Do I want to come to the cheese shop to pick something for Saturday evening's party? The enduring snow and cold make that an easy decision. So does the interior climate -- foggy and listless.
No option like that for the party itself -- a champagne tasting led by our friend Janine, who's a wine distributor's rep and does this sort of thing for a living. People want to see you, Monica says. And if you feel you want to leave after an hour, that's OK.
Parked in a chair next to our hosts' living room fireplace, I find a comfort zone that's good for a bit more than two hours, but I'm nowhere near as sparkling as the wine samples. Back home, first thing I do is call the city desk at The News. They won't be seeing me Sunday night. The party was the test.
Still foggy and listless in the morning, I nevertheless think I can assemble something for a Reporter's Notebook column on Monday, which otherwise probably wouldn't appear. It takes the better part of three hours at the computer, and by t hen I'm falling asleep in my chair.
After a nap and lunch and a second nap, some neglected little personal chores get tackled, including an on-line order of some newly-released CDs (Father John Misty, Steve Earle, Gretchen Peters), since they'll show up at the front door before I'm likely to get over to Record Theatre. Stalled repeatedly at the final step in the check-out process, I decide to try my luck with a living human being. I call Waterloo Records in Austin directly (they're open late) and bingo!
Is the rest of the evening spent watching the Academy Awards? No more so than if I had been at work, which is where I usually spend Oscar Night and the telecast is background noise. Monica tapes it on the DVD so she can skip the commercials and we get to watch another diabolical installment of "House of Cards." For those who know the series, suffice it to say we're now two episodes into the second season. Diabolical, indeed.
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