We celebrated Kathleen’s birthday, yesterday (today’s her birthday), with a small brunch. It was very simple — blanquette de veau, with rice and a simplified Caesar salad; two birthday cakes; and three very retro hors d’oeuvres that weren’t really hors d’oeuvres. Wine and champagne — quite a lot of champagne, delivered more or less on the spot, cold, by the liquor store, when I realized that I’d overlooked an important detail: toasting Kathleen upon the news of an honorable and deeply-appreciated appointment. Will, who was on hand, seemed to recognize Kathleen, but you can’t always be sure, because he is a very sociable child.

Between the setting up and the cleaning up, the serving and the toasting, the excitement and the champage, the party exhausted my resources, and all I could think of when I woke up this morning was that there’s probably going to be a doorman strike on Wednesday. If I could, I would leave town for the duration — that’s what I did twenty years ago, during the last one. A strike will entail a week or so of uneasy fluctuation between inconvenience and hardship, and I was in no mood for inconvenience. Not with that headache.

Nor was I in the right frame of mind for reading about the SEC suit against Goldman Sachs. The complaint alleges genuinely stinky behavior, and the firm’s successive statements highlight its moral vacuity. Wall Street seems more than ever to be populated exclusively by sociopaths and morons. Going to the dogs &c.

But enough of this gloominess. Kathleen decided to celebrate her birthday by taking the day off. And my iPad has just arrived. That’s a good as two birthdays.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 19th, 2010 at 3:47 pm and is filed under Monday Scramble. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.