Oh Baba, I retailed last week about the shock that made me quit smoking. It is really tough, but if you are strong enough to perform stand-up surely you can fight off the hecklers that are cigarettes!

This is not really relevant but I had a friend-of-a-friend like yours. He had a stellar career as a lawyer and a close network of friends, of whom I became a part. One of the most loving, generous guys I’ve ever known.

Summer is when I go somewhat vegetarian because we have a Viking stove that, if it had been on board the Titanic, could have powered it through to New York, post-iceberg rip on the side and all. It throws off a ton of heat.

We gave up our car a couple of months ago because we hardly ever used it. My husband took a new job where he was no longer reverse-commuting out of Manhattan and the parking garage fees alone were over $500/month.

Envious of the Alaskan cruise. Did you hear about the freakish weather Anchorage has been having? The normal high is about 65. It hit 90 a couple of days ago. It’s going to be in the mid-80s next week. Who knows what it will be like a year from now. Pack both an insulated parka and a swimsuit, I guess.

Diana’s sister in the yellow hat looks like she could be “Camilla’s sister in the yellow hat.” A very particular look. And given that the Spencer family is far more noble and long-rooted in Britain than the gotten-up Saxe-Coburg und Gotha Windsors, it could be that Cam is taking style cues from her. Diana was related…

But genius though! Your now-spouse was maybe thinking, “I didn’t know/remember that Wicker Man was this long, it’s getting a little late, but if goddessoftransitory might let me stay over we could have something to eat shown on her two-piece pjs the next morning...”

The night I met my husband. We met through a mutual friend, a group of us hanging out at some gay bar, and I said to him, “I’m not ready to go home. Do you want to get a drink somewhere else?”

Baba! Wait, Key Largo is a play? I love that movie. Was it a one-off, local adaptation or is it something that might be in some kind of general circulation? I love off-Broadway and community theater and touring company productions.

I’ve always meant to ask you: have you ever read David Grafton’s The Sisters? It’s a group bio about a trio of siblings frm Boston who went on to become Babe Mortimer Paley, Betsy Roosevelt Whitney, and Minne Astor Fosburgh. I have it and should definitely reread it, it’s perfect summer reading.

A little off-topic but sometime around 1995 I read (in the “New York Observer” I think, which used to be the smartest and funniest thing I would ever read; sadly, those days have long passed) a feature about “Would people who work at ‘Vogue’ wear clothes featured in ‘Vogue’?” The answer was no. I still remember one…

I was thinking, “An unexpected death in Mother’s family, necessitating her to leave DC unexpectedly, giving our God-fearing VP with some free time to don his leather mask and anonymously return to his favorite DC kink bar.”

Let’s put this in perspective though. It would cost a lot more than $350 in surgery bills for me to get the stomachs shown in the models featured at top.

I was one of those very naive Internet...visionary isn’t the word, but I had heard about the possibility of it in the 1980s and that libraries were working on networks that would allow access to their collections without having to visit their facilities and hold the original material in your hand.

Good for you! I quit smoking after a 30-year habit/addiction but I did it in a very specific, not helpful or advisable way.

No, he was truthful and straightforward, he went to USC and that’s what he had always told me, but I was too thick to remember it, EVEN THOUGH I WAS VISITING HIM WHEN HE WAS A USC LAW STUDENT, because I only knew of UCLA! And Pepperdine, oddly enough.

I wanted to leave this observation somewhere so I’ve decided to respond to you, lucky you, Baba!

It looks like the hamburger bun was toasted, though, and a toasted hamburger bun is the unsung hero of many a sandwich. Untoasted that would be a little unappealing, but so would an untoasted English muffin. 

Oh I knew you were joking, and the joke was really on myself.

Oh I’m the worst when it comes to kitchen-related specialty tools. I once came home and said to my long-suffering husband, “Look what I found!”