically a slave to this blog now. It consumes my life, everything I see and experience throughout the day I consider it for this blog. Things were going well, I had comments from four people generally. Not consistently mind you, but feedback means that someone has been reading this. It crushes me when there are no comments at all.

Now that I am coming up on posting 1000 entries, perhaps it’s time I give it up. I’ve proven to myself that I can write at least 500 words a day, but without comments or feedback I feel I am writing to myself, for myself.

I was just hoping for some sort of interaction with the 6 people that sometimes read this. I figured writing about the first movies that people had seen in a theater would be a good way. Boy was I wrong. My sister gets a pass since she’s on vacation without a computer. And because she’s my sister.

Don’t worry, I’m not expecting an avalanche of comments saying ‘ no don’t give it up’, in fact I’m not expecting comments of any sort at all. I will be taking on co-editing another blog soon enough, something that you probably won’t know anything about since I don’t plan on writing about it here.

So anyway, after WAGTF, found myself watching Lawn hors d’oeuvre Criminal Intent which was good but sicked since Bill wasn’t around to watch it with me. Almost got caught up in another episode, but wound up watching a documentary on National Geographic about earthquakes. Very intense.

Then I went to sleep. Woke up at what I thought was 4:00 AM and looked out the window. Was the sun up then? Was I dreaming? It looked foggy and the sun was coming up. I wasn’t sure and went back to sleep.

2 hours later I was awake, it was raining hard out. I shuffled about, wishing I had the day off, but not really since no one is around to share a day off these days. After showering and futzing about, the lights went out in my apartment.

I hoped it was the whole building, or the whole city, but no, it was only my apartment. I didn’t want to have to go to the basement and flick the switch so I did my best with the little sunlight coming in through the windows. After 20 minutes I knew I would have to go downstairs.

Got my shit together with a flashlight and trudged down 5 flights to the cellar and flicked the switch and climbed up 5 flights of steps. Ate my breakfast, finished getting dressed and was soon out the door. Looked in my bag for my umbrella but couldn’t find it so it was up the stairs again and got a back up umbrella.

By that time it mainly stopped raining. I read on the bus, Simon Rich ‘Ant Farm’ on the bus ride in, pretty funny stuff, very short stories. Martha Keavney would like it I think, but who knows what Martha Keavney likes these days? She could be an anthropologist on Mars for all I know.

I read about the New Yorker to do. The cover had Barack Obama dressed as a Muslim and Michelle Obama dressed like Angela Davis. It’s the New Yorker. It’s satirical. They didn’t get it. Obama’s camp upset. McCrazy even weighed in saying it was wrong.

G. Gordon Liddy loved it, saying it was the first time the New Yorker was right about anything. Lot’s of press for the New Yorker including a lot of people who never read it, or heard of it before. Work was busy and that made the day fly by.

I was soon walking across town from Third Avenue to Ninth Avenue, enjoying a Padron and listening to the B-52’s which I had also burned for Rita. Had a good time with Rita at the Film Center Cafe which was showing Marie Antoinette in honor of Bastille Day. The 1940’s version, not the Sofia Coppola version.

After dinner I walked Rita home, sitting outside her building singing a Beatles song. I could have gone up and met her dog Lulu and seen Rita’s boyfriend Jerry, but no, I had to come home and write. I finished the Simon Rich book on the bus ride home.

Happy Bastille Day