I got up first thing Saturday morning, ate a whole-grain English muffin and a bowl of raisin bran, took a cab down to Integral Yoga in Chelsea, and spent a couple of hours twisting myself into heart-healthy positions. I came back to my Upper West Side apartment to take a shower, then picked up a Zipcar and drove to the Newark Museum of Art, where I spent a couple of hours looking at paintings like this and this.
Once I’d seen enough, I drove to Rutt’s Hut and dined on a pair of “rippers” slathered in Rutt’s secret relish, thereby satisfying to the fullest a long-standing wish. (No, they weren’t the least bit heart-healthy, but ooooh, did they ever taste good!) I read the first chapter of Peter Ackroyd’s newly published brief life of J.M.W. Turner as I stood at the counter.
I popped a Fats Waller album into the CD player of my Zipcar as I drove home on the New Jersey Turnpike. At five o’clock on the nose I pulled off the exit ramp of the George Washington Bridge and onto the Henry Hudson Parkway. The sun was mere seconds from setting and the bright blue sky was flooded with Turneresque orange light (it looked something like this). Mr. Waller obligingly chose that precise moment to launch into It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie.
I dropped the car off at a garage around the corner from my apartment, picked up some oatmeal-raisin cookies and two bottles of lemon-lime seltzer at the neighborhood deli, and spent the evening watching Ernst Lubitsch’s Heaven Can Wait. As Laird Cregar leered diabolically at Don Ameche, I said to myself, I couldn’t possibly be happier.
I hope your weekend was as good as mine.