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7/30/00 Overheard in a club early Saturday morning: "Ugh! My feet hurt. These shoes were not made for dancing." "What about prancing?" "Prancing maybe." I had dinner with the family last night, at Felidia in midtown. Aunt, Uncle, Brother, and Sister-In-Law. Felidia is this fancy-pants restaurant owned by Lydia, who is apparently a chef with a show on PBS. It was fantastic. Whether I'm poor or not, I never get to eat at restaurants like that, or at least not unless I have family in town. I guess I could sometime, but it would never occur to me to do such a thing. The food was wonderful. Everything just tasted better. They did olive oil tastings, and the wine was this snappy little Italian Sauvignon Blanc ("There's a strong taste of wood," explained the waiter before we ordered.) My aunt's risotto was the hit of the night. It was served with 25-year old balsamic vinegar. That vinegar was three years younger than I am. When I was three years old, somebody decided to make that vinegar just so it could be served 25 years later at a dinner celebrating my brother and his wife's 5-year wedding anniversary. I love food. My whole family does. We spent the whole night sharing and tasting everything, trying not to be loud and boisterous (tricky, considering the martinis we had at Vong before we even got there.) I had this interesting conversation with a friend of mine - a self-described WASP - earlier this week about the boisterousness of a Jewish family. She was telling me this hellish story about a recent family vacation, wherein she smiled and acted nice the entire time, even though she was ready to kill her dad. She was forced to play hostess to an unending stream of family members and friends. "I had to be the good girl," she said. "But I felt like yelling and screaming the entire time. I was expected to be appropriate. It was very WASP-y behavior." I started telling her about my brother and sister-in-law's wedding five years ago. "My aunt started yelling at me for smoking at the hotel bar, and made me cry. Then my mom started crying because I was crying and my aunt and I were fighting. My sister-in-law's mom cried later just because she was really drunk. But it was a lovely time." "Yea, see, that would never happen in my family," said my friend. "The difference between WASPs and Jews is this: WASPs, you open their closets, and they have a bunch of skeletons in there. You look in a Jew's closet and all you'll find is a bunch of shoes." We were a little WASPy last night, perhaps. I did not want to talk about anything of any substance. My brother asked me how I was doing, and I said, "I had a rough week." "Personally or professionally?" "Both." He thought for a moment, and then said, "Well, you haven't been dating anyone long enough for it to be too big of a deal, so it can't be that bad." "Nothing is ever that bad," I said. "Still, I'm just shooting for superficiality tonight." He smiled and sipped his wine. I asked him a small question about a business matter I had assisted him with and he gave me a positive response. And then we all spent the next three hours talking about food and wine and cooking and it was only at the very, very end that anyone got a little sad. As I have said before, a perfect day is never a perfect day unless there is one tiny thing wrong.
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