Her: What happened to you?!

Me: (holding arm) Fencing.

Her: You're 36, why don't you learn to knit?

Her: What happened now?!

Me: (limping) Wrestling.

Her: What about yoga?

Me: (CRASH!)

Her: (sighing) Why are you always tripping, dropping or breaking something?

Me: (turning to answer and accidentally knocking over a glass) I'm not sure.

Got hit with a lotta snow. Was supposed to go to my buddy's housewarming Saturday but it was canceled. So we stayed in and watched a marathon of poor cinematic choices rounded off with carols at church.

George Bailey: Oh, now Pop, I couldn't. I couldn't face being cooped up for the rest of my life in a shabby little office. (remorseful) Oh, I'm sorry Pop, I didn't mean that, but this business of nickels and dimes and spending all your life trying to figure out how to save three cents on a length of pipe. (resigned) I'd go crazy. I want to do something big and something important.

Pa Bailey: You know, George, I feel that in a small way we are doing something important.

Me: You mean you watch the whole thing? Y'don't just fast forward to the action?

Him: No, I want to hear the plot.

Me: Plot?! There's no plot; it's always something like: guy shows up to deliver pizza, girl steps outta the shower, and oh, she has no money to pay him. What to do? What to do? Oh my! I've appeared to drop my towel...

Him: (laughing) I still like to see what happens.

Me: Y'know what happens - nuthin that ever happens in real life, that's what happens. Grand thespians, they're assuredly not.

Been looking at a buncha ebook readers lately for myself.

Him: Ran into your ex the other day...she didn't really want to talk about what happened with you two.

Me: Don't blame her - wasn't our best moment, if you will.

Him: Y'don't hate her?

Me: (thinking) Put it this way - if y'were a 31 year-old chick in a happy, stable, relationship, would you throw it all away on some meaningless flings? In other words, how much of a ______ would I have to be for her to do that? Wasn't our best moment. Wasn't my best moment. But I'm trying to be better.

Her: He and I were married 10 years. Now we're not. I had all these plans...

Me: Yeah, y'had all these beautiful plans. Now you gotta come up with new ones. And you will. Right now, y'think of them every minute yeah? But in a while, it'll be every other minute. Then it'll be every other hour. One day you'll realize, y'didn't think of them, or him, all day. Then someday months'll go by when y'don't think of them.

Her: I can't imagine that...

Me: That's what I thought.

Her: Oriental Avenue, $100. Do you want to buy it?

Me: Yes. I am Asian, after all.

Me: I'm calling to say, Thank you. For letting me out of the lease. I'm just curious as to why you did. Last time, had to go to court and it was painful.

Him: (shrugging) Figured that with the market being like it is, you'd call me eventually. But you could have withheld rent or whatever, but you didn't. And you always kept your word - you don't know how many people tell me the check's in the mail and it never is. Your checks were. (pause) Plus I know about what happened to you. You deserved better than having that bitch screw you. So...I'm cutting you a break.

Me: (nodding) Thanks. I do appreciate it.

Him: No problem, Logan. I'll send some business your way when I can. You're a good guy. (holds out his hand) Good luck.

Me: Hey, let's look at apartments we can't afford.

Her: It's always good to dash dreams on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.

Me: So we're in agreement then.

Me: You'll meet her Friday - don't tell me what you think of her.

Him: Don't tell you?

Me: No. Cause I think she's amazing and don't wanna hear it any other way.

Her: Your friends are nice. I can see why you're friends with them. That's not always the case.

Me: I'm 35. (pause) Got ridda mosta the jerks by now.

PCD: You're like an imaginary person now.

Me: I find that both funny and sad. Why is that?

Her: Because we aren't real life friends

Me: Because we never see each other? (thinking) I try to see things from Heartgirl's point of view, if there was a guy she liked a lot and saw him regularly, I'd be a little peeved. (pause) She knows I'd never cheat on her. But I also told her that you were kind and good and that kind and good people we should keep around. I do consider us real friends.

Her: I know. Just have a fun vacation, ok?

Her: I kind of feel that I...I just got swept up in my own life. How weird is that? To get swept away by your own life?

Me: Yeah, I know what you mean.

Tell myself that I write in a mix of hardboiled and the Economist but with a lotta slice-a-life descriptions a la A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

Yes, it's a girl's book but it's also a book about NYC and the people in it. Some of the clearest pictures of my city are between those lines. One Xmas scene stays in my mind - in it, a tree butcher has a contest to give away the trees he can't sell: if you can catch a tree without falling, it's yours. When he prepares to throw his nicest tree, a small, poor girl and her little brother ask for the chance to catch it.

"Oh, Jesus Christ," his soul agonized, "why don't I just give 'em the tree, say Merry Christmas and let 'em go? What's the tree to me? I can't sell it no more this year and it won't keep till next year." The kids watched him solemnly as he stood there in his moment of thought. "But then," he rationalized, "if I did that, all the others would expect to get 'em handed to 'em. And next year, nobody a-tall would buy a tree off of me. They'd all wait to get 'em handed to 'em on a silver plate. I ain't a big enough man to give this tree away for nothin'. No, I ain't big enough. I ain't big enough to do a thing like that. I gotta think of myself and my own kids." He finally came to his conclusion. "Oh, what the hell! Them two kids is gotta live in this world. They got to get used to it. They got to learn to give and to take punishment. And by Jesus, it ain't give but take, take, take all the time in this God-damned world." As he threw the tree with all his strength, his heart wailed out, "It's a God-damned, rotten, lousy world!"

When some of the older boys pulled the tree away, they found Francie and her brother standing upright, hand in hand. Blood was coming from scratches on Neeley's face. He looked more like a baby than ever with his bewildered blue eyes and the fairness of his skin made more noticeable because of the clear red blood. But they were smiling. Had they not won the biggest tree in the neighborhood? Some of the boys hollered "Hooray!" A few adults clapped. The tree man eulogized them by screaming,

"And now get the hell out of here with your tree, you lousy bastards."

Francie had heard swearing since she had heard words. Obscenity and profanity had no meaning as such among those people. They were emotional expressions of inarticulate people with small vocabularies; they made a kind of dialect. The phrases could mean many things according to the expression and tone used in saying them. So now, when Francie heard themselves called lousy bastards, she smiled tremulously at the kind man. She knew that he was really saying, "Goodbye--God bless you."

YASYCTAI: Do something nice today for someone just cause... (10 mins/1 pt)

Her: I was worried you were one of those religious nuts.

Me: I am one of those religious nuts.

Colin: American girls would seriously dig me with my cute British accent.

Tony: You don't have a cute British accent.

Colin: Yes I do! I'm going to America!

Tony: Colin, you're a lonely, ugly, _____. You must accept it.

Colin: Never. I am Colin. God of sex. I'm just on the wrong continent, that's all.

Me: It's not. (pause) The truth is, it's the story of a boy like me looking for a girlie like you. (thinking) And hoping, I mean really, really hoping, that this time, it'll be different.

Me: I just wanted you to know that I'm outside again and it's amazing. Jealous?

Guy2: It's a McGuffin. It's used to catch lions in Scotland.
Guy2: Well then, a McGuffin's nuthin at all.

MiamiK: OK, I like how you did that, but how did you not see that rock on her left hand? I mean it was huge.
Paul: (commiserating) We'll all been there, we've all been there.