Hi!

Just wanted to say hello. Nothin' more than that goin' on really. Highlights of a not terribly exciting week:

I've spent a lot of time looking for my book club friend Rowena on tv. Given the anniversary of AIDS, she's been doing lots of press, including the Sunday morning news shows. She's the research grants director for AMFAR and currently, according to her speaking schedule at international conferences, the world's current expert on the potential of the not-yet-existent anal microbicides. (NOT what she's been talking about on American tv.) Seriously, she shows up at a conference and people say, "Oh! I know you, you're the anal girl!" She brings back cool presents too--last year it was a jingly elephant coin purse from Thailand, this year, a leather rhinoceros bookmark from Cape Town.

I got the puppy next door in trouble last night--I pet him when he was out on the deck alone, he got riled up and started to bark when he went back in. Princess is evidently training him not to, 'cause all we hear is a mantra of "No BARK!" coming through the wall. She's even drowning out the parrot!

Also made a kick-ass dinner last night: sauteed raddichio and speck with onion and garlic and tossed it with fettucine. The purpose of the meal was to go with an odd regional Italian wine that we got at the grand opening of a new wine store--it was from Northern Italy, an uncommon grape and they said it would go especially well with speck (smoked prosciutto, essentially) and grilled radicchio. They were totally right on, it was awesome.

See, told you it wasn't much...