4th Anniversary

Last year, Stacy and I celebrated our 3rd anniversary by going to Buffalo, NY (named, not after the animal, but Native American for "Pretty River" or some such). We visited Niagara Falls, saw Howard Dean at a rally (oops, my politics are leaking), and finally I gave Stacy (and myself) simple gold wedding bands while listening to an aging lounge singer at the hotel bar. We originally had rings made by a jeweler friend for our wedding. They turned out ugly. We didn't have the heart to not accept the rings, but we stopped wearing them after a few months (luckily, we haven't bumped into the jeweler friend since).

Last night, Stacy and I celebrated our 4th anniversary with a low key romantic dinner at an old and venerable Albany Restaurant called La Serre. First, leisurely "Top shelf" vodka gimlets (just a whisper of lime) at the bar, then to a dark green booth surrounded by rich wood panelling in an intimate room. Probably unaltered in forty years. The waiter, about 60, in white shirt, black vest and bow tie, though wonderfully efficient, seemed like a domesticated gangster, what, with arriving at the table, looking off to the right as if daydreaming about last nights poker game, and without the "Hello, I'm your server tonight, my name is Bob, (or Jason, or Randy). Here are tonight's specials,..." no, he just abruptly launches into: "Lamb kabobs with blah, blah...." in a gruff voice still presenting his profile.

Albany restaurants are slow in the summer. The state legislators and their entourages are gone and Saratoga Springs, thirty minutes north, is the magnet for summer night life. There are suburban strip malls (didn't they used to be called "shopping centers"?) where chain dining establishments (your Fridays, your Olive Garden, your Whatever) still do well during the summer doldrums,. We prefer to restaurant (yes, I annoyingly changed noun to verb[?]) in independent downtown joints that reflect owners' tastes.

The other diners were mostly greying older men, in pairs it seemed (maybe closeted gays?), who probably smoke cigarettes or an occasional cigar, wear light grey sport coats and white shirts sometimes without neckties and unbuttoned only at the collar, dark slacks wrinkled from sitting, pinky rings, and sporting eyeglasses ten years out of style. They drink Scotch or Bourbon on the rocks. They order steaks.

The young bartender, graduate student by day I seem to recall, was very friendly. He first suggested the word "whisper" for only a drop of lime in a gimlet, when, early in the summer, we first drifted into La Serre for a cocktail.