Nine Years

They say the human being is 61.8 percent water. Right now, this human being is about 6.18 percent. All that salt I ingested last night moved that decimal point a spot to the left.

Last night was my ninth wedding anniversary. The wife and I celebrated by driving down to our old stomping grounds and having dinner at a superb Italian restaurant we used to visit. Despite its ethnicity, I was not in the mood for Italian food, pasta and tomato sauce. So, for an appetizer I had an egg yolk ravioli in a butter herb sauce and for the main course braised short ribs in a cherry red wine glaze. Washed all down with two glasses of Diet Coke. For dessert, we had dark fudge with various flavored whipped creams, dark fudge so heavy it actually had its own event horizon (bad physics joke). I need to hit the exercise bike after I post this to clear out the arteries.

The wife made friends with the head waiter, an interesting chap named Carlo. Carlo is Italian but was born and raised in England. So not only does he have a pretty good familiarity with both countries, he also lived in Spain for a year. And goes to Paris fairly regularly. Since my wife’s parents go to Italy twice a year, her best friend is interviewing for a job in London, her sister spent six months in Barcelona, and she herself lived in Paris for six weeks as an exchange student, there was plenty to gab about. Carlo seems to know the best, off-the-beaten-path places to eat and visit in just about every country in Europe. Acting the literary agent to Carlo which she does not for me (“I just don’t get science fiction,” she says), my wife proposed he start a book series focusing on just such personalized recommendations for travel and eating. Carlo enthusiastically agreed, saying he’d title it, “Off the Beaten Track.” There’d be “Off the Beaten Track: Italy” and “Off the Beaten Track: France”, etc. We laughed and promised to check amazon.com in a couple of months to purchase his book.

We drove around a bit, seeing the old sights. This was the town we lived in for three years before we bought the house and had the kids. When we had money and lots of free time, in other words. And boy did we put both to good use. After reminiscing, we drove back home late and went to bed late. No matter; the little ones still got up at their usual times. Twice during the night I woke up and each time drained the glass of water next to my bed. I’m still dehydrated, which is probably one of the reasons I’m also so darn tired. The wife went downstairs a while ago to feed the children; I managed to sneak in an hour’s nap.

Lotsa stuff on the agenda today, nothing fun but stuff that’s gotta get done. Hopefully I can sit at the laptop this afternoon and bang out something interesting for tomorrow’s post. I’m a third done with that Cosmic Egg book, and there’s a lot of weird grooviness to be found. Such as: “We adjust not to the reality of a world but to the reality of other thinkers.” Plus, I want to get that review of Tarnsman of Gor down on paper; that’s a hot potato bouncing about in my head. Also, I’ve been fascinated with the number 153 lately (Can anybody guess why? Hmm?) Finally, I’ve been mulling a post tentatively titled The Next Ten Greatest Ideas for Mankind. That’s kinda bold, right? And I don’t only mean using the word “mankind”, either.

Well, stop by tomorrow. Should be something neat.