And it stoned me to my soul

Today I registered for the first-ever New York City Half-Marathon! I'm excited about it because the course is pretty cool: We start on the Upper East Side in Central Park, go down and make one complete loop around the Park, exit the Park at the south end and run past Carnegie Hall, directly through Times Square and over to the West Side Highway, all the way downtown past the World Trade Center site and finishing in Battery Park. Whew! I didn't realize that the island of Manhattan was so short.

The race is on Sunday, August 29 (here's hoping it's not too hot) at 7:00 AM, and you know the drill: If you're in New York, you should check me out! (And then go back to bed.)

On my lunch break today I talked to some tourists in Central Park. I knew they were tourists immediately because the mother looked over at me, smiled, and said hi, which is not something any real New Yorker would ever actually do (despite reports in today's newspaper that New York is the politest major metropolian city in the world! who knew?). She inquired as to the background of the nearby Society for Ethical Culture, about which I confess to being totally ignorant, but due to the wonders of the Internet I can now report that the Society for Ethical Culture is a humanist religious community inspired by the ideal that the supreme aim of our lives is to create a more humane society. I don't know about you, but that cleared things right up for me.

Yesterday I was granted a surprise afternoon off from work, which was so lovely, especially as the past two days I've had to be in the office at 7:30 AM (which entails, in case you were curious, leaving the house at 6:30 AM and waking up at 5:30 AM). Wordplay, that new documentary about crossword puzzles and the people who are outrageously good at them, happened to be starting at the theater downstairs in fifteen minutes, which made me feel like I was in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince having just drunk that felix solution that makes everything go right. Anyway, it was a fun movie, and I went immediately afterwards to Barnes & Noble to buy myself a book of crossword puzzles. Do you believe that there are people who regularly solve the New York Times crossword in under five minutes? I am extraordinarily lucky to finish one in under a subway ride (which I came very close to doing this afternoon). Speaking of which, it has taken a few weeks, but I finally have my pre-walking down to an exact science; I know precisely where I need to be standing on the subway platform in order to ensure that I will be directly opposite my preferred staircases when the train arrives at my destination. And that, my friends, is a sure sign that I have fully readjusted to New York life.