Brendan has become my morning hot yoga buddy, which means that he’s also become my lunch-after-yoga-buddy, which means that last weekend I wound up having a Skype date in his bedroom after the veggie-filled frittata we tried to make wound up being a crustless quiche and taking over three hours to bake.

I wandered downstairs. “He says if I move here, he wants to come with me!” I said.

“Sweet!” Brendan replied. “So, two of my friends from Block Island are coming over.” He looked down at his phone. “Right now. They’re at the front door. We’re all having drinks on my porch, you’re welcome to stay.”

Which is how an 11am class on Saturday wound up stretching into coming back from Rockaway Beach around 9pm on Sunday. Good weekend.

Other lessons learned: buy real estate (nobody can afford real estate including realtors), long lines are worth it, coffee is best cold-brewed with cayenne.

Day 11 was a Friday. Somehow the thought of going out was actually repugnant to me.

“Check you guys later,” I said to my roommates, “I’m bringing this bottle of wine, this fancy paper, and these books to the laundromat, and I am cleaning some clothes.”

“Uhhh, where do you think you are?” they said to me. “Sheesh, you’ll be arrested. Here. Pour that in a Nalgene. There . . . now that’s a great idea.”

I was so tired that night. I felt fried from constant stimulus, constant interaction, constant now and go faster and no, turn around, the other way. But a friend and thoroughly entertaining writer from Minneapolis, John Jodzio was in town, reading at Le Poisson Rouge — just a couple of subway stops away from where I work. He and his lovely wife were only in town for the evening. Not going would be just weird.

The lesson I keep relearning since high school: you never regret going to the thing, you only regret not going to the thing.

(Go to the thing!)

Full album from the evening here.

“So you’re ‘kind of’ single?” Brendan asked me over a steaming hot mess of brown rice, kale and cauliflower. “You think you’re going to date around while you’re in NYC?”

“Ugh, no. Most of the guys here are sulky man-babies. I’m pretty sure dating here is my worst nightmare.”

“Dammit. It was going to be so entertaining hearing about you trying to go out with them.”

I was walking to the river when, on the other side of the street ahead of me, I could see a dark-haired woman sitting against her apartment building. Her legs were splayed in front of her, a fluffy golden dog curled up in her lap. A fence surrounded them to make a sad sort of concrete yard, the space barely large enough to contain them.

O visual symbolism! On your way back home, I resolved, you’re going to take this person’s picture. Taking pictures of strangers always makes me nervous; what if they see it as an invasion, what if they get angry? Will I have enough time to compose it correctly the first time? Ah! But lately I’ve wondered what would happen if I just asked.

Probably, I reasoned twenty minutes later on my return, the woman would be gone by the time I came back.

But no; as I approached I saw that now, sitting in the same position, she was cutting the dog’s hair, his bright pink tongue lolling out of his mouth in sleepy pleasure. I took a deep breath and stepped forward, tried on my friendliest, undergrad-est tone of voice.

“Hey there! Would you mind if I took your picture? Just doing what you’re doing?”

The woman looked up at me as if I’d struck her.

“I HAVE BEEN CRYING ALL DAY,” she said.

“Oh! I’m sorry!”

“. . . But go ahead,” she said.