Waiting to Get There. Usually on the A/C/E in Chelsea, New York City.

As Tom will tell you with minimal, if any, provocation, I have a wee obsession. It involves my indomitable Fujitsu Scansnap 5100M and my firetrap basement. Today, I am scanning old datebooks. Which I save. I have filed them with my tax returns since 1992, the year I came down with the notion that if I ever got audited I would be able to compute mileage based on my meeting schedule and thus justify auto deductions. While I was scanning my fifteen years bustle of undertakings, I had a shocking revelation. I barely remember my life. But riddle me this, children: Do you remember yours? For example, what were you doing in 1996? My datebook is newfangled electronic these days. Maybe I should print it to PDF for archival purposes. Or start to Twitter. Just to lock in the details so I'll have some fact-based events to reminisce about.

Choo is in first grade. He doesn't have a girlfriend. Neither does the kid who sits next to him. Anymore. He used to, but then she broke up with him. She found out he ate food off the floor.

Don't tell anybody, but I have fine-tuned a savvy plan to avoid complete dishevelment in the face of client meetings on East 42nd Street. Natural elements are at play here. It is hot as asphalt in the summer and the city is an encyclopedia of unexpected smells. But during the cursed depths of winter, the avenues are wind tunnels and exposed body parts can frost right off. It is dramatic and dangerous if proper preparations are not undertaken. Plus I like a comfortable shoe for distance situations. So it took years of trial and error refinement, but now I have a foolproof stratagem for swapping footwear and showcasing my farmgirl good looks when I ask the darling customers to show me the money. There are two fancy hotels on either side of 42nd. In the summer, I always go into the Helmsley on the south side of the street. The Ladies Lounge is right under the air conditioning vent. I stand under the vent for five minutes because cool air is blissful when the sidewalk is burning hole...

I just realized a major deficiency in my approach to wintertime germ avoidance. And I'm not talking about the other day when the check-out girl at the Health Shoppe violently sneezed on my credit card. That was an anomaly and I immediately wiped all the splooge off the card when she handed it back to me. I am talking about the hands-free approach I employ in sticky situations, such as strap-hanging in the subway or opening up bathroom doors. I put on gloves. I usually wear leather gloves. Who washes leather gloves? Not me. Upon reflection, this is a problem. There are probably staff infections from 1993 on my leather gloves. I'm considering swabbing the leather gloves with isopropyl alchohol or possibly rubbing alchohol or vodka as the gloves might actually survive the cleaning. Alternatively I could lay them out and dust them with many layers of Lysol disinfectant spray. My new improved germ-avoidance strategy is to nicely ask the cashier at Dunkin Donuts for a box of those wa...

One man's trash is another man's treasure. Except if you run it by Tom who believes in the absoluteness of the garbage classification. But as per me, recently, I have come to fancy myself the One Man and have attracted a lot of Another Men running around out there. Especially on Craigs List. Last fall, I mentioned I was going to advertise our old patio furniture on Craigs List. Because I'm too lazy to play shopkeeper, I told Tom I was just going to give it away to the first taker. Tom was like, "No one is going to want that old furniture. It's ten years old. Let's just throw it away." I perservered. I am no landfill-addict, unlike some of us around here. I put this ad on Craigs List in the "free stuff" section: 60" Round/Octagonal Patio Table and 4 matching arm chairs with cushions. Frankly, they’ve seen better days. Good news is they are no-brainer low maintenance. No need to chain up because you’re afraid somebody might steal them. Also, t...

Frequently Asked Questions for those occasions when your front-desk receptionist tells you that she is "working from home today": Q: Do you have a computer at home? A: No. Q: How do you intend to answer the phone if someone calls our office? A: You're right, that will be tough. Q: And exactly how are you signing for deliveries? A: Ummm. Q: Did you take home anything to do? A: No. Q: So then help me out here. What are you "working" on? A: I meant to say I'm taking a personal day.

The car nestled in the trees off the side of our driveway surprised me. Its windshield glinted in the twilight. At first I thought the neighbors had done some impulse paving and put in a little auxiliary parking spot abutting our property line. But then I realized the car looked suspiciously like Tom's car. It's 10pm, do you know where your car is? Well let me help you out, it is lodged on a tree half way down the hill over there by the Gravel's house.

Outside of lower Manhattan and locations riddled with bagpipes and tartan, I have never seen a man in a skirt. Until yesterday when I i-spied not one, but two men in skirts. In the Episcopalian church community room. I had no idea episcopalians were so fashion forward. Linda invited us to a Fat Tuesday show featuring a band that would have been phenomenal had the very talented standup bass player not been an irascible asshole. I think he had turets syndrome because he randomly peppered the crowd with subnormal zingers. For example, early on when he told a fan her shoes looked like Minnie-Mouse shoes. He called his band's frontman a dick. Then he said "goddamn." In a house of the lord for chrissake. All of this while wearing a skirt. The skirt was a flirty length, black. He paired his skirt with black army boots and black socks. So did the other dude. In a skirt. Down in the crowd swing dancing like he was born to boogie.

I thought it was all over when I dropped the Fujitsu ScanSnap S510M in the parking lot at work. My cherished USB peripheral bounced on the asphalt and plastic appendages exploded in a 6' radius. No one was harmed, but curious delivery truck drivers rubbernecked the whole cursed incident. I picked up all the body parts and took them back up to my office. When I was done reassembling, there were several bits left over. Nonetheless, my six pounds of scanner was back in business. Good as new. Ever since the Resurrection of the Scanner, I have become a believer. I scan everything. I jellified some serious upper body strength hauling boxes of pulp-filled paper upstairs from the basement. I ripped off a fingernail yanking out staples. I pilgrimage over to the recycle center with carloads of recently obsolete and very hefty file folders. I digitized five gigs so far and going strong. I am devout.

The only reason I mention the dark green sock dangling off the chandelier in our foyer is that it may be a fire hazard. Tom and/or Sophie managed to perch the sock up there after brunch on Sunday. They took all the socks out of the ski clothes bin in the upstairs hallway and lobbed them one by one over the banister. Their stinky missiles were aimed at Sophie's mommy and me. We were minding our own business downstairs when the maelstrom of fuzzy socks rained down upon us. The sock on the chandelier is the single POW captured during the skirmish. Hopefully it won't ignite the whole house.

Our neighbor across the street, once an ambulance-chasing lawyer, recently metamorphosed himself into a beautiful black-robed judge. The governor appointed him to the bench after some political hobnobbing paid off. The invite was engraved. Lovely. Said to RSVP by January 18, but we only got the invite on the 19th. Oh yes. Fillin' up the room with the B-listers. We certainly weren't imperious enough to not go. Never know when a judge will come in handy. Plus I wanted to nibble on rich hors d'vours with all the lawyers in their lighthearted "not-guilty" embroidered ties and scales of justice cufflinks. It was delightful. Even if the judge's wife did ask us about the plastic rocket hothouse in our front lawn. I will have to take over some of my homegrown tomatos this year.

The somersaults she makes us do in jujitsu class at the YMCA froth my brain juices into a turbulent swirl of the vomitious dizzies. I only do maybe one somersault instead of the required three for warm up. My sensai is on to me. She says to the whole class that if we cheat we're only hurting ourselves but my piece of the mat gets the brunt of her stink eye. One day when I puke all over her foot she'll know I was doing it for her own safety.

After the most logistically advanced night of my music review career involving late-night car services to places named Armonk NY, a La Quinta Inn, and three people from my office who picked me up at an ungodly hour on the way to Connecticut for a full-on business pitch Friday AM, I have successfully returned to tell my tale. Terminal 5 , the new venue on 56th & 11th, is much more solid in the way of structural underpinnings than the ramshackle fire traps in the East Village where the floors undulate after the music starts and the crowd gets bouncy. I'm a fan of cement underfoot... but kinda missed downtown's sleazy old world charm. Two levels of balconies provide ample viewing angles for punctual ticket-holders who capture barstools up front. Linda and I salmoned around under them on the main floor. We sandwiched ourselves about fifteen feet off stage left in between a muscular black dude and some bitch who kept bludgeoning me with her enormous handbag. Louis XIV played a...

Over the weekend, I pounded out the finishing touches on the new toilet paper holder. It is not placed exactly where I wanted because we had to find a stud. Iron is a weighty substance. My toilet paper holder is made from 1" x 1/2" hotrolled bar stock. It took me two days to hammer it down to 1/2" x 1/2" round in the middle there. The average blacksmith strikes the anvil 1000 times in 4 hours, according to this dude named Randy I met at the Pig Iron Pig Roast. Randy mainly consisted of bicepts.

"I don't want to go camping." "No that's not true. I have gone camping before, so I am allowed to say I don't like camping. Growing up, every summer I went to summer camp." "I hiked on the Appalachian Trail with the Boy Scouts. I mean the Indian Guides." "I'm practically crunchy."

I became a Hells Angel as soon as I careened over a speedbump and knocked off a pipe under my car I now classify as one of the "Important Pipes." I didn't look much different, but looks can be deceiving. You could hear the roaring sputtering fracas that became my vehicle coming for about ten miles. Which seemed like twenty miles because it took me so long to arrive. My speedometer topped out at 50 due to the major hitch in my giddyup. I drove the whole way home on County Route 202 given my fear of getting shot driving 50 mph on I-287. I flashed my gang sign to all the bikers I passed except there were mainly SUVs and four-door sedans given this is créme de la suburbia. When my guy at the garage told me he needed to order a part from Brooklyn so I should come back tomorrow, I said that it was a good thing I drove a decrepit VW bug in the 80s and was thus skilled in the art called Barely Making It Over a Hill By Getting A Running Start and Flooring It. You should be happy t...

Tom took out the Christmas tree today. For the first time in five years, we'll be on time for curbside pick up. Generally we wait until right around Easter. I feel terrible about it. We have betrayed our tree. I strive to make sure the tree knows it did not die for short-term frivolity. But Tom isn't a big fan of my Long Haul Three Months of Tree Plan. He whipped our poor conifer outside in a very stealthy fashion. The only reason I figured out what he'd been up to was the conspicuous and lengthy trail of pine needles. Sometimes I think about not getting a tree at all, but then I drive by one of the roadside stands on Christmas Eve and see all the homeless trees forlornly lined up out there under the cold grey sky. Condemned to die without ever completing their mission. We have to save at least one tree from such a woebegone fate! Plus they smell really good. So we wait until the last minute and take home one of the orphan trees. We decorate it and say nice things about it ...

Working himself into a kerkuffle, Noel H Ballentine MD fires my dad, his patient, for allegedly asking far too many questions. The good doctor does not appreciate reckless meddling into the status of one's own health. Proving he's no bedside chatterbot, Dr. Ballentine avoids more annoying "discussion" by doing the firing over email: I am thinking at this point that I am not the right doctor for [you]. I do not feel trusted, or appreciated. I think it is time for [you] to find another physician ... Then Dr. Ballentine and his crazy fightin' fingers really go wild west: It would be my strong suggestion that [you] find a practice other than [the Hershey Medical Center]. I would not want to be in the position of having to cover for another physician in the future. Let me boldly paraphrase: "This enormous hospital ain't big enough for the both of us. Since I work here, you need to get the hell out of dodge." My pop, never one to back down from a fist fig...

Right in the middle of left foot yellow, Suzanne turned on a lightening elbow slam that knocked me ass over teakettle. It was the only reason I didn't win the Twister semi-finals over at Michael and Lynnie's on New Year's. The evening was a grand affair. King crab legs, the tender loins of beef, some tasty lentils and an excellent playlist. No sauerkraut. Which I swear is lucky to eat on New Year's day, although no one believes me.

Let me boldly suggest my beloved Grammy is thrifty. And a talented packrat. Witness exhibit A: one package from Christmas 2007 wrapped in newspaper from April 30, 1975.