The waves were breaking too close to shore to have much fun with the boogie board, but the water was clean, cool, and inviting, and I gave it a try anyway.

Recently, the odometer on my Triumph began acting wacky, with the high number turning backwards as I sped along: 20,000…10,000…0…90,000…80,000. The speedometer was replaced sometime in the eighties, so I've never known the bike's exact mileage. I’d previously had a rough idea; however, I watched that “rough idea” spin into oblivion. I swung by Sixth Street Specials to have a chat with Hugh and see if he could give me some advice about diagnosing the problem before I dug in, meddled with it, and screwed it up further.

Yesterday, I had to climb the mountain of cardboard boxes in the continuing saga of organizing the Stephen Sprouse archives. The boxes currently stored in a Brooklyn warehouse are being temporarily shipped to Manhattan to be properly inventoried and cataloged. My job is to give everything a preliminary going over, separating items that are relevant for the planned retrospective -- clothing, sketches, paintings, photographs, and so on -- from the personal things.

Deborah's friend Angel started cleaning out her closet recently and has been giving Deborah first dibs on everything. Two weeks ago, Deborah came home after working with William and Angel at their furniture store, with several pairs of calf-length stiletto-heeled leather boots. White, black, tan, brown. "Which do you like best?" Deborah asked me while trying on each pair with every outfit she owns.

Signe sent me a text on Friday afternoon: "I just found out my friend Phil is having a low-key sunset BBQ on his roof in Greenpoint," came a text message from Friday afternoon. "Wanna come?"

Yesterday morning, we awoke to find our apartment without running water. No showers, no coffee, no flushing away morning dumps. I wondered if it was just our building, or if a water main broke in the neighborhood like the one in the East Village that left "Thousands Without Water" last week.

"I had one of those little trucks," my neighbor said when she found out about the used Ford Ranger I bought on eBay. "I loved it. But I wouldn't let word get out that you have it if I were you. People are gonna start crawling out of the woodwork looking for help moving their shit. You'll see."

I was a block away from where Brian and I had arranged to meet when my phone rang. "Change of plans," said Brian. "I'm at a place with the best name for an Indian restaurant ever."

Finally, a day off after what feels like a thousand years. It was only a week and a half, and I should probably be disappointed that I didn't finish out the week for a full week's pay. But the stale air and dim fluorescent light made me want to jump out the window, so I was happy to be allowed to take the elevator and walk out the front door, instead. My eyes are still dry, cramped, and blurry from staring at a computer monitor for so long. My wrist is weak and my fingers numb.

My connection was delayed due to a stalled train on the tracks further up the line. All express trains were running on the local track, which meant that all trains were twice as crowded as usual. I was already late for work, but couldn't bring myself to squish onboard a subway car that looked like an overstuffed suitcase. Shirttails, skirt hems, and backpack straps hung in the way of the doors, and it took the train operator several tries before he was able to close them. "There's a train right behind us, ladies and gentlemen, there's a train right behind us." I'd already resigned to wait for it.

There was a photo shoot outside my window the other day. It must've been a band doing promotional shots. Four or five guys huddled together, looking awkward and uncomfortable. They weren't particularly flashy, and they weren't projecting much personality, but what else could it have been? The photographer, a skinny guy with wild curly hair and sideburns, wearing black stovepipe jeans and black Chuck Taylors, had to stop what he was doing every few minutes to pull up his pants, which kept falling over his nearly nonexistent hips, revealing what appeared to be Aquaman Underoos.

My friend and visiting fellow blogger from Australia, Dan, knows more people in New York than I do. At least at the moment, but most of them are just passing through.

After returning home from Pennsylvania, I was thrust directly into a series of long days at work. Only today, a week later, have I finally had time to unpack my bag. That doesn't mean I've unpacked it, though. It's mostly just dirty laundry, anyway.

Although the Carlyle Hotel may sound fancy -- the one in Manhattan certainly is -- I doubt the one in podunk, Pennsylvania will be. After all, it was the cheap rate that convinced us to book a room there to begin with. The hotel doesn't have a website —as Deborah said, they hardly have anyone to even answer the phone — so it's unlikely they will offer internet access. In other words, once we pack up the rental car and go, I probably won't be posting anything for a few days. We’ll see.

The receptionist at St. Vincent's Hospital directed me to the orthopedic surgeon's office, down the hall, left at the chandelier, past the portrait of the mysterious woman in black, and then further down the hallway until you come to a bank of elevators on your left, you can't miss them, and take the elevator to the 7th floor. I started down the hall but was stopped by a guard who asked me if I knew where I was going. Yes, I said, and then nodded politely while he gave me precisely the same directions.

"I was like, you should put that on your Myspace," said the girl with hair lacquered into curls like black ribbon candy to her friend with intricately painted fluorescent fingernails as they swaggered down the subway stairs. "And he was all like, 'No way,' he was like, 'If my girl sees that, she'll kill me.' And I was all like, 'Eww. You're like my cousin-in-law and shit."

Since we couldn't get the family together for Christmas, my mother organized a party over the weekend. Deborah and I took the bus on Friday night from Port Authority, which, because of the holidays, was even more than its usual ocean of whirligig flesh. After navigating the zig-zagging crowd for several minutes, I got a bad case of vertigo and had to sit down while Deborah bought the tickets. I put down my bag, took off my coat, and took a few deep breaths.

Circus performers really do live on a train. Even when they haven't hit the road yet and are still in rehearsals, there's a train not far from the rehearsal hall where they stay. You can't go on it without being invited, though, which annoyed me until I thought about it for a minute and realized that I don't want anyone in my home uninvited, either.

My internet service is on the fritz, so I pointed my receptors into the quagmire of electromagnetic pollution and found someone else's alien brainwaves to intercept.

It's still unclear how Deborah's friend ended up in the psych ward on the eighth floor of Beth Israel Hospital, but judging from the message she left on Deborah's voicemail, it's where she needed to be.