Thursday

Today was cold and wet. We hear that this rain is at the fore-edge of another cold front--number twenty--that will hit sometime this weekend. Temperatures are already dropping to the low forties, pretty crisp for around here. Because the roads were mostly under standing water, we ate close: for the last time in our lives, we're sure, we ate just down the hill at Italianni. I have always had a like slash hate relationship with this restaurant. Undeniably, some great times have been spent there: thank-you dinners with the family usually employed to feed our cat while we're away or quick bites before VIP theater movies at the mall. Hell, Sunshine and I decided to get married at Italianni. But there were also stone bizarre times: waiters who refused to speak to us in Spanish--forcing misunderstood unnecessary English on us, generally mediocre food, and a chef who periodically stood on the second-floor dining room balcony to stun everyone with a deafening serenade. All that is behind us now. Everything we do now, we say it's the last time for this or that. I had my last Caesar salad and penne with the chili arbol sauce called arrabiato. My last cappuccino at Italianni was pretty damn good, actually. In the news: Alain Robert, also referred to as the "French Spider Man" for his hobby of climbing famous structures (the Eiffel Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Empire State Building) without ropes or permits, finally made it to México City recently, scaling a thirty-story skyscraper in a scant half-hour.* He was immediately arrested at the summit by police who took the elevator up in a scanter ninety seconds or so. It is almost universally illegal to climb the outsides of famous structures on this planet, Monsieur Spidey. [Cavin]