I had Leeanne over for lunch today while Ed was volunteering at the Chamber of Commerce. He likes her well enough, particularly now that she is sober (62 days and determined). But I like it best when she and I can just have a girl lunch and he says no problem but please she should not bring any of her boyfriends. Since she has historically fished from the wrong gene pool I do not tilt at him about that. Her latest boyfriend, however, seems okay according to her description, but I have not yet met him. P.S. on my friends and their choices, I don’t see any guy dropping a male friend because he is “out there”. It isn’t catching, you know. I don’t judge her and I only care about her well-being.

Meanwhile, Lila sent me the digital photos to my E mail that she took when she and Terry bought their new car and during our lunch at Cape Harbor and horror is not enough to describe how I feel about my image in these shots. At best I look plain and simple and at worst, I look as if I weigh 150 lbs. I weigh 112, and my waist is 25 inches, so where, please did the camera find that extra 50 lbs.? Ed complained that he looked old (I told him he should try smiling), but I showed Leeanne, and she agreed I was right and the pix did not do me justice (what a friend) and said I should tell Ed that he looked handsome. I did and that got him points with her. I am not, it goes without saying,posting any of these pix. They are going into E trash, yes they are.

Ed is ambivalent about whether to continue volunteering at the CofC on Friday afternoons. It gets dull, he says, but I think he has learned a lot about the community and has made some friends. Also it’s a rather straightforward thing to do as opposed to a complicated volunteer thing like the ombudsman program. Assignments from that should start picking up. There was a lull during the holidays.

Anyway, the Chamber gives an annual dinner. Ed goes free, but he'd have to pay for me (chintzy is the rule). And we'd sit with the other volunteers and not get mixed in with the business people who come, and Ed thinks that, too, is tacky. So we are not going.

Meanwhile, many of the main TV channels including my favorite cable channels are showing the Clooney-produced special to raise funds for Haiti. I am all for these efforts, much as I can’t watch this homage to pop music that I wouldn’t watch if you tied me to a tree and stuck toothpicks under my toenails. Maybe there is something in the program that might possibly appeal to me if I had the stamina to sit through the other stuff to get to it, but if I have to listen to another gorgeous young thing (I am not averse to gorgeous) waver 10 tones on each note and call it style, I will vomit.

So the TV is off and I am writing this thing and waiting for 10 p.m. when the channels return to regular programming.

I did watch the second half of a Mark Wahlberg movie called “Max Payne” and it was pretty muddy with lots of pyrotechnics and automatic weapons and corrupt cops, as he seeks to avenge his wife’s murder and succeeds due to a potion that makes him invincible and also hallucinatory, and then dies at the end and joins his wife and baby. Not my kind of happy ending. (P.S. Not unlike Gladiator, now that I think of it and I won't watch that again, you can bet.)

xx, Teal