Oh my, there is nothing like spending time around a newborn. And lucky for me, there was plenty of that this weekend. Zach, who is eight weeks old, is quite a cute kid, in as much as a kid that age can be cute. Mostly he just looks like a little gnome like old man, an effect heightened by the hat he wears at all times. That plus he kind of blinks a lot and stares at you like an old man might. But he smells good, which an old man might not.

So we had a kind of valentine extravaganza, visiting Zach and Mark and Steph, who are his parents, and Sam and Clare came up for it, Clare looking not at all pregnant, even though she is pregnant. And we made a dinner that couldn't be beat and then I stayed up most of the night, not doing anything special, besides laying in bed trying to sleep. Then we went to a diner that makes tofu scramble and I had some kind of ginseng smoothie with bee pollen in it that made my heart race.

The lunch somehow turned to New York and Three Guys Diner, on the upper east side, where I have had more than a few meals, and that, inevitably led to a discussion of New York diners in general, which is a topic which I am overly familiar, due to the shpotz. But how can talk of New York and what hotspots there are there not lead to some kind of nostalgia? I was reflecting recently on if my time here has changed the way I feel about the place. My first reaction is to say no. I liked it when I got here in some ways, and those good things are the same. But the other bit, about whether it feels like home or not, I'm trying to gauge if there is anything different. I don't know. I mean, I still like the weather, and the views, but I still feel away from home, which is a hard thing to get over.