The optimists

Dear reader -- are you still with me? It's awfully quiet out there. Everyone is off drinking beer on a patio or burying their noses in good books, as people are wont to do when the temperatures skyrocket to record highs in mid-March. I'd like to tell you that I've been out gallivating on patios myself, taking advantage of these prime weather conditions to work on my alcohol tolerance or to practice my cider-sipping techniques, but instead I've been sitting cozily in my living room, reading and drinking peppermint tea and feeling virtuous by digging the tines of my fork into a piece of salmon and a small mound of French lentil salad mixed with fiery, mustardy vinaigrette.

But don't go accusing me of turning Puritan. There was the six-dollar breakfast -- a sort of urban legend in the land of exorbitant rentals and forty-dollar cheeseburgers -- at a place in Kensington Market near Augusta and Baldwin, where I ate eggs and peameal bacon with two lovely ladies as we sat discussing the dreaded "five year plan", future road trips and things that generally perturb us (of which there were not that many. We are optimists.)

I was carded at the liquor store when I went in to buy a bottle of wine. That's always nice. But I also volunteered for Canada Blooms this past weekend and someone there was under the impression that I was collecting hours for my high school diploma. It is especially nice to know someone thinks you are sixteen when in fact you are twenty-six and a half. Unless that person is a prospective male interest -- never good.

Trust me.

I'm being kept company by a book on emotional intelligence, a book on finding the next Starbucks, one on French seduction, and a volume of food writing by Tamar Adler that is remarkably appropriate for these economically depressed times; that is fine company indeed. Just last week I sipped on very good wine and ate a lovely piece of salmon (of course) with white beans, mushrooms and clams -- and this ridiculously delicious sort of pan sauce -- at a place in Riverside. K. and I chatted about many good things, including her recent meditation trip, and I even tripped on a stool as I walked out.

It is always a superbly good night when somebody trips.

I don't even care that the women sitting there by the door made fun of me.

I saw a documentary on Greta Garbo with some fellow co-workers and friends of mine, and we drank Wolf Blass and talked fashion. We made our way to this very retro bar across from Honest Ed's, where we watched a woman sing Celine Dion in a red bolero. There may have been shots of "liquid cocaine." The woman singing karaoke likely had a little too much liquid cocaine. We drank whisky sours and paged through 90s fashion magazines featuring Chanel and Versace back before Donatella took over.

Just like the weather, I hope these days choose to stick around. I wouldn't mind a few more months of exactly this.