Aldoblog

Rochelle found a new soul food place in San Francisco through the Chowhound.com message boards, Miya, out in the Sunset. They’re terrific.

I have a new girlfriend. Rochelle was surprisingly calm when I told her.

Heard while discussing whether we should go to an upcoming high school reunion…

In preparation for the coming year, a progress report on last year’s resolutions, which Rochelle recently found on her computer.

“I had a nightmare where you were very bad.”

“What did I do?”

“You wouldn’t do what I wanted.”

When I arrived at Rochelle’s house to pick her up for our very first date, she invited me in for a few minutes, and offered me a beverage. She took an old fashioned seltzer bottle out of the refrigerator, put a little vanilla syrup in two glasses, and spritzed in the seltzer, stirring to mix in the syrup. It was delicious, a retro luxury, and I knew then that Rochelle was supercool, someone whose tastes would complement mine. Less than three months later, we were engaged.

Rochelle and I were mentioned, and Rochelle quoted, in this Sunday’s New York Times.

It would appear that my wife has decided I’m not doing enough with my time off, to clean up the house and otherwise work on useful projects (with “useful” being a word she gets to define). She’s decided that I need to get up with her in the morning, take a bath with her, and have coffee with her before she goes off to her job. All of this to ensure that my day at least starts early enough to accomplish something.

Rochelle is closing in on her Ninja degree in tequila, which is the optional degree that comes after the Ph.D. The Ninja degree is when you (a) have your Ph.D., and then (b) drink (yet another) 35 tequilas, neat — i.e., in a snifter, straight, not in a margarita or other cocktail. You don’t need a Ninja to become a Demigod, and indeed, fewer than a dozen people have achieved all four levels.

Rochelle’s a big fan of the makeover show “What Not To Wear”, down to playing the same game with Hilda, our upstairs neighbor. They’ve been spending a couple hours on multiple weekends, going through each other’s closets, trying things on, nixing some, swapping some, and putting the rejects in the Goodwill pile. Now comes a great new show, for men, called Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.