Lessons for this weeken

1) Buying lamb kidneys as your "something new" for the week is easily thwarted by the fact that kidneys taste, unsurprisingly, like urine.

2) Shucking clams is fucking hard. I cannot get those fucking things open.

This weekend was nice and quiet, fairly uneventful, and as a result quite lovely. Amazing what not working does for your weekend. Is this what normal life is like? Saturday was a late to rise morning, sometime around 11 or 12, after which K and I made our weekly pilgrimage to the farmer's market. This week's haul, romanesco cauliflower, horseradish root, purple cabbage, bag of apples, bag of apple cider donuts (immediately consumed), bag of littleneck clams (from John the Fisherman, our Long Island fishmonger) and portobello mushrooms (although I do harbor some suspicion about the origin of the Mushroom Man's mushrooms, which look a little too nice, a little too uniform and a little too nice, not to mention the stacks and stacks of cardboard boxes that sit in front of his van.)

So, we came home with our haul and promptly went out to Belcourt with all of K's old friends for wine, wine, lamb burgers, burgers and more wine. Very nice time, very nice place, after which I promptly leapt on Marjorine and booked my way down to Grand Sichuan Hot Pot near Manhattan bridge for a giant feast of scallops, beef, pea shoots, vermicelli, golden tip mushrooms, sticky rice cakes, tofu skin, Tsingtao and more in a half and half chicken broth/ma la hot pot with A.B. We waddled out of Grand Sichuan and rolled our way due north until we hit Houston, at which point I need a coffee to continue, so we went into Think Coffee, where I got one of the best cappucinos I have had in a *very* long time, while she powered through another glass of red. We then wandered a bit until we hit Quartino, a nice little spot on Bleecker, where we talked through three more carafes of wine (white, red and rose) before we rode our way (two people, one bike, much drinking) up to 13th and A to Planet Rose where K and Co. were engaging in karaoke.

After some failed karaoke, we attempted another bar hop to Barona, which failed promptly, and then went home to sleep.

Sunday was an after-noon wake-up, lazed around the house, cooked some duck eggs over bread,some failed urine organs, and proceeded to watch the Office and NFL football for the remainder of the day. I also managed to fix Butterbear's battery casing, recharged the battery, took him for a quick spin up through midtown traffic in the rain, and came back.

The miracle: I made it from 50th street and 2nd avenue, all the way to my house without a single red light - that's a left turn, a right turn and another right turn through at least 50 intersections, without a single stop. Miracle!

Okay. Food time. And more football. I imagine there is not much more to report other than that.

Oh, and I'm currently reading Freedom by Franzen. My review, which I wrote to K a few days ago is basically this:

I can't help but think that Jonathan Franzen is trying too hard. It's not that he employs purple prose and it's not that his imagery is any less objectively interesting than other writers...but it's almost like he is intentionally dwelling on details and intentionally adding shading to descriptions that feel carefully manufactured, almost like thesaurused and intentionally using completely unrelated descriptions to describe whatever is at hand. I think it might actually be worse than the Corrections in this regard. I don't think I felt this way reading that book.

So, it's almost like i roll my eyes at some of the things he writes rather than feel "holy crap, this is how it feels." I think that's the big difference - David Foster Wallace expresses the inexpressable and the universal. Franzen just writes like he is expressing the inexpressable, without actually doing it. I don't feel like the curtains get peeled back on my own life and that I am laid bare on the page. I feel like I'm watching some carefully wrought story line of characters I don't entirely understand. It's pretty and looks a whole lot like other post-modern writing, but it doesn't seize on anything that is importantly human.

That being said, it's good. It's worth reading. It's interesting and I'm going to finish it. I just feel like I see through him, even if I'm aware that he is very skilled and extremely intelligent.