It really works! I learned this trick from Ted "Queer Eye" Allen--when you open a bottle of sparkling wine, you can stick a spoon in the neck, handle first, and it keeps it from going flat. Ted doesn't know why it works and neither do I, but I had a bottle of champagne open in the fridge over night and it was still fizzy.

I wanted to go to a meeting on Staten Island Wednesday and when I totaled it up, I spent five hours getting to and from there. I saw the new Tom Stoppard play (and old Tom Stoppard himself in the alley, later) at the matinee, then took the subway to the financial district and caught an express bus. I thought the bus went on the ferry, and had wondered if we'd stay in our seats or get off, and if we were in our seats and the ferry capsized, would I have a chance to swim for it. Ha--the bus goes through the Brooklyn Battery tunnel, then over the Verrazano Narrows bridge. (In my defense, though, I took the ferry home, and it seems like it is designed to take vehicles.) I normally enter and exit my borough underground, so I didn't know the welcome to Brooklyn sign says, "You name it, we got it" and the leaving Brooklyn sign says "Fuggedaboudit". So what is "it"?

Once you get there, Staten Island is like a small Ohio town in the 1940s.

Kellie, my herb-growing phlebotomist, was complaining to her husband one night last week that she doesn't have any friends in New York and because she hates people, she's never going to make any. Her husband, Michael, must be very perceptive, because although I've only met him once, he identified me as an ideal friend for someone who hates people. When I happened to stop by the blood bank to kill some time, she announced her intention to force her friendship on me. What could I do? I invited her out for rijstaffel.

My most stylish friend, Lorna, is visiting from Maine, with Matt and their five year-old daughter, Olivia, who's from Hong Kong. I thought I'd misheard when Olivia asked Matt to open a package for her because "I don't want to break a nail." "No, you heard right," Matt said, "Ask her what she's doing for her birthday." "I'm getting an up-do," she told me, at some kid's salon in Portland. I think we can finally put this controversy to rest: it's nurture!

Finally, Tuesday night I went to a theater where underemployed actors do readings of unproduced works. I might be able to get in on this (I thought it could be fun for Andy and me to hear a scene from our movie acted out) but I'm going to go a couple more times to get the skinny. It seemed like writers are in demand, because the organizers suggested that during the pre-reading cocktail hour, the actors buy us drinks to try to get parts. And you know actors never spend a dime unless they absolutely have to. Mmmm, free drinks.