As Joe Englert and I take a taxi (he rarely drives because he thinks it's cheaper to take cabs, once you figure in parking tickets in D.C.) to Enology, the wine bar he co-owns with Adam Manson, I ask the businessman if this indeed has been an average day for him. After all, by my reckoning, here's his day (at least the parts I witnessed):

• Eat breakfast with sons, Henry and Alex
• Call a taxi and take Alex to school
• Play tennis with buddy Matt Weiss
• Sign a few documents in his office
• Play bubble hockey with me
• Share some rum shots
• Eat lunch and crack jokes at Argonaut
• Pick out china and flatware for the H Street Country Club
• Drink a small glass of black muscat at Enology
• Make phone calls

Yep, Englert says, this is pretty much an average day, though he's quick to remind me that he did get some documents notarized at the National Capital Bank of Washington, where he traded jabs with Vice President John Gordon, who wanted to know when Englert moved to D.C. It was 1984, Englert remembered, right after he gorged on Big Macs in Los Angeles when McDonald's was giving them away for every U.S. gold medal won during the Olympics. "That explains a lot," Gordon says dryly.

But Englert says that sometimes he goes from place to place, checking on the Internet jukeboxes at his bars and restaurants. He wants to make sure that some evil music hasn't been automatically downloaded onto the machines. "You can show up one day, and George Michael is on the jukebox," Englert says. "It's just not good for your place."