This is what comes from finishing a post with “okay, I have something to say and I’ll say it just as soon as I get a little lunch!” What happens is that you decide that maybe you’ll wait until Friday, yeah, Friday!, to finish telling your story, only to have your cable modem make a series of unpleasant blinks and your internet connectivity disappear. Over the weekend it returns sporadically, just enough to get you to relax and work in earnest, only to crash again after an hour, or nine seconds. Resetting the modem doesn’t help. Unplugging and replugging the modem doesn’t help. Unplugging, then replugging the modem while simultaneously hitting the reset button doesn’t help. So you turn the modem off, only to see it flash sporadically in your peripheral vision. The cable company insists that there are no records of outages in your neighborhood, and they’ll have to send a tech out, but he won’t be able to come for at least four days. Meanwhile, your brainy and delightful husband checks the cable company’s website from the office the next day and discovers that said cable company is indeed updating their IP information, and this update “may result in interrupted or degraded service.” I’ll say it does.
Normally in such situations, I would roll my eyes, throw a tiny little snit about having to pay for auxiliary service when we already pay plenty for the privilege of high-speed internet, and then head down to the local, where I can at least get some nice tea and a couple of espresso truffles while I’m at it. This week, though, the lovely Miriam is coming to town—in fact, she’ll be at that airport 50 short blocks from my house in about 5 1/2 hours—so for the next two days, I’ll be deep in yarn-based merriment, which is a twee way of saying that I’ll be picking Miriam’s brain on lacework and sweater construction until she flees, screaming, for Philadelphia on Friday. With any luck, though, the cable company will get its ganglia together, and maybe, just maybe, Miriam and/or I can let you know what a swell time we’re having while we’re actually having it.
This reminds me: If you will be in Manhattan on Thursday, July 12 and you’d like to eat, drink and knit in the dark with Miriam and me and an exaltation of New York knitterinae, we can be found at Grassroots Tavern, 20 St. Marks Place (between 2nd and 3rd Avenues), starting at 5 p.m. Now that I’ve told Miriam that Grassroots has traditionally been cool about letting people bring food in from outside, I am officially nervous that the house rules might have changed, and that we might all have to troop over to Paul’s or San Loco or Stage or Caracas Arepa Bar for dinner after all—but hey, we’ll jump off that bridge when we get to it.
Apologies once again, dear friends. I promise you that when the cable is back, I will be, too. Until that time, though, I can at least share an inconsequential but still somewhat amusing anecdote: Remember once upon a time when I wondered just what the hell was going on in my neighborhood, particularly in light of some truly worrying graffiti? It never occurred to me to actually take a walk through the neighborhood and see if any film permits had been issued in the area. Turns out there were. (It’s a terrific movie, incidentally, and I’m not just saying that because it was shot all over my little corner of the neighborhood. If you are not averse to, erm, strong language, adult content and violence, do put it on the queue of the movie rental engine of your choice.)