Daily Blague

Talk about a piece writing itself! Kathleen was working very late, which is different from just plain late in that she gets a bite to eat at the office and we don't have dinner together and it's usually tomorrow by the time she gets home. Because she thinks she doesn't care for spaghetti alla carbonara, it's one of those dishes that I make for myself. And because I'm making it for myself, under no pressure whatever, I not only consider improvements but remember the ones I've made. Maybe Kathleen would like it now; in any case, I've resolved to serve it as a primo piatto sometime soon. Anyway, I was watching Sneakers, the cool hacker film - has anyone noticed that James Horner, a self-poacher only slightly less voracious than George Frideric Handel, anticipated his celebrated score for A Beautiful Mind by about ten years? - and making the carbonara, and then I was eating the carbonara, and the movie ended, and I felt so good that I just had to write about the carbonara. Hours later... The results of my physical exam were explained to me yesterday, and, contrary to recent anxieties, I am not about to expire. My "good" cholesterol is twenty-nine points higher than normal, which is very good, because you subtract that figure from the bad cholesterol number, and without all that good cholesterol I'd be in big trouble - although I can hear you saying that no cholesterol would probably be best. I restrained myself from sharing with my internist the theory that martinis dissolve cholesterol. They certainly dissolve something.... I did not finish A Peace to End All Peace yesterday, hard as I tried. But I did change the light bulbs in one of the hallway ceiling fixtures. And then I decided that the shopping bag of very old candy, which was in a tote bag with the light bulbs, should really be tossed, and I was about to toss it when I thought that perhaps I'd better have a closer look at what was in it, and while it was indeed mostly candy in there, and old cigars (don't ask), there was also the remote control for a defunct VCR/DVD combo. I definitely think that I should hold onto the remote until I can throw away the player as well. Don't laugh. The porters in this building are brilliant scavengers.... Who writes the weather blurbs for the Times? (If they're online, I'm too lazy to look.) You know, the little announcements in the upper right-hand corner of the front page. Our favorite is "ample sun." Today's: "Today, snow arrives by afternoon." Where? At Penn Station or Grand Central?