I missed dinner with the family because I wanted to go to the gym. It’s been a while and my pants are a little tight in the waist. When I got home I was on my own and had to fend for myself. Mrs. Wife offered me some lovely leftover pasta and shrimp, but I decided to graze instead. Have you ever done that? Just kind of picked around the kitchen until you’ve nibbled about a meal’s worth of food? It’s hard to know when to stop. Here’s what I ate for dinner:

A tuna sandwich
A slice of (leftover birthday) apple pie
A handful of Life cereal
A half a dozen grapes
A dollop of Skippy extra crunchy peanut butter on my index finger
The rest of the Lay’s Kettle Cooked chips
A Klondike ice cream sandwich.
One red Twizzler

How positively revolting.

In the summertime, every New Yorker knows where to get dessert during their after-meal walk up the Avenue.

Mister Softee and the Empire State Building: two New York City icons

Be careful of imitations! Accept no substitutes! No matter where you are in Manhattan, from May through August, a Mister Softee truck is just steps away. They’re like cockroaches. The ubiquitous Mister Softee jingle has been driving New Yorkers mad for 50 years. There were so many complaints about the jingle over the years that, by law, it can now only be played while the truck is in motion. THAT’S what I call an earworm. Imagine what it must be like for the poor drivers.

Today is Billy Crudup’s birthday. Also, Graham Jones, guitarist from Haircut 100. Kevin Bacon, Wolfgang Puck, Billy Eckstine, Beck and Nelson Rockefeller.

And me.

Apropos of nothing, here’s a rare full-frontal shot of Daughter and I on the roof of the Met at the Big Bambú exhibit. Just so you know who you’re dealing with.

Yeah, that’s my man-purse. I got it for free from Kenneth Cole. You got a problem with that?

We like to take the girls to the local thoroughbred track a few times over the course of the racing season. Monmouth Park (The Shore’s Greatest Stretch) is actually a pretty big deal in the racing community. The Breeder’s Cup is held there on a regular basis.

Horse people are an economically diverse bunch. They’re either hat people or track people. The hat people own horses. The well-heeled wives wear wide-brimmed hats, smile big toothy grins, and greet one another with air kisses. Some [actually, many] are cosmetically enhanced. The husbands wear pastel jackets and pinky rings. They seem to be a happy bunch. They sit in the clubhouse. We don’t ever sit in the clubhouse, so the only time we ever see hat people, is when they come down from their lofty perch to have their photos taken in the winner’s circle with the jockey and the horse.

We’ll usually sit outside with the track people. Track people are grinders. They are there to make money. So are the owners, of course, but the track people seem to need it a hell of a lot more than the hat people.

There’s a thread that runs through track people that ties them all together. There is a common element. Aside from horses and $2 bets, they have an affinity for the drink.

(This one was a loser. They all were.)

Some of them drink beer for breakfast. I don’t think this guy is kidding.

That’s his son playing in the dirt. I’ll bet he’d like some attention from dear old dad. I wouldn’t say I was anti-alcohol but, like organized religion, it should be used in moderation. Too much of either is a bad thing.

This is the tattoo du jour. She had the footprints of her newborn tattooed onto her leg. I’ve never seen that before, so she get a point for originality. Seriously. Do you know how difficult it is to do something totally original?

She’ll be four in about three weeks and I realized that that was probably the last time I’ll ever rock her to sleep. She usually goes to bed without a problem and if something is wrong, she’ll call Mrs. Wife. So that was it. I’ll never rock her to sleep again. I haven’t rocked 8-Year Old to sleep for years and years. I can’t remember that last time I did. It just slipped away without my noticing. Nothing last forever. Not the good stuff and, thankfully, not the bad stuff either.