Saturday afternoon was more summery than many summer days, and I called Jason to see if he wanted to enjoy it with a motorcycle ride.

Although, as a freelancer, I work with a lot of different people in a variety of places, there's a lot less diversity than you might think. Sure, every once in a while, a job comes out of left field to shake things up, but for the most part, everyone I work for is in the same business, doing essentially the same things. Subtle personality differences and different management styles are the most I can expect.

Deborah's freelancing, on the other hand, brings her in contact with a much more colorful spectrum of humanity

On Saturday morning, Deborah lifted her head off the pillow and told me she felt like shit. She'd been suffering from a cold for three days, and it didn't seem to be getting any better. I was already out of bed, getting dressed and ready for another drive to New Jersey, this time for a brunch being held in honor of my aunt and uncle's 60th wedding anniversary.

My hand is nearly healed from my trigger finger surgery, and I had the day free yesterday, so I stopped by the garage to check on my bike and take it out for a spin. It's amazing how much dust can accumulate in three weeks. I was brushing it off and crouching down to check the tightness of various nuts and bolts when a guy walked in with his biker-chick girlfriend. He was tall and thin with slick blonde hair and a pair of Wayfarers resting on his forehead. Everything he wore was emblazoned with a Harley logo. He held his girlfriend's hand with his left hand and a Harley shopping bag with his right. His girlfriend was dressed in a similar fashion. Leather jeans and a black tank top. Her hair was a wild, bleached mess. I wondered what was in the bag.

I was showing the fresh scars from my hand surgery to my uncle, who has me beat with fresh scars from the three separate surgeries he's gone through in less than a year. "If it's not one thing, it's another," he said. His latest looks like the letter "J" from his ear to his throat. We were comparing stories of stitches and scars when my father walked up.

"What's the suit for?" the salesgirl asked as she rang me up.

"A wedding," I said, somewhat sheepishly.

I heard my phone ring, but because my hand is still slightly stiff and swollen from my recent surgery, I had a hard time fishing my phone out of my pants pocket in time to answer it. It was Brian, and he left a message: "I have some bad news," he said. "I went to my mom's house this past weekend and saw my brother-in-law. (Brian's brother-in-law is a pediatrician.) Apparently, I'm dying from several infectious parasites."

The other day, when we met my friend Robert for brunch, he picked us up at our loft in a tiny silver car he rented at the airport. Deborah climbed into the back of it, I squished into the front, and we rode to the restaurant.

I paid so little for the pickup truck I bought last year that I knew I'd have to spend money on repairs eventually. I just wasn't prepared for it to be so much so soon.

My hand doesn't look too bad in this picture. It didn't hurt much when I took it, either, because my hand was still numb from the local anesthetic. I've been trying to peek under the gauze, but I've only been able to see the very tip of the incisions. I'm dying to see what the stitches look like. Tomorrow, I'm allowed to take the dressing off, and we can look together. How's that sound?

I have no idea how tomorrow's hand operation will affect my riding ability, or for how long. It could be weeks. And since, like me, a motorcycle can't be expected to run very well if it's left sitting too long, I met with Jason yesterday and spent the afternoon tooling around Brooklyn on our aging classics.

The collection of Stephen Sprouse's belongings that had been stored in a Brooklyn warehouse for years, now known as the archives, was moved to another warehouse in New Jersey a few months ago. Yesterday morning, I went there with a couple of people who were searching for items to scan and photograph for a project they're working on. I met them in front of their apartment building, and we hopped into a hired SUV to cross the Hudson River to my old home state.

March 12, 2008When I handed the receptionist at the cardiovascular center my paperwork, she seemed confused, as if I'd handed her a pile of supermarket coupons. She looked at my paper for a minute, then directed me down a long hallway, through an unmarked door that looked like a door to a hopper or a broom closet. When I reached the door, I turned around and returned to the receptionist to ask if I had heard correctly. "Through there?" I said, pointing down the hall, "Or around there?"

After work, off the subway and up the stairs, down the street, at the local coffee shop that Deborah calls the student union, I passed a young guy slouched in an "S" shape -- rounded shoulders and bended knees -- all dressed in black and smoking a cigarette.

Deborah and I rented a predictable, clichéd Science Fiction movie called Equilibrium last night. Typical vision of a fascist future where everyone is controlled by drugs and where "feelings" are illegal.

Today, like so many Sundays, wasn't a day of rest, but rather a day for laundry and grocery shopping. Although there are a couple of coin-operated washing machines in our building's basement, their constant state of disrepair, along with our fear of bed bugs, keeps us from using them. Instead, we take our overstuffed bags to the laundromat a few blocks away. Calmed by the soothing hum of industrial-sized washers and dryers, we sat reading National Geographic magazines until the spin cycle was done.

After not seeing Virgo Supercluster in a long time, I met her for dinner the other night. Because it was exactly between our two workplaces, I suggested Rodeo Bar on 27th Street and 3rd Avenue. It turned out to be a mistake. Jam-packed with a restless after-work crowd, we had trouble finding each other, and when we finally did, hearing each other. The host seated us in what he called "the quiet section," but it didn't sound any different to me. The dark section, maybe, but not quiet.

Don't ask me why I didn't take pictures last night, and why, instead, I've illustrated this story with totally random old pictures from all over the place.

My friend Jason celebrated his 40th birthday on Saturday with a small party at a barbecue joint near his apartment in Windsor Terrace, where he lives with his girlfriend, Erika. Deborah and I drove over, parked a few blocks away, and looked at the apartments between our parking spot and the restaurant, wondering what the rents were like and if it might be worth considering moving there.

Several months ago, a wood-burning pizza oven was delivered across the street to a nondescript cinderblock building next to an auto body repair shop. At the time, it had a sign above the door that read, E.S.P. Construction Corp.. An odd place for a restaurant, perhaps, but someone had a vision. I watched eagerly out my window as spring turned to summer, summer to fall, and the new year came and went. "When the hell is that pizza place going to open?"