“It has become uncool to smoke, to put it in the adolescents’ parlance,” says Major Bloomberg.

As re: smoking, perhaps you are wondering what my New Year’s resolutions are. Well, most of them are far too grave and all-emcompassing to enumerate here, but I will say that, come 2009, this gal will have a driver’s license!

While one might imagine that cigarettes, and indeed sobriety generally, might figure in Slim’s plans for the new year, he has declared that his only ambition is to brush his teeth with his left hand every night, so as to improve general dexterity and brain function. (Also his resolution for 2007.)

Major breakthrough with the hostile woman at Grand Slam Wash who clearly despises me. When I went to collect my laundry today, she handed me the bag without my even needing to produce a ticket stub! Of course, it was done in sullen silence, and of course I pushed my luck by commenting timidly on the weather, which earned me a derisive sneer.

The other two ladies are extremely friendly. One of them told me, in confidence, that I’d put the other ‘Sadie’ in the neighborhood quite out of joint; apparently that little madam had been in the habit of sweeping in grandly without a ticket and giving nothing but her first name. My presence has spoiled her schemes.

I wonder if it’s the Sadie who went to Bronx Science. When I was growing up, she was the only other one in town, and I was always hearing tell of her. Then, in college, she happened to be dating someone in my French class, and when she came to visit we finally met, and talked about how we’d always heard about one another, and how annoying it is to always be called “Sophie” or even “Sandy.” Nowadays, of course, we’d really have something to talk about – the legions of toddler Sadies prancing all over Park Slope with their friends Max and Rose, and no hint of grandmotherly namesake whatsoever.


Am watching Casino Royale. Over the summer a suitor said I reminded him of Vesper Lyhnd. GK4, former fiance, just called (to say that he had absolutely no interest in The Wire, everyone be damned) and he hooted with laughter when I told him that and said, ‘you think the Treasury Department would send you to represent the country?”

Well, maybe not, but Slim said he could see it, as I am a great one for barbed banter, as well as, of course, an internationally renowned beauty. Anyway, I’ll take it, as I haven’t received such a good compliment since I was 16 and someone said I reminded them of Elizabeth Shue in The Saint (which seemed pretty flattering in the mid-90s.)