Is my husband trying to kill me? Some think so. First it was the bicycle. I remember my housemate, Bob, asking him, "Do you really want him on that thing?" The implication was obvious: I would meet my untimely demise on this thing. Yet, I've become addicted to it and have even taken it to the dreaded mainland. Surely, there have been some close calls, but there I am, all over town on the thing. Secondly, it is the gym membership. My baby bought us memberships in the very chic David Barton Gym in the Gaansvort Bldg. (actually the post condo complex The Baroness Seitzinger resides in). Mr. Astor got me out of bed at the crack of dawn today, dressed me up in an "outfit", and placed me on the aforementioned bike on a ride to the gym. There he ran me through a series of premeditated "routines" where I watch myself run around a track over and over while pumping some running machine and then marched me over to complete three repetitions each on a number of complicated upper body machines. Finally, he put me a bike machine for an hour of cardio assault.

I countered by sneaking off when he went to work for a four hour lunch at Da Leo's with the greatest guardian of town gossip, Carl Z. of The Wire magazine. This was infinitely more my style, as unlimited champagne was part of the brunch, and that type of lubricant greases of the mind and tongue in a gossip-fest like that.

Both The Baroness and Mrs. Stuyvesant-Fish were away on Palm Beach this weekend. I bribed the border guards at the Miami-Dade line to detain MSF's carriage; I was hoping that a cavity search might resolve the case of the missing tea service here at Casa Astor, but she somehow eluded detection. Early reports have her hiding in a barrel of margarita mix, and I have nothing to make me doubt otherwise.

The business we used to call The Happy Place is now known as Misery, its employees fearful of a seemingly unhinged owner. I can faithfully say that his hinges are about to be tested even more as investigations proceed into shady practices in far-off states. Karma....it can be so nasty.