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

Nothing says Friday Night like hoofing around the Village at 4am in pursuit of a public defender and an Ethiopian, aka Kerry's sister and her sister's boyfriend. We found them at the Little Branch Bar, a cross between a crowded speakeasy and your mother's basement with a lot of people in it. I drank a rum buck made out of real ginger and real ginger juice. It was good. I love ginger. One time, I loved ginger a little too much and ate an entire jar in one sitting. (Please keep in mind that what may seem like an assbad idea to some people may seem like a genius move to other people, especially if they have had between three and seven beers.) How it became 4am confounds me. One minute we were circling the block between 59th and Tenth searching for a bar actually located on 53rd and 9th; the next minute it was three hours later and we missed what could be considered the entire set of the band my friend's friend's friend was fronting; and then suddenly we were downtown l...

"Can I get a hit?" - College freshman kid to a girl at the show on Monday night. A wild girl, brazenly sucking a toke. On a Marlboro Light.

I went to college with more than a few Arab sheiks' sons, an Argentinian blue blood and a truckload of your everyday heiresses. They all had rooms in the dormitories. With no beds. They slept off campus in palatial apartments on Rittenhouse Square chockalot with hot tubs and full maid service. But for those awkward hours between classes, the richlings all held onto their conveniently located pied-a-terre dorm rooms. Which they pimped out with fluffy hand-tooled oriental rugs, sectional couches, big TVs and refrigerators filled with beer and spicy finger food. The Really Rich get complete and entire new wardrobes every season. If you say you like their shirt they will take it right off and give it to you. There's more shirts where that one came from. The Really Rich go heliskiing and think if you don't go it's not because you can't afford to rent a helicopter for the weekend, it's because you're busy. The Really Rich don't quite comprehend any other stat...

I have informed Tom I would appreciate either a flypress or a chipper shredder for my Birthday.

Antiperspirant is up to no good. Behind its happy-go-lucky holocaust on sticky pits, there is danger. Namely aluminum. Which leaches right into your blood and shrivels your brain cells. So I have put my lingering smells in the hands of your standard old-school deodorant. Not without its own challenges but I would choose stink over drool any day of the week. Cluelessly, I attempted to go about deodoranting with an antiperspiranting approach. Kerry set me straight: The key to successful deodorant use is the reapplication. Keep some in the car. Keep some in your desk drawer. Hide some under the sofa cushions in the homes of your relatives. Wear undershirts.

To: Agency Staff From: Stacey Subject: I'm BACK! Got in at 4:30 am last night after two late flights and one missed connection (arrgh!!). Needless to say, after 35 hours in airplanes or sprinting around airports, combined with some magnificent jet lag, Tom and I are in slug mode today. I'll be in tomorrow. To: Stacey From: Eric Subject: I'm BACK! Barry and I noticed that the Def Leppard/Whitesnake tour kicked off in New Zealand last week – hope you were able to get tickets!

Buscot Station Lodge is the love child of a cozy retreat for backpackers and the aspiring set of a horror film. Check it: An isolated homestead packed with stuffy furniture covered in doilies, a collection of fragile china tea cups, thick oriental rugs and a lot of tiny blood-sucking insects. The proprietor, a deep-voiced sixty-something slow talker heavily into monotoning 24/7 political discourses and snapping at his house boy. The house boy, a skinny Jewish (but not from Israel) high-pitched switch-hitter twinkling about in short short shorts and dark sunglasses asking all the girls what games they played as children and surreptitiously taking time-lapse pictures of his favorite ladies while they ate dinner. People taking really long showers. Rusted scythes and heavy farm machinery strewn around a decrepit garage. The midnight drone of immense harvesters tirelessly circling the farm house. A dormitory above the garage overflowing with pubescent teenage boys in their perpetually damp...

The whole New Zealand experience locks down a simple truth : Humans are wee little cocky ass pantywaists. What kind of idiot fucks are we to presume our tyranny over Mother-Earth? Carelessly polluting, eroding, mining, draining, paving, killing. Papatuanuku will squash us with a glance. She has pulled towering black mountains from the depths of the sea. She has yanked entire continents asunder. She has strewn billions of white-hot stars into the milky way, hurling them across distances our tiny crazy brains cannot comprehend. She reigns at the speed of light; dominates with infinite time. Our entire species is lost in the trace of a single teardrop. Moss and ferns and milky white ice will cover our selfish dead bodies, strewn over the poisoned planet we begat.

We're freshly back from Middle Earth. Land of the Kiwi. In sum, I have never seen anything like it.

After a frenzy of wild activity, I shut my office door and whisked myself away for a two week vacation. Right before I took off, I went into our corporate fridge to empty out my motley assortment of foodstuffs. Unthinkingly, I carried a container of take-out fish back to my office. I tossed it out in the garbage can under my desk. Do you think it will still be there when I get back?

Sethie was a lifty at Mount Baker back in his long-hair days. He and his ski-rat black-diamond daredevil amigos usually rigged out in mismatched skis and duct-taped jackets. It is a universal truth. The more decrepit your equipment looks, the cooler it is when you get out there and show 'em how it's done in prime time. So same goes for backpacking. Sethie was kerkuffled that Tom and I would destroy the family reputation if we showed up at the trailhead with the price tags hanging off our spanking new backpacks and hiking boots. Especially if we had no game. Which is likely since I haven't been backpacking since maybe 1984 and Tom is a nubile camping virgin. Sethie advocated leaving our new gear out in the rain or maybe seeking out mud. Aside from that topline tip, he also recommended: Hanging twist ties off various clips on the backpack exterior. Sethie says twist ties come in handy on the trail, plus they make you look like you know what you're doing. Line all your stu...

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.