What's with the disclosures these days? A woman at the theater Saturday looked iffy and when I asked her if she was okay, she said "I'm having a panic attack. I'm just so scared," she continued, "about a health issue." What was I to say? "Well, it's a musical, it'll probably take your mind off things." "That's what I thought," she said. "Let me know if there's anything I can do to help you," I said, and fortunately, she started gabbing with a woman in her own damn row.

It was a mild late-fall evening in NYC, so I walked from Houston Street (where I saw "Slumdog Millionaire", which is a good movie, I guess, but even though I don't like kids, I have a low tolerance for watching child abuse) to 57th, buying a few items along the path. I was walking behind a guy and a girl I thought was his girlfriend, and he was explaining to her how his parents had been married a long time, and his mother had had a couple of miscarriages, but they didn't think they could have kids. But then when she was very aged, she became preggers with him, and "they were supposed to abort me, but they didn't". He grew into a strapping young man, I can report.

Tomorrow I'm off to Minnesota for a week for a family emergency. Don't rob my apartment, kay?