expect no quarter

The other day at Trader Joe’s I bought a roll of quarters from the manager/customer service counter – or plank, as they might call it. I grabbed the business card of that store’s manager because I couldn’t pass on this name - Johnny Lawless. If I could change my name to anything it would be Johnny Lawless.

Getting back to work is uneventful after five days of vacation in Vermont. What can you do?

I didn’t get much input from the crowd on the yawning in public disease that’s overrun the city. The details are pretty clear: it seems that covering your massive, gaping maw while yawning on the train or bus is now non grata. I’ve seen some huge caverns and studied a good amount of dental work on display by complete strangers.

We were sitting in a living room semi-circle doing the Sunday NYTimes Puzzle last week and I somehow ended up in the role of reader. In the normal state of affairs the Eleven gets to sit back and simply provide input whilst MC Phil picks-and-chooses the across/down puzzle route. What you don’t want to do when designated control is not spell out all idiosyncratic clues that Will Shortz swings your way. My mistake was my encounter with the clue “Weigh stn. visitor.” I did spell the ‘stn.’ in order to indicate an abbreviation for the answer, well done on my part! Unfortunately, I neglected to spell W-E-I-G-H aloud and the front row on the couches had W-A-Y stuck in their shared DNA headmeat. When I finally almost mumbled over the answer (‘semi’…ah!) as I filled it in at toward the end of the puzzle my beachhead was washed over with refreshing waves of “what?”, “weigh?”, “well, of course…”, “Jesus”, and other variants of “you’re a damn fool”. They will eat the young and newly entribed.

We played golf in miniature on Mountain Road in Stowe one evening. They don’t call it mini-golf up Stowe-way – too left bank. I stink. X is some kind of putt hustler who smiles sweetly while gutting you on the course. I’ve never beat her, not that I need to, but she is ruthless with the short stick. I don’t think she missed any 4-6 foot putts – cold and calculating with a dash of grin and ‘oh my’ mentality.

The first day up North was spent at the Shelburne Museum followed by dinner at A Single Pebble. The Shelburne is site of the Electra Havemeyer Webb Memorial Building that houses an amazing group of impressionist artwork. After wandering around through gardens and exhibits for a number of hours we ended up in this building and were overwhelmed by the paintings on display. I can’t remember all the details but the building contains the innards of a NYC apartment of Electra and the brood – some lineage of the Vanderbilts and sugar kings. The Shelburne is well worth a visit. I must pass along a funny quip; the boys got a little frustrated with each other after a long day together and managed to get involved in child diplomacy. When X stepped in as the intermediary I overheard H. relay this evidentiary tidbit “Why am I always blamed for things I do?” Brilliant.

I’ll let everyone go for the day.

T.