I've always been a proponent of civilized living (and I think we are all agreed that cheese is the bedrock upon which civilization is constructed) and today, after an unextremely uncivilized wait at the post office to turn over things that already had postage on them but weighed more than a pound and were only going to two separate addresses but were in six separate packages (why can't the intern ever grasp the difference between international and domestic mail? why?), I realized I needed a good dose of civilized living. So I went to lunch at Metropole and had a nice sandwich. More importantly, I had a glass of wine with my lunch. Why are we not drinking wine or beer or cocktails at lunch? Because Specialty's doesn't serve them? What has happened to the heyday of the three-martini lunch? Here's the thing---it really took the edge off, that glass of wine. Civilization is ending (it feels like the entire known world is hurtling towards apocalypse) and so maybe we ought to be taking advantage of as much as the civilized world can offer us---drinks with lunch, an entire cake of Humboldt Fog to ourselves, the consolations of High Life.