Vignettes from the last 72 hours

1) At the pool for a pre-work swim, I started talking to my lane mate, a skinny girl with an athletic build wearing a two-piece. Let me explain first; no girls that swim competitively really ever wear two-pieces, even ones made for lap swimming. This girl turned out to be very competitive, a tri-athlete who was just finishing her 2000 morning workout. What I didn't realize was that I had already met her and talked to her; midway through her conversation she spurts out "but we've already had this conversation! Don't you remember?"

"Sorry," I said. "My memory is fuzzy before 9 A.M. - that's the time when I start getting in trouble for not remembering things." To be honest I didn't remember her at all. "I have the memory of an elephant," she said. "But I don't know anything else but what we talked about."

2) Walking out of the Time Warner Center to work, I almost had by head caved in my a mini avalanche. A 15 lb block of ice fell from the top of the building onto the sidewalk, scattering shards 20 feet in every direction, sounding like a car backfiring. I was probably about 10 feet away. And I thought that place was all classy and safe and upscale. Reminds me of that time we convinced the girl from Florida visiting the dorms in Philadelphia that she needed to buy an icicle helmet.

3) After the swim, I was late to work. When I got there, my co-workers were standing around one of the analysts on our desk, shaking his hand. I knew immediately what was going on. This analyst was the first person I interviewed with during the hiring process for my current job. At another office it could have been that he was getting engaged, having a kid, or a number of things. At our office people come up to you one at a time and shake your hand when one of those things happens. He was leaving, and in the industry we worked in, switching jobs is a disappearing act. No one in the companyknows about it till you send out the terse, 3 sentence email to the everyone listserve. And then you're gone by the end of the same day. Just like that, people move in and out of your life.

4) Laughing uncontrollably while playing gamecube, I realized that it doesn't take much to entertain me. But it doesn't mean I don't have expensive taste (I like to think of it as supporting the economy). My next trip will be a real vacation - to the Atlantis on Paradise Island, in the Bahamas. It's tempting to take an "appetizer" trip to Vegas meanwhile, but I'm working hard on convincing someone to come with me to plow down Mayan temple slides and check out the aquarium, before retreating to the casino and overpriced hotel room.

5) Lazzara's Pizza, now my favorite pizza joint in the city. Especially after i got sick from Angelo's a couple of times.