On the crowded rush-hour F train, I heard some shouting from the back of the car--not unusual, then somebody started joking about "snakes on a train". Only it wasn't a joke. This guy had an orange python in an insulated lunch bag. The guy next to him didn't say anything when he took it out and was waving it around, which was a lot cooler than I'd have been. One woman was deathly afraid of snakes. They called her Beyonce. Then the guy told this story about having a cat he hated, so he stopped feeding it, but it wouldn't go away. So he stopped feeding the snake . . . "Aw man, you can't be doing that!" said another passenger, "cats have nine lives, you're cutting the shit short!"

That thorny mess that made it so hard to remove the dead pigeon turns out to be roses! There were no flowers when I left, but there are now. That white ledge you can see in the upper right is my kitchen window, and somewhere in the bower is the basement eye-level window. Thus does my apartment say "Happy Birthday" to me!

My brother and I both left our respective cities at 4:30am to go to Minnesota when my mom had her heart attack. I took two trains to JFK. The first of which, my train, the F, I got on and was heading for a seat when I detected a whiff of feces. I looked around and saw a couple of workmen at either end of the car, and in the middle, screaming at them, was a guy, naked from the waist down, with his diarrhea-soaked pants on the floor next to him. I sat down as far away as possible and he started yelling at me, "What are you avoiding me for? Don't you want to hear what happened to me?" At the next stop, I scooted to the next car down, which was packed. Downtown in Brooklyn, I transferred to the A train to the airport. Well, by then it was 5am, which I guess is quittin' time for the local gay hookers. The one doing jettes was dressed in this: cropped jeans the waist of which was completely below his buttocks (as was, mysteriously, a fanny pack) which were covered by his pink tights; a white long-sleeved Lycra shirt, a pink cropped top over that, and a pink "working for the weekend" bandanna headband to cap it off. "There's not much going on in Salt Lake City at 4:30," Leo said, "but now that I think about it, there were three guys in suits outside the temple waiting for it to open." So there's something in a nutshell, eh?

So my moms went to see "Shrek the Third" last Tuesday and had a mild heart attack during it. Not so bad she agreed to let her friend take her home, mind you, but when she was having chest pain the next morning, she called 911 and sure enough, it wasn't just the heart-stopping excitement of the movie. My brother and I got here about the same time Thursday morning and by that afternoon, the angiogram revealed significant blockage in her arteries and she was scheduled for a bypass on Friday. (Yay, non-socialized, no-wait-list medicine!)

I was pretty surprised by the good prognosis and fast recovery she can expect. She's a little behind in her benchmarks, but she still might come home any time after Wednesday. When she does, the only things she can't do are drive and lift more than 10 pounds. Since there's no actual care involved, I'll stay on another week or so to be her "caregiver".

As for the label of this post, I never had this particular reaction to visiting here before, but this trip it really strikes me that Minnesotans are really nice. When this guy who rang up my breakfast the other day found out I lived in Washington, he said, "I went there twenty years ago and it was wonderful! Did you ride the metro?" "Did you see the Smithsonian?" I kind of rushed him along by saying I lived there for thirteen years, then I don't know how it came out that I live in NY now. His reaction was the same as everyone else here I've told, "WOW! Do you live right in Manhattan?" I said no, I live in Brooklyn. I don't know what he's heard about it, but that got another "WOW!" Then he asked me what I do there, and I told him. "Wow! And have you had a production yet?" I said no, I planned to produce my play myself. "Well, good luck with that. Well, luck isn't really part of it, I'll just say best wishes!" Now that, dear friends, is one delightful bumpkin!