Greetings from Brooklyn, where it is cold and bright, and where I slept until almost 9 because I was up till after 2 because that's how life works here when your host's working day often ends at 4 a.m. So far we have drunk New York State beer at Commonwealth in Brooklyn (the aforementioned host's bar), eaten dinner at Sparks in midtown (famous mob-patronized steakhouse, famous spot for mob hits, though no one was murdered while we were there . . . at least not in the dining room, where the waiter insisted on referring to me as "young lady" all evening), had a ginger beer at the bar under the constellation ceiling at Grand Central Station, read interesting advertisements in the subway ("Relationships may fail, but philosophy is forever. Sign up for a class now!"), hugged a large son, sat around in a basement living room listening to Queen and Pavement, and tried reading the directions for how to use a theremin but had to give up because I was mostly asleep.

Today I have no plans, other than to (1) eat dinner with my son and our friends this evening and (2) buy a pencil box. (Why do I, of all people on this planet, not own a pencil box but just have a purse full of writing implements with the tips broken off and the sharpener lost among the extra Band-Aids?) Surely NYC contains a pencil box I can afford.