I have been reading this book for the past couple of weeks -- picked it up after I heard the author being interviewed on NPR and found myself captivated by her voice as she read:

First Night

"I first saw Harold across a crowded room, but it was lunchtime, not some enchanted evening, and we did not speak. I was having lunch in the Etoile restaurant in Charlotte Street; my companion pointed to a trio of men lunching opposite us. They were in fact Robert Shaw, Donald Pleasance and Harold; they were discussing Robert’s play, The Man in the Glass Booth, in which Harold would direct Donald. My companion admired Robert Shaw intensely: the handsome red-headed star who was said to do his own stuntwork and embodied machismo. Apparently I said thoughtfully: ‘I’ll take the dark one.’"

Other than that, I'm fine, how are you?

Here's what's new: I find that getting rid of stuff turns me on more than acquiring anything ever has. I feel lighter and lighter with each "release" and somehow smarter as I let go of things. My daughter's best friend is moving into her own apartment -- not going away to college as she has an absentee father and a drug-addicted mother so there's no money for college other than the community type and just enough dysfunction the past ten years to keep her from excelling in school so there is no hope of scholarship money either -- but anyway. I have delighted in passing along to her things that I have been hanging onto for reasons I don't know. So she gets the diaphanous sheer curtains and the set of coffee mugs I never drank from and the set of plates my husband bought for reasons I could never figure out and likewise never used because they were too large to fit in the dishwasher and too heavy to not hurt my wimpy old lady wrists. So they squatted, a glaring pile of green ceramic squares, taking up space on a shelf and annoying me every time I looked at them. Now gone! Yay!

Lately I just want to purge, purge, purge and spend my money on experiences. So I have been packing in a lot of travel lately, business and pleasure, but spending money and going first class, taking in the sights, eating in stupidly expensive places, drinking lots of wine or drinks with fancy names, flirting with my colleagues -- New York for Thanksgiving, then off to the Keys for New Year's, in Seattle last week, to Scottsdale next month, Charlotte a few weeks after that. The kid and I are also planning a trip to Italy this summer to celebrate her high school graduation. I find myself feeling at home in airports, wallowing in the metaphor, inhaling the Cinnabon and judging people by the size of the luggage they consider to be appropriate carry-on baggage.

My favorite airports this month so far: Denver because I so enjoyed all the guys strutting around in cowboy hats as well as the number of people galumping around their gate areas on crutches (ski novices?) and Charlotte because they have fabulous white rocking chairs in which to plop and rock away while waiting for your connection back to steamy, green Tampa.