16 Sweet Gratitudes, Catching Up

1. New Prada lipstick in the house. I bought my first tube in mid-May at the Nordstrom flagship in NYC and used it down to the nub. The colors are so stylish. Prada is so stylish. A lot of lettuce, $50 plus tax, but very worth it. The counter guru helped me find two great hues in person now. But the matte is a bit drying, so best to put the Prada lip balm under or on top, or even dab on Vaseline.
2. Lunch with young MTM*, my colleague and friend, a couple of Sundays ago in Princeton. We ate on Witherspoon Street. MTM had a salad and I had the chicken pot pie. It was a beautiful day, and we had been talking about reconnecting for years. :)
3. Chef Lidia Bastianich at the Ferguson Library in Stamford on a weeknight with Sis and Diane. We soaked up Lidia's hints, such as how to tell if you're buying real Italian San Manzano tomatoes. If a food is made in Italy, the packaging will say PRODUCT OF ITALY, Lidia said. I used that rule when selecting prosciutto last weekend.
4. "A Wonderful World, The Louis Armstrong Musical" on Broadway. I went to the matinee yesterday with Sis and Edie. It was.very.very.good. I've played Satchmo's music today. 
5. Post-theater dinner two blocks away at Patsy's, a landmark Italian restaurant and celeb magnet on West 56th Street since 1944. Best shrimp scampi with spaghetti that I have ever eaten. In my life. The simple pan sauce was intuitively done, "broiled with butter, garlic and lemon," per the menu. Tender butterflied shrimp. And if I were still indulging in desserts, I'm quite sure the ones I eyed on the old-fashioned rolling cart, pushed by a waiter, would have been winning. Especially that fancy ruffled chocolate cake or tiramisu.
6. "Conclave" film about electing/selecting a Pope. Dan and I saw it on opening night of the  Montclair Film Festival. Very well done. The acting (Ralph Fiennes, Isabella Rossellini, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow) is superb as are the settings and secret rituals of selecting a Pope. Director Edward Berger was there at the Wellmont Theater and took questions afterward.
7. The New Yorker Festival. Drove into NYC with my friend Anne to see New Yorker Magazine editor David Remnick interview Rachel Maddow.
8. The cold opening of SNL last night, Saturday, November 2, with Maya Rudolph and the real Kamala Harris. (Thank you, Nan, for texting link.)
9. A hike in the Stamford arboretum woods with Sis and Galena.
10. Walks around our block and in Anderson Park and Edgemont Park.
11. Tea nightcap at Figgy's apartment the other night.
12. Dinner in a Dumont tavern with Moey and Tish.
13. "Godzilla" movie. Newest version, made by Japanese writer and director Takashi Yamazaki. 
14. Ina Garten's memoir.
15. Seeing my friend Rachy for late breakfast, another thing that's been put off for months.
16. Work clients, including two new ones. I'm grateful.

I just realized many of these are Italian--numbers 1, 3, 5 and 6. And 12 is famous for its pizza.

*Dan gave my friend Eileen the "young MTM" nickname decades ago, before she was married, when we went to a party she hosted in Weehawken in her pretty little Mary Tyler Moore-style apartment with a view of NYC's sparkling skyline across the river.