Bloggers always complain about all the email they get, and what a disaster it is that they can never answer it all, and blahblahblah. Why don't I have that problem? Before a few days ago, the only mail I got about my little portion of e-space here was from someone who thought it was really important that I increase the size of my penis. And, without letting you in on my personal assessment as to whether that's something I should address, it's not really something I want to be getting emails about.

I wanted to mention it (not the penis thing) because I did in fact get an email from a loyal fan (probably my only loyal fan, ever since Ton stopped reading the blog since it resulted in uncomfortable silences on the phone), thanking me for something or another; turns out this loyal fan is a member of our military, stationed abroad. And so I was thinking of dedicating this entry to our men and women overseas, in thanks for all of the incredibly important work that they do to keep our great nation safe. Then I realized that it may not be considered a compliment to have something of dubious quality dedicated to something of such great importance. It kind of reminds me of when a cat brings something it killed in your yard onto your doorstep. Thanks, but do me a favor and keep me out of it. Instead I'll just say thanks. And by thanks, I mean huge.

I have a thing about being on time. It's nothing to the level of an obsessive disorder, but I do start to panic when I realize that I'm going to be late for something. And I tend to arrive pretty early for appointments. It's probably something I learned from travelling anywhere with my father. For any flight, my family will arrive before the suggested arrival time either a half hour (for domestic flights) or a full hour (for international flights) (with the revised arrival recommendations following 9-11, my family's current MO is to get to the gate half an hour after the flight number is chosen, but before that information is transmitted to the FAA). I've developed an internal justification for my promptness - when you schedule a meeting with somebody, it's a sign of respect that you get to the meeting when you said you would. Not doing that is tantamount (in my opinion) to saying "Really, I don't give a tinkers cuss about what I told you before, I'll get there when I durn well please."

Which makes living in NYC something of an interesting experience (not that it wasn't an interesting experience before I got here, of course). No one is on time in NYC. Ever. For anything. Which correlates well with my respect hypothesis, since it's been my experience that no one in new york does in fact respect anyone else. I don't mind it when people are late - I've pretty much learned at this point in my life to expect that not only is the person I'm meeting going to be 15 minutes late, but I'm going to be 15 minutes early and so should bring a book, or at least have the foresight to schedule all meetings in the range of a wireless hot spot.

All of that is in the way of an aside. Went to a birthday party on Monday night, for the sister of a good friend of mine. I don't really know her that well, and certainly don't really know any of her friends. And I totally forgot that you aren't supposed to be on time for a party. Just completely forgot about it. Was panicky about getting to the party half an hour late. Half an hour? To a party of someone I don't particularly know? Obviously I was the first person there, and just as obviously I didn't know any of the five people (with the exclusion, of course, of the birthday girl) there. What followed was an incredibly uncomfortable 10 or 15 minutes. The tight lipped smile, nodding the head, sipping wine. There's only so much of that you can do without it reaching a breaking point. So I played for time - went into the bathroom.

Now, the problem with this tact is that it has a very fixed period of time where you can make it believeable. And you really have to pay attention, otherwise you'll go right over the time limit (which is really only a couple of minutes, if that). Generally speaking there's no clocks in bathrooms, so you have to keep on top of it. There's nothing like walking out of the bathroom after having accidentally spent upwards of eight or nine minutes in there just because you lost yourself in the blissful serenity of comfortable silence (a stark contrast to the incredibly uncomfortable silence waiting for you right outside the door, puncuated in 4/4 time by the world music playing on the stereo. Actually, since it's world music, the timing is 5/7 or something annoying. Which is just as well, since my interest in musical timing got stopped short when I learned that 4/4 can't be expressed as 1).

Thank god for technology, however. Upon leaving the bathroom, I remembered a call I had to make, and I didn't get reception in her apartment. So I went down to the street to reassess the situation. Luckily, I waited long enough that a whole crowd of people I knew showed up, but not long enough to make the hostess believe that I went out to call them and then waited for them to show up. It all worked out pretty well, I think. Especially since they brought beer. Ended up drinking a fair amount of that beer, to the point where I had to say to Ben "Man, I haven't been drunk on a Monday night since college."

Whereupon he said to me: "That's really not true. I was right next to you the last time you were drunk on a Monday night, and it wasn't that long ago. Remember Mardi Gras?" Sometimes having friends is annoying.