My weekend started with an 80-minute drive after work Friday evening. I managed to cover nearly 33 miles in that time, getting from Ramsey, NJ to a bar on Amsterdam and W. 83rd St. in NYC. Which is to say, there are certain aspects of living and working in NJ that can be frustrating. Traffic is a major headache, which is why I don’t schedule anything too tightly for NYC on weeknights.
For instance, I was heading in Friday for dinner with friends at a Thai (sorry, “Pan Asian”) restaurant that’s never done me wrong, and I asked them to set it up for 7pm, since that would give me enough time to make it through whatever traffic was en route, as well as some pre-dinner gin to help wash away the week.
I got to meet up with Mark F., a good friend of mine, for that pre-prandial libation. We shot the breeze for an hour or so, discussing the novels of Richard Price (he gave me a copy of Samaritan that evening), the music of Stan Ridgway, Michael Penn and X (the former of which he referred to as “the music equivalent of Raymond Chandler”), and the declining levels of service and professionalism in this world (I dumped my Mahwah Honda story on him). I also gave him his chanukkah present, even though he’s not Jewish. I told him not to open it till sunset on Friday, but we’ll see how that works out.
The easy familiarity of our conversation reminded me of how little I’ve seen of my friends in the past few months. Work has been tiring, but I should’ve been getting out a little more or getting people to come out to our palatial country estate.
I got an even bigger reminder of this at dinner a short time later, when I discovered that one of my closest friends has been engaged since September. She told me that she didn’t want to give me the news in something as impersonal as an e-mail or phone call, so she’d been waiting till we met up in NYC.
For three months.
This is in contrast to what I did after I popped the question back in May 2005, calling friends all over the country as I drove up the FDR on my way back to NJ, then blogging about it. But I’m such a whore, as you know.
Anyway, congrats to Elayne & Tim on their nuptials!
Thank You, dear.