DRY JANUARY

Love an entrance---Taking longer to get ready than most.  When you don’t have much hair, it takes a while to glue it in all the right places.  The correct shirt, jacket, pants, shoes, and the correct winter coat.  Not the one that you could actually survive in the cold but good enough to get across the street for the proper winter entrance.  Arriving you are greeted by the maître d’, the sommelier, and the waiters you know at the because you are a regular.  This is why we all want to own a restaurant.  The magic of the arrival; being acknowledged by the people that work there; maybe even the owner.  You may not be important but for that moment, at the entrance, you are.    The food is critical but the greeting is the killer. The truly good restauranteurs know how to greet and it keeps you coming back.  The “just a little too loud hello” so that others will know that you are known.  It is the right juxtaposition of need and giving.  The first drink is the best.  You still have all of your faculties and the evening is just beginning.  Its cocktail number three that is the problem.  You can have cocktail number three, just don’t drink it.  It is important to know that you never have to finish a drink.  It isn’t one of those parental instructions – “Finish your food or no dessert!”  Sometimes the drink left is the best drink consumed.  A waiter showed me the “towel” under the chair trick.  Just in case you are being watched to see if you are drinking you can always deposit a little at a time on the towel below.  Third drink aside, going out to drink and eat is super fun…

But after 30 rough mornings in December, I decided to forgo alcohol for January.  Dry January is not an original thought but a crucial one.  Prove that you can, give the body a break; maybe lose a pound or two; wake up with a clear head and the ability to immediately walk across the room. The first two mornings were a blur, like a San Francisco morning waiting for the fog to retreat.  The third morning, up at 630; made the bed, put the dirty clothes in the washing machine, made breakfast, washed the dishes, cleaned up the house, folded the clothes, finished the memo for my zoom team, showered, got dressed…. Upon completion the real problem of a dry January revealed itself --- it was only 7:45!!!!!! What the hell am I going to do with all of this extra time!!!!!

We all love a meal out and it is clearly one of the things we miss most for this past year of lockdown.   Since I could not go out, a dry January was an idea that could be accomplished.   But like all good things, there are unintended consequences.    I had not factored in all the time it takes to eat and drink.  There is the recovery from the night before.  Depending on the severity of the evening it might take two to four hours of morning time just to get to the front door.  An unusually fun evening might take a day.  Then there was the prep time, travel time, greeting, ordering, consuming, departing – eating and drinking takes time, and when you are not, well, what is going to fill all that available time???  My early December was an amazing exit from real life. All of the aforementioned time usage for preparation and execution managed to take up most of my day.  After squandering money and my health, Dry January was the clear solution. The unintended consequence is I have too much time on my hands.  I was told to be brief in my writing but with all of this extra time, my posts are getting longer.  Don’t worry February is almost here, the fog will return and the posts will get shorter.   I’m going to go clean out my closet now --------  it’s only 10 am!!!!