I won’t fib, dear friends: It is not a lack of subject matter that has kept me quiet this week. Although the news crews have packed up and gone to other neighborhoods, the fallout from our power outage still continues. Two days after the CEO of Con Ed told an Assembly committee that the utility would be standing firm on its commitment to reimburse local businesses $7,000 and not a penny more, “but we would talk to [them] about it,” I overheard the manager of the health food store tell a customer that the store had lost $45,000 in inventory alone. The owner of a fish market a few blocks from our apartment told a local newscritter that between lost inventory, lost sales and damaged equipment, he had lost over $100,000. Call me pixilated, but I fail to see how talking to these folks is going to make them feel better about those $7,000 checks, or about the dwindling lack of investment in maintenance that led us to this sorry place. Then again, I could just be smarting over the rebate schedule Con Ed just announced for this month’s billing cycle: $3 for residential customers, $6 for small businesses, $250 for large businesses.
As you might have ascertained, I am not happy about this situation, not at all. I am also not happy about the unreliability of our cable modem, which manifested itself during Blogathon and continued for much of last week, over the weekend and well into Monday night, before the cable company announced on a prerecorded phone message that there were service outages in Ozone Park, Kew Gardens, Elmhurst and Astoria. (It does seem to be behaving itself tonight; let’s hope it continues to do so.) And even as I realize that I am probably overreacting, I was provoked into sputtering bewilderment by this story in this morning’s Daily News. I do not want to know what it says about us, and our relationship to food, when we require the use of heat-sensitive inks on eggshells to let us know when our eggs are cooked.
Luckily for you, dear friends, I have not had the fortitude to go on about this for 5,000 words or so, simply because LuthorCorp has been pinning my shoulders to the mat every day, leaving me at the end of the day with just enough energy to cook dinner. I had forgotten how tricky it was to get everything done while simultaneously training the person who will help you get it done while you head to jury duty for four weeks. Fortunately, I am leaving everything in the hands of a woman who is both a quick study and a smart cookie, and I am confident that no containment cores will melt down while I’m out serving the cause of justice. But mercy, this all plays havoc with a girl’s sense of prose stylings, and, frankly, it’s been making me a little nervous.
Until tonight, that is. Dear friends, I hope that the pickings around here won’t be lean in the coming weeks, but if they are, then they’ll be so for a good reason. I have had the great good fortune to be invited to be interviewed on Inkwell: the interview begins tonight and continues for two weeks. I am being interviewed by [name redacted at interviewer’s request, with regret], who doesn’t let a little thing like whirlwind world travel diminish her enthusiasm for, or curiosity about, cookery in general, or egg cookery in particular. She is an absolute hoot, and she asks superb questions. Personally, I think you should come visit just for her questions, not for my answers—but by all means, do come visit. (You need not be a WELL member to read along, and if you’d like to ask questions, you may do so by emailing the Inkwell hosts.) It will be a fun two weeks, I am sure of it.
