I woke up to find Deborah sleeping on the couch with her two cats keeping vigil, one at her feet, the other just inches from her face. Scattered on the floor were three volumes from a ten-volume set called "The World's Best 100 Crime Stories." Small books, hard-bound in green textured fabric, copyright 1929 and falling apart to varying degrees. There was another one resting, overturned, on the pillow next to her head.

Not that I was ever being especially creative or breaking new ground, but this little corner of the city has become so overrun with camera geeks and street art aficionados that it's challenging to get excited about taking pictures around here anymore. There are so many photos floating around the internet of random garbage, graffiti walls, banal industrial buildings under the yellow haze of street lamps, and so on, that I've become redundant.

"Oh no," said Deborah, her eyes rolling out of time with the thump thump thump rat-a-tat-tat-tat of our new neighbor's new stereo, "Our lives are about to change."

"Shoes off," said Brian when Deborah and I arrived at his apartment. I knew the routine, but Deborah had never been to Brian's place before.

Although polls opened at six a.m. yesterday, It seemed more civilized to wait until after work to rock the vote.

Although a lot of people go all out on Halloween, many more of them, like me, do nothing. Deborah says it's something she'd really like to change about me, but she's not likely to have any luck. Regardless, Deborah was wiped out from a busy work week and wasn't up for partying anyway.

Brian and I had plans for last night, but when I called him in the morning to figure out what we were going to do, he cancelled. He had overextended himself — literally. "Dude, I fucked up my back. I'm lying down right now, and it's all I can do. I can't walk, I can't sit."

What happened to the World Trade Center on September 11th made today's plane crash a much bigger story around the office than it might have been otherwise, but at the same time, it made it a much smaller story too.

"I'm the freak, you wanna shoot me?"

"Yes, I do," said Deborah.

Like a lot of people, the girl with the big brown eyes has a love/hate relationship with New York. She was supposed to move to LA several weeks ago, but she got a last-minute reprieve and decided to stay here instead. I had no idea that she was still in town, so when she revealed this to me in a recent e-mail, I was surprised.

Before Signe met up with Deborah and me, she was at the gym, and during her workout, was watching the women's Olympic volleyball competition on the gym TV.

"Hey, were you serious about wanting Kate?" asked my friend Mauricio. When I'd seen the mannequin in his showroom, he told me that it had been gifted to him by one of his clients, but he wasn't sure what to do with it because it was so unlike his other mannequins. I expressed a willingness to take her off his hands. But mannequins are expensive, and I knew he wasn't looking to unload her for free. A few days later, when he asked if I was serious about it, I still wasn't sure.

"How do you like not working?" I asked Brian, who recently quit his job to concentrate on a few personal projects, including a novel and several screenplays, none of which he's managed to touch since quitting.

I caught up with my friend E.V. at the Cheim & Read gallery in Chelsea last night for a show called I Won't Grow Up, featuring a group of E.V.'s mummified Barbies. We had previously made plans to go to a different art opening, but then E.V. emailed me to let me know about her show, which she'd somehow completely forgotten about. When she sent me the information and I saw the list of artists included (Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kembra Pfahler, et cetera), I found it impossible to believe she'd forgotten about it.

During the two short weeks Deborah and I were away on our honeymoon, the price of Deborah's preferred brand of cat food went up fifty cents per can at our corner deli, from 1.49 to 1.99. (When Deborah and her cats first moved in with me, the price was 1.29.) "I could probably feed the cats steaks for less money," Deborah said when she noticed the price increase.

Our wedding was also a reunion of sorts, as weddings often are. A lot of my friends hadn't seen each other in years, and many of them were there to see each other as much as for the wedding. I stood by as my friend (and officiator) Russell caught up with a mutual friend of ours.

I've been to Las Vegas a half dozen times -- usually on my way to somewhere else -- and honestly, I wasn't all that excited about going there again. It's fun if you can maintain a certain state of mind, but since my mind was set on getting away from noise and neon and people, I wasn't too jazzed. It was simply a necessary evil on the way to wide open spaces. Deborah had never been to Las Vegas, though, and asked if we could stay an extra night before heading out on our grand adventure. "Okay," I said. "Why not?"

Deborah rode her bicycle to a job in Park Slope the other day, and while stopped at a traffic light in Bed Sty, got cat called by three street-corner Romeos who'd apparently taken off work for the day, if not for a lifetime.

My old friend "Brother" Russell will be officiating at our wedding, and Deborah and I thought it would be a good idea to meet him for dinner to discuss what little there is to discuss concerning our small, simple ceremony.