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So sorry.

There was movement, too, but to me it signified the chaotic liveliness of Italian piazzas. I wasn't distracted. The de Havilland movie tried to get at this with (a) actual people milling about, and (b) pigeons fluttering off en masse at crucial moments. The original story focuses more on what people were thinking than what they were seeing.

We saw an excellent production of The Light in the Piazza in Boston last week, then rushed to watch the de Havilland movie, and to read the original Spencer story in the New Yorker from 1960 Those were the days. That issue was 144 pages. The Spencer story took up sixty seven. Twenty seven of those pages were full-page advertisements. Twenty eight were two thirds advertisements. That leaves a little over twenty pages of text, but then there were the cartoons.

Whew! That knock on the door just now really was the plumber wanting to fix the toilet? Oh well, another night of using buckets of water. (May I recommend that those of you watching, as the title of this thread suggests you are, think long and hard before you install electrical bidet-toilets -- yes, the multiply orientable jets of hot water are close to orgasm-inducing (going by my wife's oohs and aahs) -- but when it all fails it does so emphatically. The manual says "have a bucket of water on hand" and it wasn't kidding.)

Hey, that's all I allow myself. It's made me the charmer that I am. Had you embraced your inner passion for public tv, you'd have been equally winsome. Instead, you went all edgy, with results we can all see.

I know next to nothing about TV, but I knew of him and watched episodes of Cheers here and there. I'm sorry, too, to see him go. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/20/arts/television/george-wendt-dead.html

As you know, I fear you. But I disagree.

Et tu, Wilfrid? What happened to plain old crisp?

Is cooking pizza at a 45-degree angle all the rage now?

Interesting. Pistachios for the pine nuts, or in addition to? Does that not alter the taste-profile significantly? On my mind's tongue, though, I can see it working well. How did you handle the basil and garlic?

We are successful enough in life to have a 2004 RAV4 in our driveway. It has a little over 50,000 miles on it, many of which were put on during a 6-month stint in Santa Barbara in 2007 when we had to drive even if we wanted to go to the bathroom.

Why? As far as I can tell, you only eat out.

Yes.

And as far as you go @MitchW if you're who I now think you are, the person behind you was a young woman reading an Arabic book, and was brushing no behinds.

1) Although I found it "impenetrable" on attempted rereading (as said above) I was able to penetrate it as a young man (ghastly pun aside). 2) All love/lust was unsuitable in the India of the 1970s -- the crushes I had on teachers, on our cleaning lady, on the girl on the 123 Bus (we gazed at each other eagerly, morning and afternoon, for two years) -- no love was suitable. That angst might have been the appeal to me then. 3) The "exotic". To me that was England -- all cricket and moors and dogs. 4) Every boy's fantasy.