Our new kitchen.

Years ago a wise man said to me, "Eventually, time and tide will catch up to you. You will be, no matter how hard you try to elude it, ensnared in the net. The net from which there is no escape. Eventually, your wife will prevail and you will be building a new kitchen."

"Not me," I scoffed, thinking like I was Superman and invulnerable to kryptonite.

The wise man shook his head slowly, laughed and repeated tellingly. "Eventually. Eventually."

Well, I'm sad to say, eventually is now.

My wife, an otherwise intelligent woman with a Master's degree in Genetics, spends her waking hours talking about the relative virtues of Sub Zeroes, Thermidors, Wolfs and Vikings.

When we visit friends we don't talk about our careers, or our travels, or our kids. We look at cabinets. Study the way drawers pull out. And Talmudically discuss the virtues of six burners over four.

Nothing else, not beheadings in the Middle-East or cop killings in Bed-Stuy seems important. We are, finally, building a new kitchen.

The same wise man said to me, "George, look at it this way. A city kitchen is like a Mercedes-Benz. If you have a small one, it will cost about $40K. A mid-sized one will cost $75K. And a large one, well, you can't afford it."

For now on, I order in.