@tsarstepan,
wearing: black shorts, black tee, sort of drapey blouse seen in a avatar photo at one point (taken by Mame), the same scungy comfy loafers, no socks (time to polish them, the shoes, I mean)
hearing: Led Kaapana's Black Sand (hawaiian slack key guitar)
eating: Nothing. Had nice piece of leftover red trout with o.o, garlic, lemon, oregano, pepper for lunch (Diane and I went to the little market with the good butcher shop, which also means good fish, yesterday). Re money, I have to close my eyes in there, I have a burdensome tendency to love good food products.
drinking: more apollonaris
doing: about to call the mac place. Found out that on my last crash, I lost I Photo (hadn't tried to use it since). Don't want to have to somehow pay to get it back.
looking forward to: opening this week's New Yorker. I've subscribed since the late sixties. It's my last gasp of luxious living. Well, that and the internet.
wanting: serenity for Tsar
What's apollonaris? I fell hard for european mineral waters some years ago, for associative reasons, and then I learned I liked them for the minerals. I never get a foot cramp if I drink either gerolsteiner or apollonaris. Of course, that's only anecdotal. Gerolsteiner and apollonaris are german naturally gaseous waters (at least gerolsteiner is) with lots of minerals, and Pellegrino, which I like less, is italian, in that case having added co2, with some minerals. My least favorite is Perrier, which is slightly more amusing than new mexico tap water (bad) with an aura of faux snottiness on top of it, and, if I remember, close to zilch minerals.
Back the last time I had decent money and took a long trip to italy (1999), I stopped after tromping virtually alone around the old part of Viterbo, for hours, at a hole in the wall place that turned out to be part of the slow food movement... called Il Torre, or something like that. It was the first place I came to that seemed to have anything to do with food. It was my next to last day before catching the plane back to the US outside of Rome. It was probably approaching 2 pm and the place was semi empty, except for the staff and one super romantic middle aged couple a few tables away from me. They were friendly. I must have been a vision, coming down the stairs, what with my now 29 day worn travel smith black pants suit, clearly not italian but an odd american. (Yes, I washed the suit out semi religiously). Camera and notebook.
They brought the menus. I think the first one was the water book. Probably twenty pages of possible waters to order, complete with all minerals charted in a grid. I asked in bad italian for the cameriera (or whatever a waitress is called) to choose, something in the middle range. Then the menu for food. I'm sure I wrote down what I ate in my notes, and that I liked it. Then the wine list. I sprung with credit card in mind for a bottle of barolo, a primo italian wine I'd never tried, surely not the best one, but lower middling. That was a sort of long lunch as I was weary, the previous day being all out hectic; there was no hurry. I wrote in my notes, and the waitress and I talked. I probably had max two small glasses of wine.
The bill, the bill. It wasn't bad. They didn't charge me for the bottle. The waitress and bartender said they'd drink it somehow.
Long live Il Torre, if it is still there, long live Slow Food (I liked the original idea, if not all the manifestations), and I'll probably always like mineral water.
;
eMassage Wi-Fi Back Rub technology hasn't been perfected quite yet.
