Party! Party! Party!

This is a picture of my life long best buddies, Mac and Goodbody, at the end of a long weekend of play and a long table of food at the toney Restaurant Lulu in San Francisco.

The gathering was the wrap party for Rachel Demming's graduation from Stanford -- Rachel being Mary's niece, Mary's sister Katherine's daughter,Anna and Kate's sister, and Anna Demmings'granddaughter. Rachel is smart and Jacqueline-Kennedy-esque and very, very cool. As are her sisters. Rachel will teach for Teach for
America in Oakland next year. Sister Kate took a gap year and travelled to India and later to Romania to work with Romanian orphans. Now she is at Washington University learning Arabic. Anna -- a junior at Choate -- will spend a month this summer in Ghana living in a community and building latrines.

We old folks sit back in admiration. After our freshman year in college, Mac and Goodbody and I went to Europe on an oceanliner where we drank fresh lemonade and played three handed bridge in our hotel room in Paris. Goodobdy reminded me that one day when we came back from the beach at Nice, to our usual routine of having a citron presse at the bar. Evidently we spoke francais and Goodbody did not and we told the bartender that Goodbody did not know how to french kiss (untrue, but it made for a good story). He offered to teach her, she protested "but you are married, " at which point he removed his wedding ring, shouted " Ca Ne Fait Rien!" and swept her in to the closet. During that same trip Goodbody protected me from two italian doctors who were addressing what proved to be kidney troubles, but at no time did we help any one, or add any value to the planet.

Mac and Goodbody and I are settling in for a short week in San Francisco. Today they took a Segway tour (they got a certificate!) from the San Francisco Electric Tour Company, had a great lunch and went to Alcatraz. I lolled around the room and
controlled all of Hawaii by cell phone from my bed. Life is good.