Sloppy

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It got sloppy out last night. We had to watch carefully as one of the regulars navigated across Fairfax Drive on the way out. He was fine once he actually found the crosswalk, though the start of the transit was a little sloppy. Or maybe that was the night before; it was going to be Buffalo Night on Friday, last one of the month, lurching into Labor Day, and you could sense all of the Ballston neighborhood starting to hold its breath.

There was just something sloppy about the whole day. Something ill-fitting, as though the entire period from before breakfast right through exercise and the swim had been thrown together by complete amateurs. I like to think of my days as carefully-crafted gems of harmonious integration.

I once had an actual secretary who printed my schedule for the Pentagon day on a little three-by-five card for easy reference. It was very precise, and I always felt super-organized. Then everyone started retiring on me.

So, I am still getting up at some ungodly hour, and now, having friends at leisure from the Far East to Europe, there are important things on which to comment, and cat videos and all that stuff before the East Coast has stumbled to the kitchen to put on the coffee and fuel the morning rants.

There is plenty to rant about, and I have pals on all sides of the issues. Which leads to writing things that are too intemperate to publish, publicly, at least, and trust me I get them from left and right.

So, by the time all the get-off-my-lawn traffic killed, it is ten o’clock, I am thinking about the second pot of coffee and what the exercise routine is going to be later in the day, and then some politician will say something stupid and the whole address book goes crazy.

By the time I get things tamped down in the afternoon, it is time to try to get some exercise, and then it is Happy Hour at Willow. Rinse and repeat. I have no idea what to do about the exercise piece after the two bonus swim weekends in September are done, and I need to get serious about getting the yoga mat out again.

I was thinking the Chinese might be amenable to sharing the thirty thousand yoga routines that Secretary Clinton gave them off her home email server, but you can’t tell if they want to publish them separately. It is a sloppy process, but you have to do what you have to do, I suppose.

I actually had lunch at Willow- a delicious heirloom tomato salad and a couple impertinent glasses of Sauvignon Blanc with a colleague who was also “working from home.” It was a rollicking time, and really only phase one, since this evening is Buffalo Night, and I then lurched into a drive out to Dulles to pick up Sunny, a pal I first met in 1967. He is on a lay-over on his way to Germany, where he says the people are very tidy.

He won’t find it that way here, and after we had a drink and a dip in the pool we were ready for drinks at Willow, and hand-cut pommes frites, and those fabulous thinly-sliced beef on house made Kemmelweck rolls.

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Apparently they are not the greatest sandwiches in the world, or I was informed by no less an authority than the chef herself, Tracey O’Grady. “They are good,” she said, “but you should have seen the ones we made with the left-over Prime Rib from the Sausage King’s daughter’s wedding reception.”

The gang was out in force, as is usual on the last Friday of the month. Barrister Jerry, Old Jim,Chanteuse Mary, TLB, dapper Jon-without, K2 in casual mode, Brian and ann Marie and more new friends we had not met yet.

I don’t expect I will get lucky enough to see one of those, and will have to be content with the commercial-grade Best Sandwich on earth.

We eventually weaved our sloppy way out of the bar and returned to big Pink, where we set up camp on the patio and solved world problems until well after my usual bed-time.

Off to the farm now, and the cheaper booze I serve here at big Pink, and then maybe weave down to the farm in the morning.

Life is grand these days, even if it is a little sloppier than I am used to. I saw this one fly around an decided I liked it:

I am a Seenager. (Senior teenager)

I have everything that I wanted as a teenager, only 60 years later.

I don’t have to go to school or work.

I get an allowance (pensions).

I have my own pad.

I don’t have a curfew.

I have a driver’s license and my own car.

I have ID that gets me into bars and the Beer Store.

The people I hang around with are not scared of getting pregnant.

And I don’t have acne.

Life is great.

Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com

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