Diagonality and Redux: British Tan-Bow Ties and Lymphoma

 Cup number two of my Café Bustelo espresso sits in fellowship with a slice of banana nut bread. Life is bliss this weekend-seriously. LFG and I remain in the midst of a fun weekend and I hope that she’ll sleep in this morning. LFG-like scores of overscheduled kids has to wake up so early during the week that she naturally wakes early on the weekend. If she wakes before eight this morning I’ll go back in with her and see if she won’t go back down for another little while. “Go back down…” You’d think she’s still an infant.

LFG and her best friend DG accompanied me to Dave and Busters yesterday. What a racket…I MUST discover a business model similar to this racket or something akin to the $385.00 Dolphin Hug that LFG wrested from my wallet a couple of summers ago. 

Thirty bucks (each) later and the LFG/DG duo had a pair of cows. LFG’s mom will revel once again in another plush animal adornment at their house. DG is my favorite friend and LFG feels the same way. She’s funny and smart and they are two peas in the proverbial pod.

We walked through Bloomingdales en route to our car from Dave and Busters and I spied these pedal adornments. This has gotten out of hand and coming from me-that’s saying something. You’ve probably already surmised that if anyone can put the “double wide/fuzzy dice” treatment on otherwise sound sartorial contrivances-dat be me. Diagonality just doesn’t fit my sock-view. 

I do though-love my new word…“Diagonality”. Say it three times with me now…Diagonality- Diagonality- Diagonality…with a crisp little southern twang accompanying it. Diagonality- Diagonality- Diagonality. 

Oh yeah-and I bumped into a pyrex lid from a piece of All Clad cookware on the way out the door-it shattered in a million pieces.

We dropped DG off and headed to Cactus Cantina for our standing Saturday night date. Four rounds of pre-entrée Crazy Eights ended in a draw. Then a foursome rolled in to the table beside us-two bald headed babies in tow. The little girl and LFG share the same first name and LFG and I had a great time talking with the very young parents and playing with the babies. The little gal was teething but not cranky about it and she was gnawing on everything in sight-including the table cloth-funny as hell and good for her immune system.

I couldn’t get a good shot of the little guy on the other side of the table but he was equally cute and his parents-equally young. They had already declared that these two tots were gonna be a couple and why not-all four of the parents have been friends since they were in kindergarten-I kid you not. What a great story about a great set of childhood friends who are now married and growing little families. It resonates with me on many fronts but probably to a great degree because I failed at the same effort.

They were far from indigent but with little people in tow-I’m certain they weren’t flush with dough. To that end, LFG and I paid for their evening out.

Onward-Diagonality Not-Before the Pootist hollers from her bed…. “Daddy…I’m not sleepy anymore…” Bliss. Pure bliss.

via Maxminimus by ADG on 7/8/09

I spent yesterday up at Johns Hopkins attending their weekly lymphoma conference and interviewing a few oncologists for a project I’m working on. I always look for lessons in gratitude and God never fails to provide me with examples that ground me in what remains my incredibly fortunate and gifted world. Yesterday was no exception.
Oncology and hematology fellows present their most challenging cases during these conferences. Community based specialists as well as the teaching staffs are invited to show up for and contribute to these exchanges and they are nothing short of fascinating. The patients discussed are not your run of the mill cases. They’ve presented with a plethora of challenges and the goal is to debate best options for the next steps in the continuum of care. The intellectual energy in the room is right down my alley. The sobering reality of death isn’t. Five cases were presented. Three of the five are being lateralled over to hospice as a result of the discussions. Game over. Two of those three have about ninety days.

Ok, so all of my vacations in 2009 will be domestic…I think I will survive. I’m still here and healthy, LFG is healthy, my bills are paid for another month, my liver enzymes-post July 4thare settling back into a normal range and I have business prospects and projects that will keep me solvent for the remainder of the year. I’m blessed beyond measure and I need the record to reflect my gratitude.

So, now that I’ve dropped that mood buster on you, let’s talk about clothes. First, I’d like to reiterate my stance on quality. While this tropical weight suit is beginning to show some signs of wear, realize that I had this suit made by Flusser in 1990. It’s on the cusp of a twentieth birthday. A bow tie was de rigeur for the academic ego-turgid Hopkins-esque environment yesterday. Also, a bit more conservative getup was prudent, given the mob mentality regarding pharma and biotech company profits and the evils of their contribution to healthcare. That’s another post for another site. I just needed to not be so flashy as I was there as a guest of Hopkins and under the auspices of a biotech client who realizes a rather healthy revenue stream from said teaching hospital and research facility. On balance, let me also say that Hopkins realizes a shitload of revenue from industry. I’ll stop with that statement as I’m taking this down a rat hole at warp speed.

This suit was one of my first Flusser custom contrivances and the coat styling reflects it. Two button as opposed to three. Lower yoke-button stance and notch lapels. Double vented.

These almost twenty year old trousers are beginning to pull a bit. I'm essentially the same size-weight as I was in college but these pleats are pulling a tad. Not enough to warrant altering though. No braces yesterday...I kept this rig a bit simpler. End on end dress shirt from Paul Stuart in NYC....about 15 years old. You can't see it in the picture but the collar is scarred from years of pushing collar pins through it. Clip on collar pins are in the same sartorial no-no camp as clip on bow ties and clip on suspenders.

When I was little, my mother wore clip on "ear bobs" as I called them. I remember her removing one of them from time to time during church and rubbing her ear lobe-I recon those clips kinda hurt after a while. Then when I was about eight or nine-she had her ears pierced. When did your momma pierce hers?

Note to self: Get out the Windex and clean the mirror before shooting another "shoe-picture". Help? Where's the housecleaning help? We got none.Oy.

I could have pimped this thing out with some crazy socks but I needed to be taken seriously at this meeting. So I kept it to darker choices finally settling on charcoal gray pinstripe socks. And as always with me, when I have to wear big boy shoes for work, brown suede is the only choice. Monk straps yesterday that are starting to show some wear as well. Another bit of evidence regarding the age of this suit. If I made this one today-the cuffs would be half again as big. These look a little skinny. See that little gray strip of fabric stitched on to the inside of the trouser cuff? That's a little touch that comes with bespoken trousers. It provides weight to the back of the trouser leg so that it hangs properly. Essential.

Speaking of showing wear-I'm really a lot happier than this bathroom mirror self portrait reflects. I take shitty pictures and am a shitty subject-Annie Leibovitz again, was unavailable for this impromptu shoot. I think that the residual sequelae from the 4th of July hooch consumption was still showing a bit as well. And finally, I left all of my pimp ass multicoloured pocket squares at home and opted for white linen courtesy of Ralph. Under no circumstance would I ever have a coat pocket sans pocket square. I even resorted one time to donning a vacant pocket with those brownish-industrial grit paper towels from a dispenser in a men's restroom. It was a hit.

So my friends...have a blessed balance of the week. Have some fun-suck a little marrow out the bones of this life we are living. Hug your kids. Take a cleansing breath and count to three before flipping off someone in traffic. Don't text and drive. Wear sunscreen but not so much that you don't get some healthy color. Have one alcohol free night sometime over the next week but ONLY one. Call your mamma even if it is a pain in the ass to do so. Skip one night out over the next ten days but ONLY one. Take the money that you'd spend on that night and help restock your local food bank. Pay the final sessions fees for one underserved child to finish summer camp. 

Give anonymously. These are the things that I'm doing this summer to keep my materialistic,self indulgent, hedonistic soul reasonably pure.

Onward