Life, while mostly predictable, can sometimes surprise you.

I don't just mean how you can have an adventure everytime you walk down the street, even though you can, like just tonight, when I was coming home and a very pretty Moldavian girl tried to solicit me with a spearmint patty to donate money to her organization, though I could hardly understand her, since she had a thick Moldavian accent, or how you might find your wife run over by a car, even though that is what Bill did, though she will be ok. What I mean is that it can be surprising. Take the last two weeks for instance. Even though this timeline is jumbled and leaves out a few key events, like a totally debauched night that is locked in the vault but has nonetheless scarred me, this is a sampler of events:

Mar 4: My parents came out to California to visit. Not to visit me technically, but it was a visit nonetheless. They were actually here to visit my uncle, aka my dad's brother. Still, we had a merry old time visiting here and there, staying up north in Petaluma, and eventually they came to San Francisco and they took the ferry across the bay and a cable car and we walked around some and the local men all seemed inclined to revere my mother in some perverse Judy Garland kind of way.

Mar 7: Had a lovely luncheon at Greens, the premier vegetarian restaurant around here, though certain people felt that their tofu was sour. My father commented only on the urinal, which he spent some time marvelling thinking it was a bidet for men, at until another man came in an peed in it. Afterwards, went to Japantown and took in the local sights and Japanese people in their native habitat.

Mar 8: Took my mother to a Zen monastery. She seemed to enjoy it. Then took a drive up mount Tam, and stopped on the side of the road to buy some nuts from a grizzeld old Russian man. Cresting the top of the mountain, I came upon an enormous spider being eaten by ants. When I say enormous, I mean about the size of a baby's hand.

Mar 11: My parents went to Big Sur, to stay at Esalen and watch naked people play the diggerydoo. They befriended an Iranian.

Mar 18: Fly to New York. The flight is surprisingly easy, in spite of the unwatchable film they showed with the Rock and Christopher Walken. We are met by a white stretch limo with champagne in the back, due to some mix up at the car service. Feeling sort of prom night, I resist the impusle to stick my head out the roof window.

Mar 18 (LATER): I head to the east side, to check in to the Mark, where it smells of cologne and I imagine some foreign man has recently been and has only recently departed. However, they upgraded me so the room is quite large. Then I went out to dinner for a birthday dinner for Bill at Neowhere the bill is shocking, by anyone's standard. Then back to the hotel.

Mar 19-20: Work from early in the am, sorting through the chaos of line reviews, until the late. The surprise snowstorm may be cause, or the colleague with cooties who breathed on me, but I catch a cold. All plans to do construction are thwarted. At Eisensteins, I eat a chicken salad sandwich, even though it is 9 am EST, making it about 6 am PST. But I feel extreme measures are called for, as I don't feel well. Later I meet Julie, and see here lovely baby Lilly. Then I run into Peter on the street and mistake him for his twin, David. Then I run into Jude on the street, surrounded by lesbians. I begin to feel like the mayor of New York. I eat all lunches at City Bakery, where you can get line caught New Zealand Salmon for 12$ a pound. Fortunately I have an expense account.

Mar 19: Visit my sister and am surprised to witness the aging of her children, my nephews. Sonia, her youngest, now speaks in sporadic phrases, though she most certainly would not remember me if I were to disappear from her life. Later, go to see a band at Joe's Pub who will almost certainly be much more successful in the coming years. Go to the Ear Bar, which makes me sad, as it seems one of the very few, dwindling places of its kind left in New York, which is rapidly being covered in glass, stylized concrete and aluminum. Although it is Chris's birthday, I am too ill to attend and crawl home humiliated, having made the amateur mistake of taking the E train to 53 and Lex and having to get out and take a cab. That night, lay on my back for many hours, finally take a sleeping pill.

Mar 20: Spend the day involved in righteous nonesense, going to get lumber, only to have Theo's timing belt snap as we got to the parking lot, so there was nothing to do but get towed. While we waited for the tow truck, we went next door and bought some sunflower seeds and non pareils.

Mar 20 (LATER):See Chantal in an avante garde play, which is surprisingly good. Then off to Bowery Bar, then off to Moby's where he holds court on various political topics. Somehow on another night we also go see a band and Tom Visconti is there in the booth with us. He was in T Rex and David Bowies band and stuff and he's really famous. He was kind of grumpy and sort of looked like my nice, now dead friend Lou Shapiro.

Mar 21: Get a flight back where I am trapped between ninety Stanford math kids, all breathing on me and smelling like feet. It is perhaps the longest flight of my life. I finally get home to my apartment just about dead.