Monday, June 27, 2011.
Rome Is Out. Snack Day.
Mary Ann found out officially what I've been telling her all along: you can't get onto a cruise with only a few hours' notice. Even if there are lots of open rooms on the ship. Forty-eight hour minimum.
And one other problem: Mary Leigh's passport is expired. So ends the plan for the Marys to go to Rome this summer. All the non-planning has forced such a vacation up against the vacation they plan to take in California on July 15.
Instead, they will drive along the Gulf Coast to Florida, Miami, and Key West. On Fourth of July weekend. Not a single reservation has been made anywhere. I'm glad I've been excluded from this jaunt. "We're two hot babes in a convertible," MA says. "Where would an old man with a cane fit in there?" Nowhere. And am I glad.
A square meal is enough to sate one's appetite. A round meal is more than enough. I've never heard of a triangular meal, but even though the Food Pyramid was dismantled by the Food and Drug Administration, maybe there's a place for such a thing.
This brings us down to the one-dimensional meal. The linear meal. One thing, grabbed and gobbled. Two of my meals most days are down to that. Toast in the morning. Slice of pizza at midday. Some days--and today is one of them--the third meal is also linear. A few slices of Dubliner cheese. With café au lait, which I have begun drinking in the evening to keep the intake interesting.
I need to find some other menu items for tri-linear days like this. Too much bread and cheese. I'm going to invent a bean dish for this purpose. I'm thinking along the lines of a bean salad, along the lines of an antipasto.
To finish this reductio ad absurdum, let's note the zero-dimension meal. That's the point in space that can be noted and defined exactly, but which has no substance. Some days I think about lunch, but don't actually eat anything.
