I would just like to mention that last night I went out with my old friend Stephanie, who many moons ago was my roommate in Los Angeles when I was in grad school and she was a lowly assistant in the film industry, and my sister, and we were celebrating Stephanie's last day at her job and her completing this crazy executive MBA degree at Columbia, and Stephanie is from Iran and one of those jet setting internationale types who will go off for a weekend to ski in the Swiss Alps, and anyway, I seem to know several people of late for whom the world seems much smaller and more accessible than it does to me and I WANT TO TRAVEL LIKE THAT TOO! Of course I say this just before going to hunker down in Pennsylvania for a year but after that I shall go everywhere everywhere. I mean just this month Stephanie is off to Nicaragua and Italy, and she's always off in India or China or London or Iran or Germany and she might be moving to Dubai. Really, it is just obscene.

Anyway, we went to this Persian restaurant on 30th Street. This is my favorite cuisine, and has been ever since I worked in this Persian restaurant in Seattle when I was in my early 20s (I also worked at a sports bar named BOGEYS where part of my soul died from the constant onslaught of grunge and heavy metal). Lamb kebab and onion and basmati rice and yogurt and pita and eggplant and the most amazing ice cream with rose water and pistachio! That restaurant was some damn good. Once I waited on an Arab sheik who tipped me 50 dollars for bringing out a plate of fish.

The end.