I don’t have it this morning, sorry. I was going to thrill you with a bag-dragging tale about Shanghai in 1997, but I can’t find the pictures that I had digitized years ago. If I get to it I will bore you with an integrated presentation It was a semi-busy week, a lot of thoughts about old rambling days and great cities and hotels around the world, and particularly Asia, where my thoughts are draw to where my son is assigned these days. I remember those days so vividly, and the days since have blown away like the organ leaves on the maple tree outside the dining room window of the apartment I rent in Arlington. So many things not quite as I expected them to be.

I had a chance to re-hash some of the old days with my pal from Chesapeake, who is in town on official business. We had lunch at Willow- he enjoyed the award-winning double-smoke burger paired with Tracy’s remarkable Tater Tots. I went with the Friday Lunch Counter Special, a small cup of black bean soup and a half Cuban pressed sandwich and a couple glasses of the Happy Hour White, which it wasn’t, per se, being only noon, but the hell with it.

By the time we had solved most of the world’s problems, it was getting on to time for a nap, so I wandered home, passing the entire complement of the Barrett Elementary School strung out in costume, headed for the assisted living facility at Culpeper Gardens. The old folks view the arrival of the kids as second only to election day for excitement.

I felt my motivation for the project I was supposed to be doing ebb. I tried the nap, and managed to get between the worlds briefly until someone knocked on the door. I was a little bleary, and looked out as I opened the door to see a ghostly figure in a white cape, stark white makeup, Elsa Lancaster Bride of Frankenstien shock of white hair and right red lips blood-like on the stark white visage.

I blanched myself, momentary, and recognized it was Ann, who works the concierge desk when Rhonda wants to take a day off. She handed me a container of some sort of meat and rice, and I thanked her, kissing her hand, since I didn’t want to mar her makeup.

She looked truly creepy. Great costume.

She had children to scare somewhere and bade me adieu as I closed the door and kicked myself for not thinking through the whole costume thing. I looked at the clock and realized I had to do something, so I reprised the Mac the Knife soot-suit from last year. I have been growing a mustache in honor of Men’s Health Month as part of a challenge from a pal who wears a fierce van dyke goatee with a wild stash that he grew last year and decided to keep.

The line I have been using is: “I march for breast cancer awareness, grow a mustache to promote prostate cancer awareness, and forget what I do about Alzheimer’s.”

I pulled on the suit over a black shirt and pearl tie, grabbed the black hat a friend keeps here in case she wants to attend the Gold Cup in the Spring, and slung a dagger on the silver-chased black belt and went back to Willow.

In addition to Halloween, it was Buffalo Night, so the usual suspects were all there- Long Hair Mike, Jerry the Barrister, Jon-without, Shy Peter, and a pretty good crowd of civilians. Old Jim was not present. We think he might be in Las Vegas on a mission, and are anxious to see how he is doing. Sabrina and Brett, supported by Sammy and Jasper were working the bar, and it was a lively evening, though it was not going to be a late night, for me, anyway.  with those amazing locally raised, humanely treated, slow-cooked and thinly-sliced steamer rounds of beef piled high on Kate’s fresh-baked Kemmelweck rolls crusted with sea-salt and fennel.

It was a pleasant enough evening. I took off and went home a little after seven, and was in bed by eight-thirty. I dunno what it is these days. I just can’t seem to get motivated, but the sleeping seems good enough. Maybe after the election things will get back to normal, whatever that is.

(Sabrina as Peter Pan. Pleasant evening. Still not motivated. Sabrina is a yoga instructor and remarkably lithe. I am thinking about taking it up).

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
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