Happy Almost New Year!

So here I am...still in a fairly comprehensive mess, but that's because I haven't cleaned up from Christmas yet. 

This apartment is so great...everybody loves it and is congratulating me for getting out of Chelsea.  You walk into the front door and the kitchen is on your right.  Oh, this glorious kitchen!  It has an icemaker in the refrigerator, a dishwasher tht actually works, and a ton of storage space...and it doesn't get covered in grease and the stove doesn't get unbearably hot when you cook on it.  Plus the floors are level!  (I made some very odd-looking fried eggs in Chelsea because they kept slithering to the edge of the pan because the stove wasn't level.)  Then the living room has a big picture window out to the street and tons of light during the day.

My bedroom has plenty of room, with a good sized closet and another of those picture windows, the bathroom has tons of storage, and right outside the bathroom there's a sort of half walk-in closet and a linen closet.  This is wonderful!

The neighborhood is slightly sketchy, but gentrification is moving toward me at a great rate.  There are housing projects all around, but also lots of luxury apartments...you can tell, because while my corner deli (open all night!) has a lot of cheap beer, they also carry premium brands and black olive tapenade.  The supermarket closest to me is pretty terrible, but perfectly fine for everything except meat...but there's a good one four blocks away which I went to explore today which has everything else I need.  I also have a gourmet store two blocks away and a Duane Reade one block away.  And if I want specialty stuff...you know, an actual butcher and an actual fish store and like that...Essex Market is about nine minutes away by bus.

Transportation is admittedly a bit of a problem on weekends.  The M21 bus, which is the crosstown bus, doesn't run on weekends, and the M9 (that's the one to Essex Market) has a truncated schedule.  However, I can always go over to Avenue D and catch the 14D, which hooks up with all kinds of transport, so that's reasonably OK.

My cable is hooked up, and it's somewhat cheaper (FiOS rather than Time Warner), so I can sit here in perfect peace and watch TV with my trusty ashtray.

I did have a few bad moments when the super (Jimmy...a lovely guy and a friend of friends) came by soon after I'd moved in to tell me someone kept smelling smoke, but he caulked a couple of things, and I use my air purifier, and that's the last I heard of that...and Jimmy kept reassuring me that this is NOT a non-smoking building.

We had a lovely Christmas, even though it nearly killed me.  The week before Christmas I had to do all my shopping in one day (which I do NOT recommend...either the amount of shopping or the timing), and then Sarah, bless her, got all the stuff for the nieces and nephews...but I still had to wrap it all and mail it out Express Mail.  But it all got done.  Then we had our traditional Lobster Fest on Christmas Eve, and our proper Christmas night meal, and our friend Henry brought the tree over on Christmas Eve so we could trim it between lobsters.  Unfortunately, Moon Unit has discovered the tree and thinks it's the best fun ever, so I have to keep an eye on her...she likes to knock the ornaments off and bat them around the floor, which is not particularly good for either the ornaments or the cat.

Meanwhile I put my mother-in-law in a taxi on December 26th to get her back to Penn Station, and then came back and SLEPT for about three hours.  Then I got one full day off before I had to go to my ambulance chasing lawyer pal for Wednesday and Thursday.  Today I went to the good grocery store (I lead such an exciting life).

Tomorrow night I'm either going to my pal Jiggers' place or to the Bistro for New Year's Eve, looking absolutely gorgeous...Sarah bought me these amazing red velvet pants for Christmas which I just love.  I'm going to wear them with a black turtleneck, ropes of pearls and black heels.  Get me...

Oh, and did I mention that there's a post office around the corner and a library across the street?  Talk about convenient...

Now to eat dinner, and I think I'll find something to watch on TV.  Hoo boy...this is GREAT!

Have a wonderful New Year, everybody!

Love, Wendy

YAHOO!

I'm sitting here in front of my very own computer, with my very own ashtray in my very own living room.  Hog heaven!

As you can imagine, what with not being totally unpacked (totally? try mostly) and my mother-in-law arriving Friday and people for dinner Saturday and getting the nieces' and nephews' gifts into priority mail, I'm a complete banana.

Let me get through the holidays, darlings, and I'll give you the full rundown!

Meanwhile, merry and happy whatever you celebrate and I'll give you a full rundown next week.

Love, Wendy (exhaling happily)

Last Night in Chelsea!

Oh, my God.  I have packed ALL the artwork, ALL the books, and borrowed a cat carrier from Sarah.  All I have to do now is the kitchen and bathroom.  And the movers are coming at 9 am tomorrow.  I swear, I flat out refuse to move again...EVER.

Let's hope the cats like catnip...I got a catnip toy to help persuade them into the carrier.  I'm not looking forward to that one.

Look for me in a week, gang...I can't get my cable and computer hooked up until the 15th, damn it.

Moving twice in two years is not to be recommended.

Love, Wendy

What?

I will blog about Thanksgiving, but just at the moment you all absolutely have to read the comment on my previous post about getting my apartment.  It's hilarious!

Love, Wendy

YAHOO!

I got an apartment!  I'm totally amazed, after the hoops they made me jump through.  Do you know that it just cost me a total of $13,999 to rent an apartment whose rent is $2695 per month?

We had two checks for $2695, of course, for rent and security.  Then we had a check for $4851 for the broker's fee.  Then we had a check for $2758 to the insurance company that let me pay them to insure that I would pay my rent.

So yesterday I went over, signed the lease, and I've got my apartment.  Or I thought I did. As soon as I got to Sarah's bar, Joe from my new building called me and told me he had forgotten to tell me to get yet ANOTHER damn check for pet deposit.  To the tune of $1000.

This last one almost killed me.  Pet deposit?  For CATS?  Cats only destroy their owners' things...not apartments.  Dogs will scratch the hell out of doors if they want to go out, but not cats, for God's sake.  What I really wanted to do at this point was go home, empty the cat litter box, and bring him its contents.  "You want pet deposits?  These are pet deposits."

But I am now the proud renter of a one-bedroom apartment in the East Village, with an excellent kitchen (that even has an ice-maker in the icebox)...it's an open kitchen  with a breakfast bar, so I have tons of counter space and storage space...yay!  The bedroom is big, it's got good closet space, and altogether I am thrilled.

We have not mentioned the smoking question.  I'm sure that if I use my nice air purifiers I should be fine.  There's a laundry in this building with a nice garden outside it, and said garden has benches...AND OUTDOOR ASHTRAYS.  This gives me hope.

Oh, and I found out at the lease signing that this place even has a free concierge service, for heaven's sake.  And they'll be perfectly happy to help me get a mover and all kinds of good stuff.  For free!  Wow.

Meanwhile, my turkey is defrosting in cold water in the kitchen sink,and I'm probably going to have way too much food tomorrow because there's only about six of us...and I've finally managed to get all the shopping done without ONCE obsessing about the green beans!  I think that's progress.  Of course, now I'm obsessing about what on EARTH I'm going to do with what's bound to be a mountain of leftovers...

Happy Thanksgiving, all!

Love, Wendy

The Apartment Hunt - Day Three Million Or So

You know, I'm not the best person to go apartment hunting in Manhattan in this day and age.

When I moved back here in 1972 (we lived here at the tail end of the War...you know, the one back there in the 40's), I lived with my aunt in Brooklyn  Heights for a couple of months.  Then she had friends who were looking to sublease their West Village apartment on Jane and Hudson, which I promptly jumped on, followed by getting my own (non-sublet) apartment in the same building.  Not too long after that, one of the original subletters (my pal Charles) moved in on West 11th Street with his new lady Casey, and they discovered that I could get a better apartment in THEIR building, so I moved.  I lived there for years, and then we bought the Charles Street house after my father died and I had some money.

Now, the way I got my three apartments was that I signed my name to the lease and paid them one month's security and the first month's rent.  THAT WAS IT.  That was all I did.  And then we lived in the Charles Street house for 18 years.

I am here to tell you that things have gotten very strange out there in apartment land.  Their requirements are horrendous.  They want you to have 40 times the monthly rent sitting in your bank account.  They do not believe in trust funds...a landlord remarked to my realtor that "Oh, a trust fund.  Well, they come and go."  Um, no, they don't.  That's why they're called TRUST funds.  Mine, for instance, is backed by a very large bank.  It doesn't go much of anywhere.

And then comes the part that utterly fascinates me...the credit rating.  You have to understand that I tend to be a complette innocent about money, and have learned about it through extremely painful trial and error.  My father brought me up to never touch the stuff.  I never had an allowance; any time I wanted something I was told to simply sign Daddy's name.  Which I did.  It never occurred to me to ask how the bills got paid, because it certainly wasn't encouraged.  To this day, Bill the trustee keeps up the same nonsense...I have absolutely no idea how much is in my trust (in excess, at the moment, of $500,000, I know).  I have never been allowed (by Daddy's wishes) to see an accounting or get regular financial statements.

Of course, this ended me up in a hell of a mess when I got credit cards...somehow I missed the point about how you were supposed to PAY the bills.  Somehow in the back of my addled little head was the notion that you signed your name and the bills got paid...well, they always had, right? 

I finally got all the credit cards paid off and haven't had one in years.  These days, I work entirely in cash, and if I can't afford something, I either save up for it or talk myself out of getting it.

Which brings me to the credit rating problem.  It seems that in order to have good credit and be seen as a good risk, you have to be in debt to a credit card company.  I cannot be the only person on earth to whom this makes no sense whatsoever.  I pay my bills (electricity, cable, cell phone) on time, and I have no debt whatsoever.  Wouldn't you think this would qualify you as a prudent member of society?  Nope.  It seems to mark you as a deadbeat. 

So I've just been accepted by something called Insurent, whereby you have to pay them 102% of a month's rent so that they will insure that you pay the rent.  This, when we were perfectly willing to pay them six damn months of rent in advance! 

I am left deeply confused by all of this. 

The bright side is that there is something I've seen and things are moving, but I'm damned if I'm going to mention it until everything is in place.  Everybody cross your fingers at the top of your lungs!

And to all parents of children out there...TEACH YOUR CHILDREN ABOUT MONEY!  You may feel free to use me as a cautionary tale.

Love, Wendy

The Apartment Hunt - Day 1

I have just been shown (by a very nice lady named Joanna), three identical apartments on one floor in one building.  Why on earth I should have looked at all three of them is somewhat beyond me, since they were identical.  They were also all tiny studios...even if I WANTED to swing the cats (which sounds dangerous, since most cats of my acquaintance don't want to be swung), I couldn't.  Not to mention no storage space in the kitchen and no closet space...and they don't want smokers.  And what is the matter with that floor in that building that there are THREE apartments available simultaneously?  Mice? Rats? Dragons?

Onward and upwards...

Love, Wendy

CLEAN!

In case you've been wondering, I have been missing in action because I have been cleaning my house.

This is because, of course, my year of exile in Chelsea is just about over and I am moving, moving, moving, back below 14th Street where I damn well belong.  In an apartment where I can friggin' SMOKE.  The front stoop here is charming, and I have many good friends among the dogs in the neighborhood, many of whom want to sit in my lap.  Well, you know, I'm OUT there all the damn time.  And I'm an easy mark for any friendly dog that wanders by...I love dogs and would have one, except for my wonky hours (you really can't leave a dog alone for a possible eighteen hours...you know, by the time I go out, hit a location bus, and then go out and have a couple of beers at the end of the day).  Not to mention the fact that I distinctly remember the days when we DID have a dog, and despite all promises to the contrary, guess who was out there with the dog at 6 AM in subzero temperatures?  Yeah.  Anyway, Dweezil and Moon Unit (otherwise known as the Insane Cat Posse) keep me busy enough.

So.  The house.  It really is a perfectly nice apartment (now that I can see it), presuming I A. wanted to be in Chelsea to begin with, which I don't, and B. that I could smoke in it.  And Maria, the odd gal from whom I sublet this, actually wanted to know why I didn't want to renew my lease.  She seemed quite shocked when I told her I wanted to smoke indoors.  But it is now painfully clean, which means I really have to find a new place soon before I get a chance to filth it up again...my track record on keeping ANY apartment clean isn't the best.  Although when I get going, I do quite a good job...really, you could eat off the floor, except that you'd have to fight the cats for anything that was down there.

And we still have to have Thanksgiving here...oy.

Tomorrow I am meeting with a nice lady named Joanna who is going to show me apartments.  Watch this space for the hunt details! 

And cross your fingers that I can manage to keep this apartment together long enough for Maria to rent it again and, importantly, NOT to retain my security deposit.

Love, Wendy

Law & Order - The Micro-Shoot

Well, that just wasn't worth putting on all that makeup for.  The makeup was because Russian women, the older ones, wear a TON of it.  Personally I feel that the older you get, the less you should wear...it just settles into those tiny fine lines (oh, all right, crows' feet you could stick an actual crow into, if you must know) and makes you look older.

Anyway, so I caught the location bus out to Brighton Beach at 5:45 am...then we walked back and forth on Brighton Beach Avenue for a while...then we were sent back to holding...and then we were wrapped, at 10:45 in the morning!  Sheesh.  I must say that SAG is a generous employer, though; while we were out walking back and forth, it spat one or two drops of rain.  Would you believe we got wet pay for it?  (Yes, in SAG language, there really is something called wet pay.  You can also get smoke pay, among other things.)  I mean, thank you, SAG, for the extra 7 bucks, but how silly can you get?

Meanwhile, I've been being terribly social...birthday party for my friend Caesar at his place in New Jersey on Saturday (you know I adore the guy if he got me to go to New Jersey without a location bus).  Lots of lovely food and lots of people I hadn't seen forever.

Then last night I went uptown to a rather less amusing engagement...a memorial service for a gal I did a show with some time back.  It was quite a decent memorial, as these things go; lots of wine and good food, and again, a bunch of people I hadn't seen forever.  But nobody (even if we weren't close friends, which we weren't) should die at 58 from hepatitis.  Ghastly.

Tonight I'm off to play with my child at the bar...without makeup and with jeans, for a lovely change.  Well, I certainly wasn't going to a birthday party looking like I was going to the grocery store (red turtleneck, black mini, black tights, red cowboy boots...yay, me), and I would consider it impolite to not dress decently for a memorial (gray pants suit, pale blue turtleneck, short black boots).  So at least tonight I can throw on my dirty old sneaks...long sigh of relief.

I was reading the NYTimes on Sunday (through my hangover...that WAS a good party) and went directly to the vanity publishing ads, as usual.  There hasn't really been anything good in these recently, but Sunday I found one for your delectation. 

"MUSINGS OF ONE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS OF SOLITUDE

In this collection of maxims, aphorisms and just plain thoughts and unanswered questions, Bardas Benetbunk attempts to lend coherence to the thoughts that visited his mind over a great number of years, and the reflections they occasioned."

Hoo boy.  Can we say hubris?  What on earth would make this gentleman think that anybody was in the least interested?  I bet he's bored every single member of his family and everyone else he knows to death with this stuff.  Can't you just see, oh, say, Thanksgiving?  "Oh, God, here comes Bardas again.  Look, if I'm stuck with him for more than 5 minutes, invent an urgent phone call or something, please?"  No wonder he's had a thousand and one nights of solitude.  Admittedly, much can be forgiven a man who's stuck being named Bardas Benetbunk...but not everything.

So, for those of you who are looking for the equivalent of a lump of coal in the Christmas stocking for certain people this year, I give you Bardas Benetbunk.  He'll have plenty of books left after he forces one on each member of his family, I'm sure.

Love, Wendy

Time Got Away From Me Again

Well, I keep meaning to post...doesn't that count for something?

I've been locked into the ambulance-chasing lawyer's office for practically two weeks, which means that the sum total of interesting things that have happened to me is one big fat zero.  Unless, of course, you count the fact that in six days of this guy, I managed not to strangle him...which I consider an enormous achievement, frankly. 

You have no idea.  He's a perfectly nice guy, I have to say, and even (unlike far too many lawyers) actually has a sense of humor.  Most lawyers simply aren't taught these things in law school, you see...evidently moot court and torts class don't have sections devoted to oh, say, Mark Twain (although they ought to).  No, it's his method of working that drives me straight up a wall.

The man has the mind of a butterfly on crack.  He cannot prioritize (I hate that word) his work to save his life.  The result of this is that everything gets half or one qaurter done when he suddenly comes up with another frantic emergency.  Face it, people...everything is NOT an emergency.  A Will in probate is not going to get probated any faster if the letter is written this afternoon instead of this morning.  Or, in fact, tomorrow instead of today.  This guy doesn't do criminal law, so we're not talking about somebody rotting in jail for an extra day.  Anyway, six days of him was WAY too much for flesh and blood to take...which is why I've been avoiding my home computer.

So there.

However, I did get two calls in succession yesterday while I was dozing off over a Stipulation and Final Accounting for Receivership (oh, God help me...I'm talking legalese).  One was from Central Casting, who have suddenly decided they love me again...and I'm doing Law & Order SVU on Monday!  Yay!  And right after that...I mean 15 minutes after I talked to Central Casting...I got a call to do 30 Rock today!  Unfortunately, today's shoot was weather sensitive with a fallback on Monday, and of course I was already booked on Monday.  Damn. 

So today I had a nice long nap, went and got my chin and upper lip waxed (I don't think the elderly billy goat effect is a really good look for me), and am now attempting to talk myself into doing something useful in the house.  That would be organizing the books, of course.  Every single book I own (well, not quite) is on the living room floor because I'm trying to get all the authors together.  It's been like this for weeks now.  The job is intrinsically boring anyway, and then there's the basic problem of runniing across something I haven't read in forever and just saying, well, the hell with it, I'll just read for a while.  I'm managing to organize six books a day before I get sick of the whole thing and curl up with one of them.  At this rate, I'll be moving them off the table for Thanksgiving dinner.

The cats continue to be completely insane...Moon Unit showed me some affection the other day by walking up, looking me in the face, and then nipping me very gently on the eyebrow.  Um, what?

Love, Wendy

Unbelievable...

From today's Weird But True column in the NY Post:

"Lawmakers in Ohio have made it legal for people to carry concealed weapons while visiting bars.

One state senator said there's no need to fear people carrying guns in close proximity to alcohol.

'An undischarged concealed weapon never hurt anybody,' he said."

Does anybody but me see anything hugely, deeply wrong with this whole idea?  Obviously an undischarged weapon never killed anybody, concealed or not, but how many times have we all heard, "I didn't know it was loaded!"  And the notion that you can just waltz into a bar, no matter what your mood, carrying a weapon that no one can see...well, I'm personally not going to be drinking in Ohio any time soon, I can assure you.  Not, you understand, that I have EVER planned to drink in Ohio, but stranger things have happened.  For instance, I actually have had a drink in Ohio...this was roughly a million years ago during my touring children's theatre years, and I haven't the remotest notion exactly where in Ohio I was.  Yeah, well, you do three shows a day and spend the rest of the time in a heavy fog on the Ohio Turnpike...you won't know where you are either.

And someone came up with an equally ridiculous and dangerous idea here in New York just a couple of weeks ago...the notion that you don't need a vision test to renew your driver's license.  Hoo, boy.  Like the streets around here aren't dangerous enough already...although personally I blame that on the kamikaze  bike riders we have.  Luckily someone with a modicum of good sense nipped the no vision test thing right in the bud, which is excellent.

Meanwhile, good old Anonymous (and how IS life in Chicago?) does raise a point about various people not being thrilled with my notion of heaven.  This is probably because I failed to make it clear that this is MY version of heaven.  I am firmly of the belief that if there is a heaven, you get the one you want.  I mean, I know people who would be thrilled to have heaven be one long night at a 1970's disco.  This would cause me to beg for the fires of hell immediately, but there's no accounting for taste (certainly not for that one).  No, everybody deserves their deepest desire in heaven...why not?

Love, Wendy

One More Day

Well, I finished up being dead.  As it happened, I was dead for a total of three days...draw your own conclusions.

The last day of the dead was out in Brooklyn, in the old Williamsburg Bank Building, which is absolutely gorgeous.  All columns and marble floors and this incredible ceiling with blue and gold signs of the Zodiac.

I must say that the scriptwriter on this has what I sincerely hope is a damned odd take on the afterlife.  First of all, I really hope I'm not being transported there via PATH train under New Jersey.  Hell, we didn't even get to see the light at the end of the tunnel...although in this case, it most certainly WOULD have been an oncoming train.  And while Croton Park Point was lovely, there were all those bees...being stung by a bee never figured heavily in my notion of the afterlife either.  And now (if things go according to this script) it turns out that in order to get to the actual afterlife, you have to fill in forms and stand in line.  Doesn't that seem awfully bureaucratic?  And what if your forms aren't right?  Do you have to be alive again?  Personally, I've always pictured Heaven (well, all right...I know I'm presuming here) as a gorgeous very English library, with a roaring fire and big comfortable leather chairs, and bookshelves that are constantly refilled with brand new books by my favorite (dead) authors.  Oh, yeah...and a small kitchen area with a beer filled refrigerator and all my favorite snacks.  Doesn't that sound cozy?

Meanwhile, life has been dull.  Nobody else seems to want me to be in a movie, so I'm going to give Nancy, who is my overworked friend at that nutty law firm, a few days off...Thursday and Friday of next week and the whole following week.  This may be that bourne from which no traveller returns...I'm deeply afraid that seven days of Andrew the lawyer may kill me, because while he's an awfully nice guy, he is the world's most maddening person to work for.  However, it is money coming in, which is always useful.

And just to show you what me and Sarah get up to (we tend to text each other when we get bored), here's a verbatim exchange straight from my telephone.  S is Sarah and W is Wendy...just so you know.

W:  I got a hat.

S:  I...What?

W:  I got a hat.  I told you I wanted one.

S:  Oh. Yeah. But it just seemed totally random.  You could have said "I got the hat I was looking for."  What came out was closer to "wanna ride bikes?"*

W:  Wait until you see it.  I didn't think the purple veil was going to work with the pink roses, but the rhinestone clip really beings it together.

S:  I'm going to barf on your head.

W:  Black felt fedora.  Found it at H&M.  Perfect.

S:  I'll buy it when I see it.

As you can tell, we have a good deal of fun together.  And the asterisk on the "Wanna ride bikes?"  That refers to a silly joke Sarah told me years ago which has sort of become a catch phrase with us.  How many people with ADD does it take to change a light bulb?  And the answer is, Wanna ride bikes?

I will now go and do nothing in particular for a while, then I will go smoke my final cigarette of the day, and then I will climb into bed so the cats can gnaw my toes.  A full, rich life...

Love, Wendy

Nature Red in Tooth and Claw

I have said it before and I'll say it again...I am not a nature person.  Get me away from decent taxicabs and all night delis and I wilt.  Not to mention that I'm convinced that trees are out to get me, and that one of these days butterflies will grow teeth and then THEY'LL get me. 

This said, you can imagine my extreme distrust of going out on Tuesday for Gods Behaving Badly to be recently dead in a park an hour outside New York.

To give the place (Croton Point Park, I believe) its due, it is absolutely lovely.  BUT.

First of all, trying to get something to eat was a production number.  Crafty was a van ride away, for God's sake, and when we got there, there were a lot of perfectly lovely donuts waiting for us, and I was starved.  Unfortunately, the idiots running Crafty were evidently also city types, because instead of putting sturdy plastic covers on the donuts, they had loosely covered them with Saran wrap.  The result was that when we got there, the table was completely covered in a swarm of bees.  We had to fight them off to get any breakfast.  See what I mean about not liking nature?  That never would have happened in a decent deli.

Then we wandered about being dead.  They did have one thing that I thought was utterly marvelous.  We were all given what were supposed to be orientation packets for the afterlife, and true to the movies' insane attention to detail, they had actual orientation schedules and maps of the Underworld in them, which was hilarious.  From what was on the orientation schedule, it was clear that they had taken these things directly from a university orientation booklet, but it was funny anyway.  Things like Managing Your Credit in the Underworld (it's the one thing I thought I wouldn't have to worry about after death), cocktails in the Hades Bar, introductions to the medical clinic (eh?), and my absolute favorite...Safe Bicycle Riding.  Um, we're supposed to be dead ALREADY.  My only thought was that (since this particular item mentioned helmet safety) well, I suppose that even if you're dead, you wouldn't want to spend the afterlife with a misshapen head from a bike accident, now would you?  Not if you're going to have an elegant cocktail in the Hades Bar, anyway.

I'm back on this next Tuesday and maybe next Wednesday, and then I go back to my little law firm on Thursday, so money coming in...yay!

The cats are playing a very loud game of chase and running into things and knocking things over.  Teenagers!

Love, W.

Giggling Hysterically

The world's best story headline from today's Daily News:

"Man in mourning as fire engulfs his prized 'Willie.' "

Well, yes, I should think so.

Love, Wendy

Not To Be Believed

I wouldn't like to say that some people are a bit bad at taking responsibility for their actions, but there is a story in today's New York Post that is just wonderful...in an awful way.

It seems that there is a gentleman in Nanuet, New York who regularly (oh, yeah) patronizes a White Castle which has the sort of tables that one often sees at McDonald's, where the chair part is attached to the table part, and therefore cannnot be moved about.  This gentleman discovered one day that there was no longer enough room for his stomach between the table and the fixed chair.

Now, I don't know about you, but my first thought here would be, "Jeez Louise, I'd better cut back on this crud a little bit."  Is the story about a person who then changed his ways and is now a regular gym goer?

No, don't be silly.  This is America.  He is, naturally, suing for his (according to him) God-given right to keep putting on more weight (he nows weighs 290 pounds, which, by the picture in the paper, is NOT the most flattering look he could have chosen).  Therefore, he wants Wendy's to replace all their furniture with something that will accommodate him.

Please.  God knows I am all for accommodating the handicapped.  Wheelchair accessible, certainly.  Blind person accessible, absolutely.  Service dogs welcome, you better believe it.  And so forth.  But for God's sake.

I do know that there are a few glandular problems which do result in enormous weight gains...years ago I had a friend thus afflicted.  But I ALSO know that the incidence of these diseases is statistically extremely small.  Face it...most people who are fat are just fat and have let themselves get that way.  I am damned if I would be willing to tear up all a restaurant's furniture to accommodate people who won't quit eating.

Besides which, if they make the tables far enough away from the chairs to accommodate this guy, how the hell am I supposed to reach MY unhealthy burger?  My arms aren't that long.

Love, Wendy

P.S.  I know it's September 11th.  I was downtown that day.  I walked home in the ashes, etc.  Enough.

I'm Not Dead Yet! (Thank You, Monty Python)

Yes, well, these things happen. In this case, what happened was a complete computer failure and my efforts to get it fixed...which swiftly turned into my efforts to pry enough money out of my trustee to get it REPLACED.

After I called Time Warner Cable, who are usually really good about helping me with my occasional tech issues, they told me they couldn't fix it, and I should call Compaq (this being a Compaq laptop). Compaq first of all attempted to sell me a $99 service contract, and then followed that up by telling me that the necessary repairs would be three or four hundred dollars. Somehow I felt that spending nearly five hundred bucks to repair an oldish computer was not the wisest economic decision...so for $750, I am beaming this to you from my nice new Dell laptop, which, for that $750, also includes proper Windows 10 (Word, Excel and Power Point...you never know, I might have to act like a secretary again one day), tech support, and they took everything off my old computer and put it on this one. Not a bad deal at all.

So, let's get everybody filled in on what I've been doing.

The first thing of any interest whatsoever was that I did a shoot that I found deeply creepy on the 8th of August. This is a movie called Imogene with Kristin Wiig, and the shoot took place in the Empire Casino at Yonkers Raceway.

You have to understand that A. the only casinos I've ever set foot in are in Europe, and it was back in the '60s with my father in places like Cannes, where one wore evening gowns and black ties. It was all very glittery and there were croupiers and dealers and roulette tables and whatnot. B. I am NOT a gambler. Well, okay, I'm an actor, which argues a streak of gambling in my soul, but it's gambling on myself (that I'll get cast), not on some horse I've never even met, for heaven's sake. Years ago some friends of mine and I used to go out to the racetrack, and I would take a $20 bill for a ten race card and put $2 on the favorite to show in every race. I invariably came home with my original 20 bucks and maybe a couple extra...as you can see, I'm not a gambler.

So we get to this casino, and I have never seen anything as completely creepy in my life. There were no people in it. I mean, no people that worked there, except for some young girls wandering around with trays of drinks. There were no tables, no dealers...all that was there was two floors of row upon row of computer screens. Even the roulette "tables" were comprised of computer screens, although they had big TV screens where you could see a wheel going around. However, the screens were strange too. Each screen featured a model type girl spinning the wheel, but they had only filmed her doing so once. So the loop plays endlessly until the girl begins to look like an animatronic figure...only, she's not exactly a top model, so she's somewhat less animated than a real robot would have been.

And into this bizarre scene come the gamblers. They are overwhelmingly elderly. Many of them have walkers or wheelchairs. And this seems to be their life. Personally, if I had a choice about how to spend my declining days (and come to think of it, I should probably make said choice, shouldn't I?), it would most CERTAINLY not be in a room full of computer screens. You'll see me hopping on my mobility scooter (which I have every intention of fitting out with a foxtail and a great big OOGA OOGA horn) and heading directly to my neighborhood bar. Personally, I think this seems a WAY healthier choice than staring at a computer screen all alone every day.

There was one thing that amused me...here and there around the sides of these huge computer filled rooms are windows with a big sign across them that says "Redemption." Well, of course they're for turning in your tickets and getting your cash, but I kept having this fantasy of gamblers coming up and throwing themselves in front of the windows and yelling, "I'll never gamble again! Please, Lord, redeem me!" Unfortunately, this didn't happen, but I thought it would be just great.

Then my favorite gals from Chicago came in for their annual trip and we had a nice meal together, and then finally I got to my much awaited first shoot for Gods Behaving Badly, where I'm recently dead.

This was another peculiar shoot, although MUCH more amusing than watching the almost dead play computer slot machines. We started out in midtown, at 34th Street in the PATH train, and spent a large part of the night (this was an overnight shoot...more money...yay!) going back and forth under New Jersey in our special three car PATH train. The best fun was watching the people who were actually waiting for real trains as we went by. We had to go slowly because of the camera equipment, of course, and the looks on people's faces were great. It's not every day you see a train car filled with people in their pajamas and bathrobes wearing ghastly gray-white makeup...some of them with IV bags hanging from the car rails, some of them heavily bandaged...calmly chugging by as you try to get home to Hoboken. We ended up at Christopher Street, which was also fun. All the assorted weird denizens of the night who hang out there were thrown by us too, as we wandered the block between holding at St. Ronnie's (St. Veronica's) and the PATH station where the food was. I must admit, however, that I was slightly annoyed at the end of the night (i.e., 7 am)...if I hadn't moved, damn it, I would have been exactly two blocks away from my house. Growl.

Then we finally, on August 30, did the promised reading of my one act play at Sarah's bar, which was attended by damn near nobody...because, of course, with no friggin' computer, how was I sipposed to let people know? However, those who were there enjoyed it immensely, and we're going to do it again and film it, so there.

As to the hurricane...meh. The earthquake was more interesting. The hurricane was pretty much a non-event by the time it got to Manhattan, although it did a lot of damage around us. We got a lot of heavy rain and a lot of strong wind on Sunday. I made sure I had beer, cigarettes and cat food, those being the necessities of my life, and hunkered down...and then nothing much happened. I spent a lot of the hurricane standing outside the building smoking under an umbrella. You do have to remember that I'm originally a Chicagoan...my take on wild weather and high wind tends to be a bit casual because I grew up with it.

The earthquake was interesting, though. I was sitting in the kitchen, and I have shelves on my kitchen table (because this apartment doesn't have anything resembling enough cupboard space). All of a sudden the glasses I have there started clinking. I promptly looked under the table, assuming the cats (who continue to be a furry joy, even if they do destroy things and knock things over) were screwing around and banging into the table legs. They weren't, however, so I straightened up in my chair again and just then...the kitchen floor shifted. It took me a minute, but I suddenly realized that it had to be an earthquake (well, I didn't have a hangover and I hadn't been smoking anything more interesting than Marlboros, and I didn't have any new meds from the doctor, so...). I jumped up and went to stand in the kitchen doorway and braced myself there (yes, you really are supposed to do that), but it stopped. The reason for the doorway thing is that if you look at pictures of various bits of destruction, you will see that for some reason, possibly having to do with angles, doorframes seem to stay stable. In my building, which is made of a lot of thick stone, I wasn't particularly worried about collapse, but common sense will tell you that you don't want to be in an elevator, and you don't want to be on the stairs, which can (and do...look at those photos again) pull away from the wall. But it was certainly interesting!

Okay, now that everyone is sound asleep from the length of this missive, I am going to take a shower and go see Sarah at the bar, and I absolutely promise not to disappear for so long again! But it wasn't really my fault...blame Compaq.

Love, Wendy

Oh, Honestly!

There is a piece of building material left over from the World Trade Center collapse which ended up being in the form of a natural cross. It's quite impressive...they set it up amidst the rubble as soon as it was found, and it really did, in those days, convey a sense of hope. (Yes, I was working downtown that day...eight blocks away. It was a very strange day.)

Well, they are now going to move the cross to the Memorial Center, and the atheists have gone completely bonkers on the subject and are trying to get it banned.

You know, I happen to be a believer...not in religion per se, which I consider the most divisive force on earth, but in God. Now it would not occur to me to tell others what to believe, or to tell anyone what not to believe, or anything of that nature...I mean, I feel very strongly that one's beliefs are one's own private property. But this group has gone completely bananas.

In today's NYTimes, they have an article about the fact that the atheists have brought a lawsuit to try and get the cross banned from the Memorial site, and it says, in part:

"...four individual atheists, who are described as having suffered 'dyspepsia, symptoms of depression, headaches, anxiety, and mental pain and anguish from the knowledge that they are made to feel officially excluded from the ranks of citizens who were directly injured by the 9/11 attack.' "

First of all, if they were "directly injured" by the 9/11 attack they'd be dead. Secondly, how dare they deny the comfort that might be derived by Christians (or for that matter, Jews) from this cross? And thirdly, how on earth do these people live in the world? Do they fall down with migraines and indigestion (that being what dyspepsia is) every time they pass a church or a temple? And who said they were excluded? That's an exclusion of their own making, surely. I hardly think the Memorial is going to have a sign announcing No Atheists Allowed.

I mean, really. How damn stupid can you get?

Love, Wendy

Say What, RiteAid?

I have various discount/reward cards for the drugstores I use. Today I went into RiteAid to get cigarettes, some dish soap, and some body lotion, and when I looked at my receipt, I saw that they had indeed discounted a couple of items...the two packs of cigarettes.

This is fine, except that the discount/reward card is called "Wellness +". Ummm...what?

Love, Wendy

More Work!

Just got cast for three days' work in something called Gods Behaving Badly. I am going to be playing "one of the recently dead group." Yes, really. I can only hope that casting agencies make a habit of saying "The director loved your look!" You know, the way people reflexively say, have a nice day? Because if they cast me as dead, and the director loved my look, I am in SERIOUS need of new headshots. I mean, face it, doesn't that seem just a tad bit tactless? You're hired to be recently dead because the director loved your look? Good God, what can I possibly look like?

Meanwhile, I just saw the last Harry Potter with Sarah. It's wonderful, presuming you're as steeped in Potter lore as we are...definitely a fitting end to the series. I must say, we're evidently not quite so serious about it as some people. At one point, there was a girl sobbing so loudly you could hear her all over the theatre. Admittedly, in these nasty little multiplex theatres, that's not terribly difficult.

Oh, for the days of actual movie palaces! The Piccadilly Theatre was ours in Chicago, with marble floors and golden cherubs and red velvet curtains...now that was movie going. That theatre could even ennoble a lousy cowboy movie.

I'm going to eat something and curl up in bed and see if the fur people will join me. I've been filling Sarah's bed up with her boxes of stuff, and Moon Unit at least has taken to dozing on my bed, which is just the way it should be.

Love, Wendy

Busy...And HOT

This weather is disgusting. It's in the high 90's every day, and Friday it's going to be 100! I can't wait...I can't wait to go on an Alaskan cruise, that is. However, after a brief period of complete panic caused by my spotty knowledge of electric things, I now have more than adequate air conditioning (it was a matter of hitting the switch in the plug)...in which I intend to stay until this whole thing goes away.

Meanwhile, I've been running around like a chicken with my head cut off. A week ago Sunday (July 10, if for some bizarre reason you're keeping track), I got a background job on something called Finchley Dreams. I cannot imagine why anyone would dream of Finchley, because it's a rather dull London suburb, but then again, I don't title movies. This shoot was a killer. It was a protest scene, and we protested for 15 hours. Yup, you read that right. 15 hours. In 90-something degree weather. Standing. I thought my feet were going to burn right off me. This is going to be a very pretty little paycheck, however! (And if you think my description is vague, it is...we had to sign a confidentiality agreement.)

Then a friend of mine asked me to do some computer transcription. Beware of friends bearing thumb drives. That took up all of Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday...long, long hours. Like 10-12 of them per day. And in the middle of it I had to go to a friend's birthday party, which I managed for about 15 minutes. (But another nice paycheck!)

Thursday I got some rest, ditto Friday, but meanwhile I had to do some housecleaning because of a friend bearing cats! More on this in a minute.

Friday, a little more rest, but not enough...and then Saturday a cousin came in town so Sarah and I had to have dinner with them, which was great fun...but I had gotten a call earlier in the week to go back on Finchley Dreams on Sunday. Luckily it was a late call (like noon...the previous week was 5:30 am), and only 9 hours, but more grueling because there was about three times the humidity. I may just have to burn the outfit I was wearing...I don't think I'll ever get the sweat out of it. You know it's hot when you sweat right through your underwear.

And last night...drum roll, please...DWEEZIL AND MOON UNIT FINALLY ARRIVED!

Yes, I am once again a happy cat mother. And yes, I will get pictures in here if Sarah will show me how. They're not exactly kittens...about 6 months old or so, but they are young, and they're pretty gray tabbies, brother and sister. And even better, they arrived spayed, with all their shots, a little box, litter, feeding bowls and food! Free! A friend had to get rid of them, and here I was in need of cats...

They are currently curled up on Sarah's bed. They now let me pet them and do a lot of ear scritching, but it'll take them some time to actually settle in and start to run the house in proper cat fashion. But I am covered in cat hair and just thrilled!

YAY! I HAVE CATS!

Love, Wendy

A True Meeting of Minds

Well, I had the best damn Thursday, all due to Jane Schott, whose comments you can read here, and don't forget to check out her blog, which you can find under Things I Love on my blog page...Empress of the Eye.

We met for lunch, and I then dragged the poor gal off to meet my kid, and we just had the most fun! Now Texas Beth, when are you coming into New York? And Carolyn, you get in here too, because you would logically be staying with me, and your advent may be the only damn way to get Sarah's crud out of the apartment.

Other than my lovely Thursday afternoon, absolutely nothing has been happening. I am actually doing something about the house, but veeerrrryyyy slowly. Books are getting shelved, floors are getting washed, laundry has been done...and ALL the ironing is done AND the stove is clean. I consider these last two items enormous accomplishments, particularly the stove (I'm still picking Brillo bristles out of my hands).

Now I am going to finally FINISH the damn kitchen...which is a matter of about four square feet of floor to wash and the table to move. And I've been putting it off for days now, so it's really time. AND I've sternly informed myself that I can't go downstairs for another cigarette until it's done. So there.

Love, Wendy

A Couple of Weird Food Things

I was reading a magazine the other day, and there was a product advertised in a jar. Said product was baked brie. Can someone explain to me A. WHY you would put baked brie in a jar, when you make baked brie by putting a chunk of brie in an oven? and B. I think these people should hire a translator, because this jar says Baked Brie. Under that it says Camembert Au Four. Well, au four is right, that meaning in the oven in French, but surely you ought to know whether you're putting brie or camembert in the damn jar?

But I do think I've just come across my all time favorite overblown restaurant description of a dish. This comes from the restaurant's actual menu and I don't feel like going back to it, so you'll just have to be satisfied with the fact that it's a French restaurant here in Chelsea. Which is extremely expensive. They offer the following:

New York State Steak Frites (Organic, Grain Fed), butter maitre d'hotel, french fries. watercress mustard dressing with bearnaise pepper and roquefort sauce. (sic...sic as a dog. Pace Dorothy Parker, whose line that is.) (She's talking about Winnie the Pooh.)

I think someone should do something about this chef. Mellow pills would come to mind immediately, but first I think we should stage an intervention by taking all his/her ingredients away and forcing him/her to make a steak with some salt and pepper on it. Maybe. Clearly this boy/girl has major problems. I can't even begin to think about what this conglomeration might taste like. And actually, I don't WANT to.

Um, Jane? What happened?

Love, Wendy

Unexpected Bugs

VERY unexpected. There I was, minding my own business, on Tuesday, June 7, very early in the morning. I had grabbed a cab to get to lower Broadway for a Boardwalk Empire shoot for a 5 am call. The set was absolutely spectacular. There's a tiny alley/street that runs behind Broadway at about Walker Street called Cortlandt Alley (of which I had certainly never heard) which had been tricked out to be a tenement block of the 1920's...which was only fitting, because that's what it WAS in the 1920's. There were pushcarts and laundry strung between the buildings...just amazingly great work.

Well, I felt a little nauseated when I got there, but I swallowed a few times and took some deep breaths and it all went away. Then I got dressed and haired and made up, the usual stuff, had my breakfast, and we started the shoot.

After a while it occurred to me that something was very, very wrong. It was a fiendishly hot day, and I had been placed right in front of the door to holding, where the air conditioning was blowing out, which should have been ideal, right? Unfortunately, as the morning wore on, I discovered that the damn air was giving me the chills, which should NOT have been happening.

I lasted until lunch on purpose...they can't very well be expected to stop a shoot for one lousy background actor. I mean, they would have DONE it...but it would have been damned expensive in terms of time and stuff, so I just got through it, and as soon as lunch was called I left.

I then proceeded to spend five solid days flat on my back with the worst case of flu I've ever had in my life. I mean, like running 104. I couldn't even get downstairs to smoke a damn cigarette...for me, that's SICK. Thank God for Sarah, who came in and out delivering necessities like Diet Coke and chicken soup.

I am now completely well again except for a lingering cough, which is getting better. Never again!

So yesterday I went out to shoot something called Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close in Brighton Beach, the deep Russian part of Brooklyn. What a damn screwed up shoot. I picked up the van at Varick and Canal, we got out there around ten, and they didn't use us until about 5 pm, which is in no way unusual. What was HIGHLY unusual was that there was no Crafty. Crafty is Craft Services, and it's the life blood of a shoot. It's your breakfast, it's your lunch, it's the all day snacks all actors count on so they won't have to go home and cook/pay for dinner. So we all had to go get and pay for our own breakfasts, which didn't improve anybody's mood much. The mood had already been pretty much lowered by the news that the agency had given all of us the wrong information when we called in to get our call times...they said wear a layered spring/summer outfit and bring a winter coat, hat, scarf. Turns out we needed two spring outfits. So all of us were dragging around all this damn heavy winter clothing for nothing.

And when we got lunch, it was catered by the Russian restaurant we were using as holding. Unfortunately, with the exception of things like caviar and blini and Beef Stroganoff, Russian food is pretty ghastly. Nine million mayonnaise laden salads and unidentifiable things wrapped in pastry and covered in breadcrumbs...all served cold. Well, at least it was ballast.

So we did the shoot, went back to holding and were wrapped around 6:15 pm or so. We all got signed out and went out front...only to be told that all of a sudden there wasn't any van to get us back to Manhattan. There would probably be a van at 10 pm.

Well, this was completely unacceptable, because the Brighton Beach subway stop is elevated...two flights up (and I wasn't hanging around until 10 pm). There's no way I can do this on a humid summer day hauling a heavy tote bag. (Please do not ask me why the HELL I didn't think of car service, but I didn't.) Luckily, after I stated my problem, the nice guy who was the background wrangler dragged my bag and me to the subway and carried it all the way upstairs for me (jumping the turnstile in the process, bless him), and I got back to West 4th Street which has an elevator.

I sincerely hope that it occurs to somebody that I deserve a pay bump for this, because I sure as hell wouldn't have even submitted for the job if I thought it was going to involve subway stairs.

Growl. On the other hand, even without a bump for transportation, I made a decent chunk of money. So there.

Love, Wendy

Unexpected Pleasures

Well, what a nice week.

There I was on Wednesday, minding my own business, trying to take a nap about 12:30 pm (due to a slight hangover brought about by hanging out with my kid on Tuesday), when a text message popped up, saying Can you be at Steiner (i.e., Steiner Studios in Brooklyn) by 3 pm for Boardwalk? Well, of COURSE I can. I thought it was a costume fitting (I'm in need of a summer costume for this season), but no, it was actual work. Yay!

It was painful actual work. The scene was somebody beating somebody up in a men's room in a below ground speakeasy, and what we were doing was walking back and forth on a catwalk above this bathroom...I presume the intent was to show that this brutal thing was going on and we were all oblivious and just walking around on the sidewalk. The result is that I must let you know which episode my ankles are starring in.

The painful part comes in where they had a metal bar connecting the two sides of the catwalk on one end, into which we all walked at one point or another, except of course my pal Marissa, who's about 4'10" and could walk right under it. Problem was, at various points I was supposed to be talking to her as I walked, so of course since she didn't duck...yup. Clang. In the van coming back to the city, we all decided that we were going to have T-shirts made: I Got Concussed On Boardwalk Empire! And the best thing about it was that in the middle of the day I got an email asking me if I was available for this coming Tuesday for Boardwalk.

Then Thursday my pal Jiggers played a set at the Bistro, so I went there again, and met a bunch of the people from his job at the New York City Ballet (fund raising phone work). Great group.

Friday night I was hanging out at home around 6:15 or so, tastefully attired in my sweats with my hair hanging in my face (always elegant, that's me), when the phone rang and it was Jiggers, saying that he had an extra ticket for the ballet at Lincoln Center that night! You have never seen such a quick transformation scene. Off with the sweats, into the shower, on with the good dress and shoes, comb the hair, slap makeup on the face...and out the door to find myself sipping champagne on the terrace at Lincoln Center by 7:40 pm. We saw Jewels...it was wonderful.

So it was a delightfully unexpected week...may there be more of them!

And I found the absolutely best thing in the New York Post, in their Strange But True column. Seems there was an arrest in Naples, Florida at a children's birthday party, where one woman bit another (what interesting children's parties they must have in Florida). Now I quote:

"The woman initially denied she did it, but she was identified as the biter - because she was the only person at the party with a full set of teeth, according to police."

As you can imagine, this just made my day.

Now I have to do something about this damn apartment. You would not believe the mess I've managed to get it into. (Well, actually, if you've known me for a while, yes, you would.) I decided that I should really get the books in some sort of order so I can find things when I want them, and to that end most of the books are now out of the shelves and all over the place. Then I found some boxes because I threw out my original moving boxes, and I'm still trying to get it together to pack up Sarah's stuff, and of course until I do that I won't have the space on the shelves and in the closet in the other bedroom, and...all of this gives rise to an uncontrollable urge to lie down and read a book. I don't think God ever intended me to keep a house, because I'm really quite lousy at it. Clearly I'm a person who was made to have many servants. Unfortunately, until my staff appears, I'm going to have to do something about this wreck myself, damn it.

And did I mention that there's a pile of ironing to be done, too? And the kitchen to be properly organized? Oy. Ah, well...I'll get to it tomorrow. Right now I'm going to read for a while. Well, gee, it's just about ten past eight. That's nearly nine, which is almost ten, and you wouldn't want me to start cleaning in the middle of the night, would you?

Love, Wendy

Sickened

Let's catch up a bit before I get around to the sick part. The street fair was terrific, as always, even with a few splats of rain, and I got my Italian sausage sandwich...I allow myself two a year. One at the BBC, and the other at Gay Pride Day. This usually fulfills my cholesterol needs for the year (combined with the full Irish breakfast at Fiddlesticks on St. Pat's).

Other than that, I have spent another two days at the law office, coming off as a heroine this time because I saw a roach, knocked it off the file it was on, and stomped the thing to death. Um, have I mentioned that we're not exactly talking about an elegant law firm here?

I spent Memorial Day weekend doing NOTHING. It was hot, I kept dozing off, I kept thinking I ought to be doing something...and I didn't. So there.

Now to the title of the post. Sarah now only works at the Bistro on Tuesdays, so I trotted over to spend some time with her, and they've got a new waiter, who is just adorable. I believe I may have mentioned that there's a waitress there who reminds me of a Golden Retriever; well, this kid is like nothing so much as a baby Saint Bernard whose paws are still too big for him. Adorable.

So I came home, after various lovely chats and bar camaraderie...to be chilled to the bone and sickened on my own front doorstep.

Now, before everyone leaps up in hysteria, let me say that this was because of a conversation. I got out of my taxi and there was a young man with a bunch of luggage in front of the building who clearly belonged to somebody in my building, and, because I was smoking a cigarette, I engaged him in conversation. (You know, me and Jane Austen - the only people left who ever use that particular phrase). I asked the usual questions from an old broad to a young man...where are you going,will it be fun, are you excited...

This kid frightened the pants off me. He was majoring in political science and economics. He didn't give a fuck about either discipline, and when I (taking the cue of politics) began to talk about grass roots politics...and then when I tried the 60s...his eyes glazed over. I said why are you studying this? And he said, "Oh, you can make a lot of money."

If this is the future of politics, would anyone care to join me in building a lovely log cabin in Central Park? Sorry, off the grid in some Godforsaken spot is NOT an option (no taxis = no me)...and we better wire the log cabin for HBO.

I think the worst part about it is that he was black.

Also, I think I need a shower now. That child was deeply slimy.

Love, Wendy

Monsoon Season

Look, could all my readers get together and started collecting pairs of animals? I've got my carpenter friend working on the ark...40 cubits, as specified...and no, I don't know what the hell a cubit is either (note: line only works if you remember Bill Cosby's standup act).

You will now have to excuse me for being quite vulgar, but I am going to paraphrase Samuel L. Jackson: I am tired of these mother fucking drops from this mother fucking sky. It has now rained for four straight days, we get a brief break over the weekend, and it's then going to rain for another nine days. E-FUCKING-NUFF! I have personally mildewed.

Meanwhile, now that I have impolitely vented my spleen about the weather, last week's three day law firm job wasn't that bad. Looking back, I realize that I haven't mentioned this.

I'm not on partial unemployment at the moment, so I was quite startled to get a call from the Department of Labor a couple of weeks ago. Being a cynical New Yorker, my first thought was that they had decided that I shouldn't have been getting unemployment and now wanted me to pay it back. But no...they had a job for me. I really did NOT want to go to an office job, and I CERTAINLY didn't want to go to a law firm, but as it happens, it wasn't at all bad. The reason that the Department of Labor called me is that my name turned up on their database as someone who could use a Dictaphone, which is evidently a dying art.

Anyway, it's the first time in my life I have ever been profoundly grateful for the no smoking in offices rule. You have never seen such a mess in your life...and I know messes. There were thick heavy files stacked on every single available surface to a height of at least a foot in all cases...including on the floor. Horrendous. But the work was very much my sort of thing (hand me the stuff and leave me alone, thank you very much), and the guy I was working for actually wrote a check for me, had me endorse it, ran down to the bank and paid me in cash...and gave me paid lunch hours. So, altogether not bad. Horrendously underpaid, though. Legal work used to be $20 an hour...I was getting $12. But since I wouldn't have been getting anything otherwise...why not.

Then I got a call on Tuesday to go shoot Arbitrage (some financial thriller with Susan Sarandon), which was great, but annoying. I called in on Tuesday night as directed to get my call time, and was told it was 1 pm. Terrific! Actually it didn't matter what time it was, because we were shooting on 28th Street and 11th Avenue, meaning it was about a five minute taxi ride away (I could have walked, but not in the aforementioned monsoon). However, on Wednesday morning they called me at 6:30 am to tell me the new call time was 9 am. Obviously I had no problem with that...five minutes away, right? What I DID have a problem with, however, as did all the other background people, was that they proceeded to leave us sitting in holding until about 5:30 pm. But as usual, breakfast, nice lunch, and the company of a lot of cops and retired cops (a lot of cops moonlight as background people and actors in general), who are generally good company and tell great stories. And the earlier call time and the long wait meant that I not only got fed, but a little overtime as well.

Then I went and met my pal Caesar at Sarah's bar, and then I came home and fell into bed. Today I have done nothing whatsover. I may make another stab at getting Sarah's stuff in order tomorrow, but I haven't decided yet.

And on Saturday the greatest street fair in the world occurs, the Bedford Barrow Commerce/Ye Older Village Faire! Yay! It's also supposedly the Rapture and we'll all going to die. Well, personally, if I'm going to die, doing it with great food, cold beer, good music and a bunch of friends seems to be exactly the right time and place. See you on the Other Side! (Bring beer.)

Love, Wendy

OK, Already - I'm Back

I'm back. And a very happy Cinque de Mayo to one and all. That, by the way, is the sum total extent of my Spanish, except that I am able to say, Sarah has diarrhea. No fruit, no vegetables, only chicken. This came about because we had an au pair named Cecelia from El Salvador when Sarah was still too young for day care, and she spoke no English. I managed to get along with a Spanish phrase book, but to this day I live in fear that I will someday be invited to an elegant gathering at the Spanish Embassy and have absolutely no conversational opening except, Sarah has diarrhea...

It's been an interesting couple of weeks or so. I got an absolutely fabulous invitation from my old pal Marty for April 26th, which I jumped at. There is an organization called Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, which has made tons of money for AIDS research, and twice a year they do these extravaganzas which are basically for the industry. This one was the annual Easter Bonnet Competition, wherein various Broadway shows make Easter hats and do take-offs on shows, and it was just a delight.

They had a takeoff on Glee, they had a monologue from Robin Williams, the casts from Mamma Mia, Billy Elliot, La Cage Aux Folles, Priscilla Queen of the Desert...it was all just marvelous. Sutton Foster was there, and Harvey Fierstein, and Daniel Radcliffe. The Cage Aux Folles gals did a heartbreaker of a number. They all came out in full drag, of course, and sang I Am What I Am very quietly, while they stepped out of the line to speak the names of various cast members who had died of AIDS over the 25 year life of the show. It was deeply moving. I wouldn't have missed it for the world. And of course, this being an industry show, there was every in joke you can possibly imagine. In the Glee number, which opened the show, Artie, the kid in the wheelchair on the show, was played by a guy in a Spiderman costume. Spiderman came in for a LOT of ribbing.

Saturday I went to do my weird job at the Long Island car dealership, which was even stranger than I thought it would be. First of all, nobody in the way of actual customers CAME to the car dealership for quite some time, so there was the decidedly odd spectacle of 15 actors wandering around trying to sell cars to each other, which was deeply strange. Then some people actually showed up, and I did my agreed upon bit of the dotty grandmother buying a car for her grandson who was graduating from high school. You should have heard my masterly dithering. "Well, I promised him if he got on the honor role in his senior year I'd get him a car, but I'm just so concerned about his safety...are you SURE these are nice safe cars?" I'm amazed nobody called the men in the little white coats on me.

And yesterday I got back on Boardwalk Empire! Yay! Not out on the boardwalk, damn it. We were shooting at the Henry Street Settlement on the Lower East Side. Thank God we were indoors, because it was chilly and pouring all day. Are we ever going to have anything resembling a nice warm spring? I looked at Weather.com, and we're STILL not getting out of the 60's and the "possibility of showers." I'm getting violently tired of this.

Anyway, what we were supposed to be doing was watching a Charlie Chaplin film. When you see the scene, remember this...you will see a theatre full of people smoking (1924; we were still allowed) and eating popcorn and thoroughly enjoying the movie. What we were looking at was a white curtain thing with a cross made out of black electrical tape stuck on it for us to focus on, while someone walked back and forth behind it with a piece of black something or other to make the light flicker on our faces as it would had we actually been watching anything. I'm here to tell you that a black electrical tape cross is EXTREMELY dull to look at and react to. For six hours. However, the popcorn was nice and fresh...it shouldn't be a total loss. (You know, eventually I'm going to ruin all your delight in the magic of movies here...sorry.)

And the best news of all? Sarah actually came and picked up a piece of her belongings! I'm so thrilled. She came and got the big old microwave from the old house, which is now hers since this apartment came with one. One can only hope this is a harbinger of things to come...such as the rest of her stuff leaving. But by God, it's a start!

And the wedding. Oh, wow. Glorious. I have seen every one of the Family weddings I could, not to mention Queen Elizabeth's coronation, because I love all that pageantry. Limos are so boring. I want to trot by the adoring populace in my horsedrawn carriage with the palace guard riding beside me.

That dress was so unbelievably beautiful, and so well suited to Kate. Simple, elegant...just absolutely perfect. And of course, the unvarying spectacle of English hats. Good Lord. Fergie's daughters, of course, took the prize, what with Beatrice in that pretzel or music stand or WHATEVER the hell she was wearing on her head. I kept looking at it and thinking, WHY? Why on EARTH would you do that? There was an amusing Facebook thread about the hats which started with someone saying, Where do they get them? The answer is Philip Treacy, who's been making hats for the English nobility for about a hundred years now. But I liked some of the answers that came up...particularly someone who said, Aretha's of Detroit. My response was The Ministry of Silly Hats. I was thinking as I watched the various extravaganzas on peoples' heads, how does it feel to be sitting behind one of those things and trying to see what's going on, or worse, sitting next to one of them and having the explosion of feathers or the cockatoo in full plumage or whatever the hell piece of nonsense tickling your ear through the whole wedding?

The Queen looked lovely. That color is so nice on her. And I hadn't realized that Prince Phillip is going to be 90...good Lord. Camilla looked lovely too, although I wish to hell she'd do something about the Farrah Fawcett Majors hairdo. And Princess Anne looked like a very well bred horse. This is because Princess Anne ALWAYS looks like a very well bred horse. Dressing her up has never, ever, helped. She really is at her best in riding clothes.

Altogether a MOST satisfying occasion, and they really looked in love with each other.

And of course, the other bit of news...no more Osama bin Laden. I do wish I could be happier about this one. The problem is that while I'm thrilled we finally got him, I'm somewhat concerned about possible retaliation. I mean, is it like cutting off a lizard's tail? The lizard thrashes around quite a lot, but eventually it grows a new tail. I wonder what's going to follow bin Laden, because something surely will. Right now I believe his forces are probably in disarray, but I cannot believe he didn't have a picked successor. We shall see.

I would MUCH rather dwell on Kate's wedding dress...wouldn't you?

Love, Wendy

Spring Spheres

The above is what this post was going to be about, sort of, until I just found out the story was a spoof...although it could happen, so I might as well write the post anyway, right?

Supposedly, a school in Seattle banned the term "Easter eggs" and decided they should be called "Spring spheres." I found this disquieting (obviously) but also amusing...would you send your child to a school that was not aware that an egg is an ovoid, not a spheroid?

But I got thinking (somehow) abut the burkha ban in France, and the ubiquitous "Happy Holiday" greeting over here and one thing and another like that.

Has anybody but me noticed that whenever anybody is expected to change the name of their holiday for politically correct reasons, it's always the Christians? As far as I know, Passover remains Passover, as does Hanukkah; Ramadan is Ramadan and the Eid is the Eid...so stated in all newspapers, on TV news, etc., etc. It's seemingly only things like Christmas and Easter that draw people's wrath. This seems terribly odd to me. If we're not allowed to say Christmas, why isn't EVERYTHING just the "Holidays?" And obviously you'd have to say "The Fasting Month."

It's all just so damn silly.

As far the burkha ban in France...well, that's pretty silly too, because unless they aren't reporting it (and I would think they would), this is another one of those things that looks like equality and fairness and is anything but. I mean, if you ban the burkha, wouldn't you also have to ban Orthodox Jewish dress? Frankly, if I had to wear those clothes, I'd sure as hell consider myself an oppressed woman. No, I'm being facetious...what I mean is that Orthodox Jewish women wear their clothing for religious reasons, as do observant Muslim women. I don't see a difference. You cannot be oppressed by a piece of clothing unless you feel yourself to be. If you consider it to be an integral part of your religion, then surely refusing to allow you to wear it is the worst form of oppression? And where do you stop? Are cloistered nuns who still wear the habit going to be deprived of it?

I can, I suppose, understand some people's fear on seeing a heavily veiled Muslim woman, but people...none of the Muslims who have attacked America have been women.

I wonder what they're going to rename Easter...the Rabbit Romp? Eggs for All Day? Chocolate for God? Oh, wait...are we still allowed to say God?

Love, Wendy

Kittens!

My kittens are coming! They won't be here for eight weeks, however, since they were just born yesterday (gee, that sounds like a good title for something...born yesterday).

They are the offspring of my pal Ellie in Vermont...oh, you know I mean her cat, don't be silly. She's got two black, three black and white and two calico, but I'm going to trust her to pick out two affectionate cuddly type kittens once they actually turn into kittens as opposed to furry blobs.

And one of my old temp agencies called me for a job which will run this coming Saturday and the following Saturday! I won't make much money, but it sounds amusing.

This is a one woman temp agency which is known far and wide among actors because the gal who runs it is a flying maniac who gets you to do the damnedest things. She once called me at 6 am to ask me to dress in a carrot suit and prance up and down Madison Avenue...since it was August, I turned her down. Those costumes are hotter than hell. However, I did do a mock election day deal for her where I promoted Pillsbury snack cakes (I think that's what it was) on Park Avenue all day. She also had me be a ladies' room attendant at the Big Apple Circus on New Year's Eve one year (which was enormous fun...I didn't have to clean toilets or anything, just man the door, and I got to see most of the circus for free and they gave us champagne at midnight). You never make a lot of money with Liz, but it's always fun. One time she sent me to the Apollo Theater to fill gift bags for some gala they were having and the people there bought us a barbecue lunch from Sylvia's, which was entirely cool.

This gig is very confusing. I have to be at Penn Station to take a train to Babylon, Long Island at 10:15 on Saturday morning to go and stand around a car lot pretending I'm going to buy a car. I can't imagine what the hell this is about...does the car lot need attention? And if so, why can't they just get banners and some guy to shriek on late night TV, like every other car dealership? I explained to Liz that I'm going to find it extremely difficult to pretend to be buying a car because I don't drive...the only thing I can think of to ask a car salesman is "Does it come with wheels?" This didn't seem to bother her in the least...nobody else is calling me for anything, so why not. Anyway, I don't think I've ever been to Babylon, Long Island, and I like riding on trains...and they're paying transportation.

And Glee is finally back in new episodes tonight! As Sarah tells me, I'm a complete nerd about the show, but I'm excited. I've also been watching the new three episode Upstairs Downstairs which is just terrific. Next up is Game of Thrones...Sarah gave me the books for Christmas and I've been wading through them. Good Lord, it's densely written. Each of the four books requires about a ten page family tree in the back so you can keep everybody straight.

And the best news of all...SARAH'S FINALLY GOING TO PICK UP HER STUFF! She has a friend with an SUV, and I will finally have the closet in her room to myself. Now all I have to do is get Joshua's stuff to storage and this place with be mine, do you hear me? MINE, MINE, MINE! And the kittens', of course. They are to be named Dweezil and Moon Unit, because I always thought those would be great names for cats. I must say, however, that despite their peculiar names, the Zappa kids are doing just fine...they're never in the gossip columns or on the police blotter. Frank did a good job.

KITTENS! YAY!

Love, Wendy

Rats!

Yes, I mean the furry variety. I just submitted myself for an episode of Law and Order: CI where they want me to handle rats. The reasons I did this were A. I'm not afraid of rats and actually consider the nice tame lab variety rather cute, B. if one's husband was a snake fancier and keeper, you get used to having them around (to feed the snakes), and C. I'm pretty sure that handling rats comes under what SAG calls special abilities, which means a bump in one's salary. All in all, a winning situation...let's just see if they call me for it.

Meanwhile, I've actually been getting some work. I spent a damp, cold night in Brooklyn last Friday for Boardwalk which was pretty pointless. They got us out there, dressed us up, made us up and did our hair, and then we sat. And sat. And sat. From 7:30 at night until about 3 am. (We did get dinner...it shouldn't be a total loss.) Then they dragged us off to a different holding area (did you know that I'm becoming an authority on church basements?) until around 4 am, and finally we got to the set...which, it being about 40 degrees and misting in a nasty cold fashion, was outdoors. They put us into position and left us there for about 40 minutes. Then they said, OK, that's a wrap! Otherwise known as, we never got used at all. However, we went into overtime and got night differential...every little bit helps.

Then on Monday I did a day on Men in Black 3. Well, I felt fine about this one...the weather was due to get up to 80...a fine idea if you're tromping about outdoors in summer clothing. Unfortunately, the weather didn't hit that until late afternoon, after the shoot. So there we were, freezing to death in our adorable summer dresses. Growl. But Will Smith grinned at us! Also, I added to my collection of bobby pins...this scene was set in 1969, which meant a beehive for me, of course...it took me ten minutes to get all the damn pins out of my hair when I got home. I'll never have to buy another bobby pin again as long as I live if I keep getting all these period shows.

Meanwhile I'm doing nothing else of any interest whatsoever. I did manage to get my taxes done today, only to discover that there are certain production payroll companies that don't bother to take out state and/or city taxes...the result being that on my resident taxes I owe the IRS $193 and change, which is annoying as hell. However, I'm getting back $500 from federal, so I guess it all works out.

Tomorrow I'm going grocery shopping and then over to Sarah's bar (all right, Carolyn, it's the Greenwich Village Bistro...so there...and yes, I did actually notice that you forgot my birthday, but I won't hold it against you).

And that is the end of the news...Jane, your arrival sounds great! Can't wait.

I'll let you know if I get to play with rats.

Love, Wendy

Relationship Woes

No, not MY relationship woes...no relationship, no woes, obviously. But I must say that standing out on the street with my cigarette does give me a rather disquieting window into everybody ELSE'S relationships.

The reason, of course, is that people continue to believe that if they are talking on a cellphone, they have somehow stepped into an invisible soundproof telephone booth. This is odd, because some of these people are too young to have ever even SEEN a telephone booth (unless they're watching old George Reeve Superman reruns).

Tonight's drama was a girl wailing to what I think must have been a girlfriend that "he couldn't understand what I was talking about, and I wrote him back explaining in a really nice tone, you know, and he just can't see it..." (voice fading out down the street). I have also heard, "Bitch, if you talk to him one more time, I'm gonna slap you all over the bar," from a very gay gentleman (well, I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt as to the gentleman part). And "Well, it's over, is all. I just can't take never knowing where she is, for God's sake."

You can see why I fear for relationships.

The best loud cell phone conversation I ever heard was a lady on the crosstown #8 bus one morning who was describing her previous day's visit to the gynecologist. In detail. At the top of her lungs. You better believe the whole bus was riveted to that conversation.

Meanwhile, I had a perfectly lovely birthday party at Sarah's bar on Thursday...lots of old friends, and Sarah actually didn't even snarl at me about my dress...which was cut to approximately my navel. Well, hell...if you can't have your boobs in view on your birthday, when can you? And along with the legs, the frontage is still damned impressive.

Then I went back to the bar on Friday, for the bar's 12th anniversary...also fun...and off to Soho on Saturday to greet my pal Tracy who's in from Italy for a week or so.

Therefore, I am currently in recovery mode. I spent all day yesterday reading the papers and eating things in a leisurely fashion, and never bothered to get dressed in anything in particular. I am slowly evolving some half clothing for this apartment. You see, in the old place, the deli was right around the corner, about 300 yards away, meaning that I could throw my coat on over my pajamas and just run and get the papers and my obligatory Diet Coke. This new place is half a block from the deli and I have to cross 8th Avenue. Please don't ask me why, but I feel that crossing a major street requires actual clothing. Well, I mean, what if I get hit by a car, and they discover that not only am I not wearing clean underwear, I'm not wearing ANY? (Who wears underwear under their flannel pajamas?) Think about the embarrassment of that. "Hey, Doc! Get a load of this! This must be some crazy street lady!" Yeah...no. So I now have three sets of sweats and sweatshirts to which I can add a pair of underpants (why on earth am I fixated on wearing underpants tonight?) and a pair of socks and some shoes, and I'm good to go to the deli...and as the weather gets warm, the socks are going. Note the lack of bra, which is kind of the point. I'm a 34D with necessary underwires, and at that point, things start feeling WAY too much like actual clothes. For half a block I can leave it off, and then if I decide on a late morning nap, it's MUCH more comfy.

But you do see why I call it half clothing. It hardly resembles actually getting dressed.

So today I did the laundry, and tomorrow I'm going to clean the house, do the ironing, and try to get all of Sarah's stuff into "her" room. The quotes are because, as she says, it's actually the guest room, since she has her own place. To which my reaction is, good. Now get this crud out of my guest room and into your "own place". I need to do a bit of organizing because I have people coming over on Monday to rehearse a play, for one thing, and also because I have to call the building people to come and replace a couple of light bulbs...the living room overhead I can actually live without, but I really need the light in the hall when I come in at night, since I don't like leaving lights on when I'm going to be out for a few hours...why give Con Edison free money?

Oh, the rehearsal? Well, some time back I wrote a rather blasphemous play about an angel coming to earth to find a new Mary (you know, as in starting a new Messiah), and we're actually doing it as a reading in Sarah's bar in a couple of weeks, now that I finally got somebody to play the angel. One of these days I'll post the script here for your delectation. It's a short, funny piece, but there's thought in it. It is, however, nothing the Christian Right would EVER see as moral. Thank God.

Meanwhile two of my friends and their 8 month old child are off to London and Italy and I'm wildly jealous...by God, I'm getting to London this fall by hook or by crook...presuming I can find a willing crook to pay my fare, that is. Third week in September is when you want to be in London...the weather is glorious, the new theatre season is open, and everything in the garden is lovely. Oh, drool...

Love, Wendy

Embarrassing Eating

I am going to HAVE to start having people over to dinner, because the way I'm feeding myself is just awful. No, no, I'm not living on buttered popcorn and fudge, or anything like that, but I'm using just about every convenience product in the whole sidereal universe, which I find embarrassing.

The problem is that I'm sitting in the direct middle of a nest of really good, well-prepared convenience food. I mean, Whole Foods and Trader Joe's are right here. So tonight's meal was curried chicken with basmati rice and naan bread and chutney. Admittedly the boneless chicken thighs came out of my freezer and I cooked them all by myself, and the rice was in the cupboard...but the curry sauce was Trader Joe's and so was the naan bread (a minute and a half in the oven!) and so was the chutney. Not, you understand, that I actually make my own naan bread or chutney, but still, I certainly used to make my own damn curry sauce. And Trader Joe's also has these great shrimp shumai which heat up in the microwave in three minutes, and these wonderful scallops wrapped in bacon that you just throw in the oven for 20 minutes...and I am CERTAINLY capable of making my own scallops and bacon. I used to do it all the time. Yet another cook lost to the siren call of the package. Sad. That's why I have to invite people to dinner...I certainly wouldn't serve guests anything I took out of a package and heated up! (Mainly because I'm a showoff.)

So tomorrow is my birthday party. I'm planning to wear a wonderful black dress I have which involves a Wonderbra because it's VERY low cut. What the hell. If you can't have boobs on your birthday, then when CAN you have them?

Meanwhile, let's all cross our fingers. Sarah is moving on Friday, from one Brooklyn apartment to another, and she and her roommates have gathered a bunch of people and rented a U-Haul. If this truck doesn't make a detour to my house I am going to have fits, because I am missing an entire closet and shelving unit...it being filled with Sarah's stuff, of course. And I NEED that space. So I'm going to be sneaky as hell and beg her roommate Alison (one of the many friends of Sarah's who calls me Mama Booz) to get this done. Asking Sarah invariably makes her snarl at me, so I figure intimidating her friends will work better. Sarah hasn't been intimidated by me in YEARS. When do you quit being a goddess to your children, I wonder? Probably somewhere around puberty...that sounds about right.

Right now I'm debating whether to open up a card table. For some reason I have a terrible yen for a jigsaw puzzle (of which there are several in the house...traditional Christmas gifts), and unless I open the card table there's nowhere to put it. I think I will, because I have to do it at some point to get my taxes done. This is because the IRS no longer sends out forms to you, and while I've printed out my 1040A form, I am DAMNED if I'm going to print out all 200 pages of the stupid instructions. Since I can't seem to get my WiFi hooked up, this means I can't take the computer into the kitchen and use the table in there, and for general use, I keep it on a very small table where I can't work on the form and follow the instructions on the screen because there isn't enough room. My God, that was dull. Sorry.

Anyway, I shall report on my birthday Friday...presuming I bother to get out of bed.

Love, Wendy

Unfortunate Business Names

So I went out to see Sarah at her bar tonight, and on the way I saw a van labeled "Too Sharp Construction."

I don't know exactly what they intended this name to mean, but frankly, it's just wrong. I keep getting two mental images from it. The first one is that a bunch of guys come to my house to build something...bookshelves, say...and the next thing I hear is: "Oh, shit. There goes that nail gun into my leg again." "Damn, that saw's really sharp, and that was my last finger on that hand." "Damn, that hammer hurts." The second one is that they all turn up looking like the cast of Grease, and do nothing all day but comb their pompadours. Either way, it's not a terribly reassuring name. I'd be MUCH more inclined to trust "Carefully Performed Construction."

So I went out and got totally blitzed in Brooklyn on Saturday night. Sarah's friend Gio wanted me at his birthday party, and the birthday party started at Sarah's favorite bar, which is just great. It's in an old coffin factory, and they've named it Pine Box, which I think is brilliant. Face it, nice to know if you kill yourself drinking there, you can get boxed right on up...none of this undignified meat wagon stuff. It was a great night...there's a wonderful picture of me at the actual birthday party at Gio's place telling a story with a bunch of Brooklyn hipsters curled up around my feet. I look like I'm reading them Goodnight Moon.

Speaking of meat wagons, or at least meat, for reasons which I can't even begin to fathom, when I went over to see Sarah at the bar late this afternoon, the TV was playing a story about an 800 pound woman who was having one of those gastric band operations, which they showed (thank GOD I wasn't eating). While I turned my face away from the actual operation, I noticed (before the slicing began) that at least one of the doctors and two of the nurses assisting at this operation were pretty hefty themselves. How odd is that? I mean...

So I am now going to go into self-imposed seclusion (i.e., non-bar going) for two days. I will be 66 on Thursday and we are having the party at Sarah's bar. The next night is the bar's anniversary, which I must attend, and then Saturday is another birthday party in yet another bar for my pal Tracy, who's in from Rome for a couple of weeks. Oy.

And finally, I made something so good last night and so easy that I truly have to pass it along. I am a seasonal eater by nature, to a degree because it tastes better that way and also because it's cheaper. This means that at the moment I am gorging myself on asparagus. So the other day I went to Trader Joe's and picked up a twelve ounce pack of asparagus and one of their containers of chopped prosciutto, and last night I microwaved the asparagus (use the microwave for vegetables, people...it's BRILLIANT) and crisped up the prosciutto in some good olive oil. Then I poured that over the asparagus and added a squeeze of lemon. It was terrific.

And now I'm hungry and should eat dinner.

Love, Wendy