Any evening that starts with a glass, a generous glass, of Rebel Yell bourbon in a small bar room with beautiful paintings of dogs and horses and ends with a recitation of Kipling poetry, at a table in a dark room lit only by candles in gleaming candelabra, shiny silver table decorations (I think they were quail) and a very good glass of port in a crystal port glass is clearly going to be a perfect evening. In between those two things, we eight people spoke mainly of PG Wodehouse.

It is difficult to imagine how the evening could have been improved upon.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 12:44 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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This day has gone from inconvenient to annoying to down right so angry that I just actually told my accountant: "You have disturbed my serenity to such an alarming degree that I actually cannot adequately communicate it to you". Much, much better than telling him to go f**k himself.

To begin, I could not sleep from between 12:30 and 1:30 this morning. I lay on the sofa downstairs and listened to the storm battering the house. It was loud, persistent, and somewhat violent.

I left the house at 4:56 this morning to go to the train station, as is my custom. There was a huge tree branch, like half a tree, down and blocking my driveway. I had to go over the lawn to get out of my house. I should have just gone back to bed.

It was a slow train ride in to Stamford. Once in Stamford, they announced that the train had hit some debris and they had to change equipment. That meant that they had to cancel our train and stick all of us on to the local -- the one that makes every stop between Stamford and Grand Central. Having left the house at 4:56, I arrived in Grand Central at 7:05.

No time to play squash this morning, due to late arrival. My partner picked up another game, you see.

Get a call from the accountant who got call from my wife who got a letter from the IRS asking in that really gentle IRS kind of way, where are your 2006 tax returns? For gentle, read: there could be criminal penalties associated with failure to file returns. As much as I would like to say, kiss my Wesley Snipes ass, you jerks, I resist. I tell my accountant that I am puzzled since I have his letter telling me that my returns (joint returns) were filed electronically. Ah, says he, let me call you back. See, if e-filed, that means that his firm did it.

His partner calls me. Turns out, for reasons he cannot explain, none of our tax returns (we file federal and in two states) were filed for 2006. Their mistake. He is going to re-prepare them and send them over to me for my and my wife's signature so that we can file them by mail. He will, I insisted, include a cover letter on his firm's letterhead taking full responsibility for the mistake.

Sure.

And if this mistake screws up my wife's application for US citizenship? What do I do if that happens?

I am now terribly concerned about what bad and stupid thing is about to happen next.

I have not had lunch yet. I bet I break a tooth when I bite into something and the dentist won't be able to see my until June. If I was a betting man, that's what I would bet will happen.

I am really beyond angry here. Way beyond. As only a guy who hasn't slept well in two days can be.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 01:06 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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I give you, Minnesotans for Global Warming:

I just wish I had thought of this first.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 10:39 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Someone once said that the race may not always go to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet. The same can be said for squash. The match may not always go to the younger by 15 years guy, the thinner and taller guy, the guy with longer arms and longer legs, but that's not a bad way to bet.

Except, of course, for last night. That was when I beat up a 25 year old guy in straight games (3-0) by the scores of 9-4, 10-8, 9-4 and saved my club team from being swept in a 9 match challenge for a pretty silver cup that the other team ended up retaining.

I am still, hours and hours later, pretty damn pleased. And the best part is my knees don't even hurt today. Woo hoo!

Posted by: Random Penseur at 02:02 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Now that my trial has ended, I was actually able to take the entire weekend away from the office. As would be my custom, I threw myself at it.

*Friday night -- martini night and dinner with friends

*Saturday

--take all three kids, who are up waaaay too early, with me to the grocery store to stock up on Super Bowl type food;

--feed the kids breakfast;

--take the Girl Child to her riding lesson and stay to watch. Try not to judge her too much as she whacks the pony on the butt with her crop because heÂ’ll buck if that happens and she thinks that's fun;

--bake a batch of chocolate chip cookies from scratch with some small help from the kids;

--oversee the Girl Child as she prepared, in her own words and her own hand, two cards to go with the two plates of cookies;

--take the cards, the cookies, and the whole family to the firehouse and the police station to thank them all for keeping us safe;

--get a tour of the firehouse and watch the kids be allowed to sit in the driver seat of the biggest of the trucks. The baby (not quite two, yet) went right for the wheel with the left hand and the shifter knob with the right and turned and gave us quite the most self-contented grin I have seen in quite some time;

--get a tour of the police station, including the booking room, the cells, the 911 communications center, and the break room. Get a special introduction to the blood hound and be allowed to play with him in the parking lot.

--explain to the children what "say no to drugs" means on the way home from the police station. The Girl Child saw it on a poster and wanted to know. We told her about how drugs were bad and if people tried to give her any, she should turn them down. She wanted to know from us how she would know, asking, would it say drugs on the side of the thing?

--take the children home to turn them over to the babysitter so we could go off to an adult's only dinner party

--go to a dinner party and have great fun with a whole wide range of people (ranging from investment bankers to music industry types). Get home late.

*Sunday

--Get up early and hit the paddle courts for my first paddle experience since New Year's Day. Realize that a three week break has somehow magically improved my game. Walk off the court feeling like a million bucks, although a confused million bucks, and with an invitation to a Super Bowl party, which I decline with great regret;

--Go home to switch off with the Viking Bride as she headed off to dance class, pulled the baby into the shower with me, then went downstairs to begin the pot of mega-chili (YAY!);

--take the Girl Child to Sunday School and come home to finish the chili preparations while feeding something inappropriate to the boys for lunch and then put them down for their naps;

--pick up the Girl Child, take her home to feed her, and then take her to the aquarium for a birthday party;

--come home, pick up the boys and the Bride, take them to a playground for a half an hour and then take them all to the aquarium to see the sharks while we wait for the birthday party to let out;

--bring everyone home, feed them dinner, and turn on the Super Bowl;

--watch the first half with the children and the second half without;

--offer up my thanks and joy when the Giants take home the trophy.

All in all, it was a pretty packed weekend, wouldn't you say?

Posted by: Random Penseur at 04:09 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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It is most certainly not progress that I sit at my keyboard today, looking out the window at an overcast sky, while the Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans works its way ever closer to the Hurricane fueled culmination of months of exuberant self expression.

I miss New Orleans. I miss the New Orleans I used to know, used to live in, used to love. I sometimes sort of miss the 23 year old kid who lived there in that time. The New Orleans I loved has been washed away by greed, corruption, and incompetence as the flood waters inundated the city in an almost biblical fashion.

But I can cast my mind back just the same and remember how I used to spend Mardi Gras. For many, Mardi Gras is spent in an alcoholic haze, oggling naked women in the French Quarter. That has its charms, to be sure. But I preferred a more Uptown approach to Mardi Gras.

I would float, with friends, from house party to house party. There was always something yummy to eat, happy to drink, and use of a bathroom (always appreciated). The houses were some of the most beautiful in the Garden District and occupied, in some cases, by some of the oldest families in the city. They were also close by to St. Charles Avenue and thus convenient to get to the parade and catch stuff.

So, as I sit here in very un-Mardi Gras New York, with zydeco music playing softly in the background, working on a contract, I taste bourbon and cheese grits and dream of humid air and masked people on floats throwing cheap beads.

That was a heck of a time.

Happy Mardi Gras, y'all!

Posted by: Random Penseur at 12:45 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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