Sunday was the second anniversary of the passing of Mrs. Wife’s grandmother. In the morning, the four of us took a drive out to the cemetery to pay our respects. It was simply beautiful out. Blue skies and cool, early fall temps. Cemeteries are peaceful, remarkably well-manicures places. They’d make great open spaces for the public if it weren’t for all the corpses.

We found the tombstone and while Mrs. Wife and 6-Year Old Daughter said a prayer, I had a look around. It’s a Catholic cemetery and as such, all of the names on the tombstones are either Irish or Italian. Really. All of them. My favorite was a heart-shaped tombstone of pink granite with a very Italian name. In addition to the name, they carved a horse and a pair of dice into it. The dice showed 11 and for those of you unfamiliar with craps, 11 is the friendly number. It’s the only number you can throw where nothing bad will happen to you. You’ll never lose money throwing an 11. He was my kind of paisan.

I heard 6-Year Old say, “Is she buried in the ground?” Mrs. Wife said, “Only your body goes into the ground. Your soul goes up to heaven.” I looked at Daughter’s face and she wrestled with this concept. I wrestle with it, too. The Buddhists believe that you are reincarnated over and over again until you obtain Nirvana. Every culture has its own take on what happens after you die.

Do you know what I think? I don’t believe ANYBODY knows what happens after you’re gone. Each culture has its own story to tell. Your personal belief is not rooted in fact but, rather, where you were born how you were raised. Nothing more. I think these stories were made up by man and handed down from generation to generation, just like what Mrs. Wife was doing to Daughter, because mankind is terrified of death and these legends give us comfort and a sense of order. It’s part of the human fabric. But I don’t think anybody knows, really. If everyone adopted this attitude, the religions of the world would crumble.

At the beginning of Act 2 during Friday evening’s performance of A Man for All Seasons, the lights dimmed, the curtain rose and Frank Langella stood on stage with Michael Esper, who plays Sir Thomas More’s son-in-law, William Roper. There was a brief pause and then both actors walked off the stage and the curtain came back down. Odd. An announcement was made over the public address, “Ladies and gentleman, we’ll try that again.” Everyone chuckled. We assumed a prop was missing or someone didn’t hit their mark. Four or five minutes passed, Act 2 began and the play unfolded without further interruption.

When the play concluded and the cast was on stage for their curtain call, Frank Langella held up his hands to silence the audience. He apologized for the false start at the beginning of Act 2. (Nobody cared. An apology wasn’t necessary.) He said that just prior to the curtain being raised when he walked out on stage to take his place, he stumbled and fell backwards and hit his head, hard, against a wooden post in the middle of the set. He felt it was better to walk to the wings and allow his daze to lift than to try and fight through it.

Working without a net. There’s nothing like it.

While waiting for the F train at 34th St. this morning, I saw this written on a steel girder:

A play on words! How fun is that? That little piece of levity is enough to give me a needed smile on the same morning I woke up to find that Benevolent Dictators, Inc. was converted to a holding company last night while I slept.

I needed to get some blood work done. Nothing newsworthy. Just some routine tests. Typically, whenever I need to see a doctor (which is rarely, knock wood), I go on a Saturday morning because during the week I am preoccupied with trying to pay the mortgage. Today, however, I decided to remote into my desktop and work from home.

The weekday crowd in the doctor’s waiting room is not the same as the weekend crowd. It is similar to a casino crowd, with the M-F patrons being a bit older and slower than the weekenders. I am not accustom to being around sick people. I’m lucky that way. nursemyra and Nurse Heidi deserve to be canonized for helping people through an illness. I award myself the golden shithead award for being so uncomfortable around the old and sick.

Sitting in that waiting room today provided a sobering reminder of my (our) mortality. I was the youngest one in there by a few generations (and I’m not that young, remember). Of course, you would expect to see old, sick people in a medical waiting room but some of these people were visibly fucked up. Most were physically incapacitated and one was clearly having a psychological episode. The whole ordeal had a profound and lasting impact on me. I hope this doesn’t lead to a religious epiphany or anything tacky like that.

When I got home, 2-Year Old Daughter ran across the room and wrapped her arms around my leg. “Daddy home!” Therein lies the antidote for my poisonous thoughts.

You can learn a lot by working from home for a day. I came out of the office at 2:30 to make a cup of tea and you’ll never guess what I came across; Mrs. Wife was having a little snooze. 6-Year Old Daughter was in school and 2-Year Old Daughter was having her afternoon nap. Mrs. Wife was wrapped in a blankee on the living room sofa all roasty-toasty warm. Asleep. At 2:30 in the afternoon. Typically, at that time of day, I am fighting corporate demons. No big deal. I’m just sayin’.

Here’s the best line from Jon Caramanica’s New York Times review of the Celine Dion concert at Madison Square Garden:

“Her outfits were, invariably, sparkly, as if she had just lathered herself in glue and rolled around on crushed mirrors.”

The flight home from London was a breeze although the movie selections were predictably lame. It was seven dead hours with nothing to watch. Mrs. Wife watched Notting Hill for the 137th time and also Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, which she liked. Our other boffo selections included Forrest Gump, Indiana Jones and the Death of a Franchise, Sense and Sensibility, The Cell, The Cell 2 (wha ?!), and The Cable Guy. Urp.

I finally broke down and watched Speed Racer. Christ. I’m glad I didn’t slap down $12 to see it. Would you like me to summarize the experience for you? Blink your eyes as fast as you can while violently whipping your head from side to side until you have a massive headache and a sore neck. There. It’s too late for me, but I just saved you 135 valuable minutes of your life.

I must have been oxygen deprived from the altitude because I actually became involved in the story. Here’s the O. Henry twist: I started watching it so late in the flight that I missed the ending. They shut down the in-flight entertainment system just as the “big race” was about to begin because we were about to land. I was crushed. Does anyone know if Speed won? And what of Racer X? Does Speed find out that he is actually his older brother, Rex Racer, whose identity was hidden from Speed by a full-head mask and cosmetic surgery? (Oops. Sorry about that.) Did Pops Racer sell Racer Motors to Royalton Industries? And, most importantly, did Christina Ricci, John Goodman and Susan Sarandon laugh uproariously while cashing their checks, or did they actually feel some pangs of remorse? If you know the answers to any of these questions, but are too ashamed to admit it, you can always post them anonymously.

Here’s an appreciation for contemporary author and recent suicide David Foster Wallace from the New York Times. Would it be in poor taste for me to tell you the story about how that guy treated me like a piece of dirt at a book signing a few years ago?

Yes, it would be.

Mrs. Wife and I boarded our plane at London’s Gatwick yesterday morning after a very satisfying holiday. When we deplaned in New York later in the afternoon, we walked into a 504 point Dow Jones meltdown and 85 degree heat. 85 degrees in the middle of September is just so wrong. (Come to think of it, a 504 point drop in the Dow seems pretty wrong, as well.) I can hardly wait to see how everyone at Benevolent Dictators, Inc. is taking the news. We announce our earnings tomorrow, so that should be a lot of fun.

I tend to suffer from post-vacation sadness. I know that everyone does, but I think I take it a bit harder than everyone else. While there are aspects of my job that I enjoy, a successful vacation always reminds me that if I had the freedom to do anything I wanted, it wouldn’t be commuting into the city to sit at a desk. Unfortunately, I have too many responsibilities to just chuck it all and try something different. Some are lucky enough to live their fantasies. It seems that most of us have to make do with occasional bliss.