As I continue to keep on living my Forever Young fantasy, I realize that, however I may really look, my countenance is naturally masked by my beard.

Picture this. A local restaurant. A favorite. Where the locals eat. You’ve eaten there before. Often Only problem is that they don’t take reservations. Often a wait. My question is. While walking over to the restaurant do you anticipate waiting for a table?

This is a sober reminder to appreciate your loved ones always, because you never know what tomorrow will bring. Over a week ago, I woke up to a text message from my mom, telling me she was having heart issues and that she was at the hospital. This text came in at 11pm, but I had been asleep for an hour. It was now 6am when I read the message. I called Mom and she had, had a heart attack. We were both shocked. Mom is a massage therapist, a personal trainer, and pretty much eats lettuce, broccoli, and water. If Colleen can have a heart attack, anyone can.

  As I write this blog, Memorial Day is coming to a close. I hope you all had a lovely, relaxing day with family and friends and talked about how different this Memorial Day was from the last.

With most of the weekend being a wash-out, I am still hoping that the weather clears later today so we can have a bar-b-que. All of our plans, from seeing the Blue Angels on my friend’s boat on Saturday to having our kids over on Sunday for a day at the pool and a bar-b-que,  were rained out.  

Those who follow me on twitter and some others there and Friday’s blogger know Shelly and I enjoyed a proud parent moment last week.

We all have routines. At some level they're comforting and at the same time can cause stress. This morning I observed mine.   I woke up at 5A (it's usually around 5 - 5:30A), grabbed my phone to see if there any emergencies like a typo in someone's blog. I sauntered (yes saunter) downstairs, selected and ground some beans to make coffee in my french press. At any given time I have 3 or 4 different types of coffee to select from. Today it was Kona coffee from Hawaii, Vera from California and Founders from Brooklyn (I'm a worldy coffee drinking man:).  

Gothamites Mitch Tobol, Odey Raviv and I belong to the North of 25A Book Group (pictured) and on Saturday we hosted long time Gotham member Tony Celano for discussion of his latest book, The Case of The Cross Eyed Strangler.  Rather than sitting on his laurels, Tony's "encore" comes in the form of Detective Story author. It was Tony’s second Book Group appearance, as we had enjoyed a prepandemic discussion of his maiden effort, Two in the Trunk.