I tell you what, this week in New York has taught me a lot of things about myself. For starters, a day spent toting my computer around on my backpack to work in a Barnes and Noble, a Starbucks, the Apple Store, and various places in between can be both very productive and very rewarding. For instance, it helps me see sunlight, for Christ's sake.

Yesterday, though... Yesterday, I woke up, did the dishes, took out the trash, cleaned myself up, and sat down to do one quick thing for a client online before heading out the door. Big mistake. Next thing I knew, it was four hours later, the sun had gone down and I was still waiting on an 18MB file to download over a dialup connection – a file that has dropped its download connection three times, each attempt with an average of a 5KB/sec transfer rate, and according to what that little button on Transmit (from Panic) says, "Resume" has suddenly changed its definition to "delete the unfinished file and start from scratch". Jesus.

Anyway. Long story short, yesterday did not gone the way I'd intended. I was planning to go work in the New York Public Library, then take a stroll through the Met and maybe even catch an afternoon matinee of The Last Samurai if I'd gotten enough done before then. Instead, I found myself rushing to wrap things up so I can get down to the NYU campus before Kate's open directing final went on at 7. I was livid. Yeesh. What a day.

Luckily, today has gone much, much better. Kate and I headed in this morning and grabbed brunch at this amazing little diner 'round the corner from NYU. There's a neat thing about New York diners – they're not like diners almost anywhere else. The diners that Kate's taken me to so far have been real gourmet stuff compared to the little greasy spoons I've been to elsewhere. This morning's was no different – I had pancakes and sausage, with real sausage links instead of those crappy little pinky-sized Brown N' Serves that a lot of places serve. They were fantastic, and the pancakes were terrific too. Great stuff. Now I'm bumming around Soho again, working and Christmas shopping. This is what days in New York were supposed to be, just a little wetter.

Hope you guys are having fun out there, and I hope your Christmas shopping is going well too. Oh, and a big "sorry, guys" to Derek and Kevin, whom I know were pulling for the other guy in this week's mayoral elections in San Francisco. The only thing I can suggest is to bottle that rage and put it to use in the big Presidential elections...