I have a consulting project lined up at an investment bank that won’t start until the 12th. In the meantime, I’m trying to make myself useful at home. I’ve made some cosmetic repairs to the house and have started to paint the family room. I need to clean the winter detritus out of the gutters.

By all rights, I should be home finishing up the painting. But it’s Friday. And after a brutal winter of pounding blizzards, a March with record-setting rainfall and a lot of unemployment drama, the sun is finally out, the sky is blue-blue, and there’s a balmy breeze. So I have put down my paint roller for the day and am in the city for what my pal Bob would refer to as a Fuck-Off Friday.

I’ll stop in the David Zwirner gallery in Chelsea to view the original drawings that R. Crumb made for his most recent book, The Bible Illuminated: R. Crumb’s book of Genesis.

Afterwards, I’ll walk over to Madison Square Park to view the Event Horizon New York outdoor installation. The artist, Antony Gormley, used his own body to cast 31 life-sized statues and scattered them throughout the park and along the top edges of the surrounding buildings. When the first statue went up atop the point of the Flatiron Building, the police received multiple calls about a suicide jumper.

A short walk away is Swann Auction Galleries, where an important rare book auction will be held next week, The Otto Penzler Collection of British Espionage and Thriller Fiction. Lots of Ian Fleming and Graham Greene first editions. The books are way out of my price range, but I want to view them before they pass into private hands.

After that it’s uptown to Christie’s at Rockefeller Center. The author Michael Crichton poured a lot of the money he made off of Jurassic Park and ER into his art collection. Now that he’s dead, it’s up for auction and for the next two weeks you can view the lots. This guy didn’t kid around. Rauschenberg, Warhol, Lichtenstein, Picasso, and the cornerstone of the collection, Flag by Jasper Johns (est. $10-$15 million.) Jesus. $10 mil for a painting. And I can’t find a staff job.

In the evening I’m meeting friends to see Alfred Molina play the troubled/suicidal artist Mark Rothko in Red, a Donmar Warehouse import from London that opened last night to stellar reviews this morning.

Do know how many wives would allow their husbands to do all that with a half-painted family room at home? While I’m out fucking around the city all day and night, Mrs. Wife will be home taking care of The Daughters. She has said nothing about my folly and had not laid any guilt trips on me.

Who has the greatest spouse on the planet? It ain’t you. I told my sister about all this and she suggested I kiss Mrs. Wife’s feet when I get home. I might do just that.

Not all of Manhattan has been gentrified. Yet. Some of it, especially some stretches of 8th Avenue, are still Original Recipe. For instance, we have this primo establishment on 8th Avenue and 30th Street:

Deno’s Party House and Bikini Bar??!! On a dicey part of 8th Av.? Are you kidding me?! No good could come from that. But admit it. You want to meet me there for a few drinks, don’t you? Any bar with an illuminated sign that includes tilted champagne glasses and balloons is the place for me! Above Deno’s is an aromatherapy supply company. How great is that?

But time has a way of steamrolling over your memories. Does anybody out there remember Billy’s Topless on 24th and 6th Avenue? It’s long gone and is now a bagel shop. It wasn’t so much a strip club as it was a neighborhood bar. Fun fact: When the zoning laws were toughened under Mayor Giuliani to try and rid Manhattan of the sex/strip trade, Billy’s, in an effort to avoid closure by the new puritanism, took the apostrophe from its name and became Billy Stopless and the dancers donned bikinis. It didn’t work.

It was a long time coming, but spring has finally arrived. I’m certain that we’ll get one or two more blasts of cold, raw weather, but unless the earth unexpectedly shifts on its axis, I think we’re done with snowstorms and winter.

After finishing some bizznizz in the city, I met Nurse H. We had lunch in Central Park and watched the big parade of humanity walk by. With commentary, of course. Don’t worry. We were in good spirits and nobody got trashed too terribly.

Do you know how “they” say that you have to have something to occupy your days? That without meaningful work, you’ll slip into a fits of depression? NOT ME, pals! I could easily spend each and every day like this and not be saddened in the least. I realize that most people require intellectual and emotional stimulation in order to feel alive, but I think that living in New York City for as long as I did gave me a lifetime’s worth of fulfillment and I could very easily coast the rest of the way. Like John Lennon, I could happily dream my life away, just watching the wheels go ’round. People say I’m lazy! Too bad it doesn’t pay.

These two were so extraordinarily attractive that they should be forced to breed for humanity’s sake. This picture really doesn’t do them justice. They’re right out of a J. Crew catalog.

This guy was a great musician. He played American popular standards with real depth of soul and feeling. And for all that ability, he’s playing for tips in the park. It made me wonder if having talent can sometimes work out to be a curse.

A shot to give the kiddies nightmares. Heh-heh.

This is the Angel of the Waters fountain on Bethesda Terrace. I’m pretty sure I’ve posted pics of this before but it never gets old for me. She was designed by Emma Stebbins in 1868. Emma was the first woman to receive a public commission for a major work of art in New York City. Hoo-ha for Emma!

Lovely Central Park Lake. The best show in town is standing on that bridge and watching people row their boats stern-forward.

It has since turned into a blackened, half-melted mess, but last weekend a fresh blanket of snow fell on Central Park. Here are a few indulgent photos.

Mrs. Wife borrowed her mother’s fondue pot. Fondue was a fad back in the ‘70s but I don‘t think people bother so much anymore.

First, we skewered cubes of New York strip steak and fried them in peanut oil. For dessert we melted chocolate and dipped bananas, strawberries and marshmallows. (That’s my tall, cold glass of whole milk.) The dessert must have been too rich, or we ate too much, because it gave 8-Year Old Daughter and I a bit of a tummy ache.

Happy news for New Yorkers and those who like to visit: The experiment to close off sections of Broadway and turn them into pedestrian malls is going to be made permanent. The city set up chairs in what use to be the middle of Broadway and, weather permitting, you can spend all day and night just watching the world pass by. It’s fantastic!

Photo: Damon Winter/The New York Times

This has not been a blessing for traffic, but merchants, tourists and residents love it, and that was enough for Mayor Bloomberg to make it permanent. That guy is the world’s only populist billionaire. Cynical old me keeps waiting for an out-of-control taxi to careen off into a crowd of tourists relaxing in lawn chairs but it hasn’t happened yet, thank God.

The pic above is from Times Square but my favorite spot is in Chelsea at the foot of the fabulous Flatiron Building. (Take a look at this pic from last year.) Given the choice between sitting before a pretty countryside or this, I’ll take the pavement and people-watching every time.