Okay, how pathetic is this? The WSJ did arrive this morning -- we just didn't see it until a few minutes ago. When I finished mowing the lawn. After more than two weeks. Of rain and sun. And heavy growth

Yeah, it was way overdue.

I thought ahead this time and brought out my mp3 player with me. As I mowed I listened to some ancient techno from the Pet Shop Boys. Please, from 1985 (I think). The heat of the air and the smell of the grass put me in the mind of those unbearably humid and impossibly empty evenings of 1986 -- wandering around the Purchase campus, listening to my music on cassette tapes, contemplating... so many things. I spent that summer painting dorm rooms by day and stalking the corridors of the residence halls and campus centers by night. Funny how music can take you back. I remember it all. They even gave me a barely-operational two-way radio so I could communicate with the security department. And a set of master keys that I wasn't sure the purpose of so used them at will.

And I remember walking the roadways of the giant campus in solitude during hot humid dusks like the one outside right now.

I never did need to mow a lawn back then. Took me until age 40 to have to do that.