When the heat wave breaks, it makes the heat wave worthwhile.

Heard in Payless Shoes on the Upper East Side: "Ezra, put your Crocs on!"

Sunday, service changes by Metro Transit Authority took effect. Two bus lines I use were eliminated and the routes tacked on to two other routes. Because there was a fire down the line yesterday morning, I got off the F train and took the newly re-routed #61 downtown. "Is this bus going to get me to traffic court?" one passenger asked. Over the loudspeaker, the wiseacre driver said, "Traffic court, People's Court, I'm a git you there, don't worry."

Meanwhile, in the seat behind me, a young woman was yelling on her cell, "My daughter said, 'Mommy, why she wash my hair with braids in?' We'll take this to court because that bitch don't know what she's doing. How the fuck she don't know how to take out braids?" Would this case be heard in Traffic or People's court? Doesn't matter, it's still the #61!

Off to shower, then lunch with my sweetie at his favorite lunch place, a Thai restaurant in Manhattan. I shan't name it because I cannot deal with the paparazzi today.

Everything really is beautiful at the ballet! I got to go to the New York City Ballet Saturday to see three pieces. As you'll recall, Lincoln Center and I are celebrating a year of Prokofiev, so the first piece was "Prodigal Son", with a ballerina who looked so tall and reedy she looked like a Julie Taymor giraffe. The second piece was my favorite, an abstract dance choreographed by Peter Martins. The tableau at the end was the most beautiful assemblage of human flesh I've ever seen, then the girls moved slightly and it was even more beautiful. The last piece, like "Prodigal Son", choreographed by Balanchine, was my least favorite, based on American folk music and square dancing, but it had the attraction of two dancers falling. Normally when seeing a dance performance, I think about the fact that the dancers have the exact same allocation of joints, tendons, muscles, etc., as I do, and I reminisce about Gelsey Kirkland's book, Dancing on My Grave. This time, though, I also thought about the grace and balance of their upper bodies. I can't be a ballerina, but there's some room between what they do and the way I fling my arms around like a lowland gorilla is all I'm saying.

Have you all heard how scandal rocked the Brooklyn census offices last week? H hopes I get more work because of it, but I've been looking at July 10 as my parole date. But yes, I do need money. (Talking to you, #11 molar!) In another Times story about the 2000 census, I found this priceless 'only in New York' quote, " But at no time was it ever O.K. in the slightest way to file for fictitious incorrect falsification." Ladies and Gentlemen, Al Sharpton, census supervisor!

What I find very interesting in that quote is apparently the Times style book prefers O.K. to okay. Dudes, the shift key, really?

The super came over yesterday and installed the air conditioners I bought from my neighbor who moved to Amsterdam. Best thing about a/c? Sleep!

Another picture from the Bingham Canyon Mine--see the full-size school bus? Now look at the dump truck it's coming up to. One of the many fun facts I learned is that a former waste product, molybdenum, now sometimes exceeds the value of the copper the mine is known for. That reminds me of a story from a book about the Mormons Harriet lent me. The Mormons only wanted to mine "useful" materials, coal, iron, and lead. They gave up one lead mine in Nevada because the ore was too impure, although they fashioned bullets from it. Which they hopefully used to kill local werewolves, because when someone else took over they found one major impurity, silver, turned the economy of the mine around.

I've been listening to the beautiful Nancy LaMott, "Live from Tavern on the Green" CD. You can hear a little plate-clinking, but it's really a clear recording. I can't forget that she died of cancer (so she must have known she was a goner) two months later, which frosts every song with a layer of sadness. Nevertheless, she sends me a little encouragement, "Asking for things you're needing/You never can go wrong/If you have faith that things are happening as they should/And just believe each step you take is leading you to something good/Help is on the way/From places you don't know about today . . ."

Lincoln Center and I continue our year of Prokofiev this Saturday when I'm seeing the New York City Ballet.

My new favorite TV show, "You're Cut Off!". Is there a point below which I will not go? Apparently not.

Here are H and me at Marie's Crisis (show tunes piano bar in Greenwich Village), about 23 hours into his birthday and an hour away from mine. I'm getting a little long in the tooth (ouch, that reminded me of last week's root canal) for two big nights in a row, but what can we do? We did have two very special evenings.

Harold knows I can't eat crab, so I took him to City Crab for his birthday dinner because he'd never have taken me, and we had big shrimp cocktail, big seared tuna, clam chowder, and a bottle of wine. On the way to Marie's, we stopped in a bodega at the corner so I could buy my birthday treat, a whooppie pie. The bodega guy asked for a dollar-fifty and my phone number, and just as I was trying to figure out what had been said (right in front of Harold, but in fairness, we were in Greenwich Village, on our way to a piano bar), a prostitute came in and said hi to both of us. So it was a very magical night. Since I wanted H to have a perfect birthday, I even hung in for Joe's pizza at 2am.

Last night, H took me to Faustino, a "new Italian" restaurant owned by a real chef, you know, one who's on TV, Scott Conant. (He's the judge on "Chopped" who bags anyone who puts raw red onions on his plate.) I had a delicious meal, stewed eggplant with pork (kind of the fatty pork taste you get in pork and beans) and roasted black bass with purple artichokes and fava beans with mint. Harold had the biggest platter of duck breast I've ever seen, as he said, "the Jayne Mansfield of ducks". Everything he gave me had to do with "us": my first Bar Mitzvah card, a CD and DVD of late great singer Nancy Lamott, and Jonathan Schwartz's memoirs. Then we went to the secret lounge at Crifdogs, where we had weirdo cocktails and tater tots. It's probably been a decade since my last tot and I really enjoyed them, and after the first couple of sips of fire water, I grew to like my coffee concentrate and cherry Black Jack.

Two happy New York birthdays on which we tried not to dwell on the opening of Auschwitz (June 14) and the fire aboard the General Slocum ferry (June 15)!