Happy St. Patrick's Day

But for me it's no booze fest, like it was in the college years, god bless them. Now, here's what makes me happy on a Monday night:

6:30 to 7:45. Muscle through Beautiful Booty class followed by half hour on elliptical while watching CNN's Spitzer-inspired special on cheaters.

7:45 to 8:15. Drive home, while talking on Treo to blue-eyed boy, a comfortingly routine exchange of information about the day's work and workouts. Bonus conversation topics: 401k, taxes, the Yucatan.

8:15. Arrive to find a delightfully clean home. Best new house cleaners ever.

8:30 to 9:30. Cook and eat dinner, Hamburger Helper made with veggie ground beef and skim milk substitutions. (Yeah, I copped to my white-trash treat; don't sleep on Hamburger Helper.) Savor vodka/pomegranate cocktail while watching PBS. Life does not get better than Huell Howser. LOVE.

9:30 to present. Continue enjoyment of cocktail and PBS (now an Ansel Adams special filled with Yosemite porn images). Further savor delighted feeling that comes from not being out drinking in the midst of some slutty St. Patrick's Day mob scene. (Nonetheless pleased with selection of green polka-dot PJ pants.)

Perhaps this is the face of 30. I can get with that.


**
"There's something in Ansel's work that is almost gothic. It's this tracery, it's this shimmering tracery...It's not really substantial. It's like a movie screen, mm, flickers like that... It's all this surface ornament, very vital and animistic and never still. Shimmering, shaking."