Paradise (Not Quite) By The Dashboard Lights

Timing is everything. At least that's what I hear when it comes to Nascar racing, who you ultimately wind up meeting and marrying, and how my weekend eventually transpired.

Sometime after Thursday was in full swing, while I was contemplating my own weirdness and that of others, a friend got in touch with me to see whether I was planning on being around this weekend. He was the second uber-giant (read: over 6/4) friend within the span of a couple days to advise me there was a recently-announced get-together in Chinatown (NYC) and wanted to see if a) I was going; and b) if he could crash at my place.

In the ordinary course, I am usually in the loop when it comes to interstate get-togethers; then again, that's usually because I'm the one (if not one of the two) arranging the get-togethers in the first place. Neither here nor there; I told him I knew about the party but I was planning on washing my hair in its stead. In either case, I haven't (yet, perhaps) made the full-on jump back into weekly hockey, so I didn't have any problem with him crashing at my place, despite wondering whether my friend (6'6) would actually fit in my apartment in horizontal fashion. He's already hung out at my place (he's from California, so him having previously visited my place is not exactly a done deal) so he knew he'd fit on the couch, so I told him as long as he would be okay, his hanging at my place was no problem.

So he arranged to get to my place sometime Saturday morningish, which was fine with me; I had some things to handle but he's low-maintenance. I had a bottle of Diet Coke in the fridge and a high-speed net connection and that was all he really needed. That night was the party, so I did my errands out and about in NYC, he did his thing, we both got ready for our respective plans, he went to the party, I went out and did my thing, and by 4:30 Sunday morning we were both back at my place, weary but the wiser therefore.

He spent late morning Sunday at a prearranged brunch at Dock's on the east side (the site of one of Kaia's and my early dates, and, incidentally, highly recommended although a bit pricey) and I did some work before heading out to do a few more errands and to see a friend who I'd promised some face time.

By the time he got back to my place, it was late Sunday and he was due to leave on Monday afternoon, so we opted to chill a bit Monday morning before a) he got his stuff packed and himself ready to roll; and b) I got myself showered and to the office for a late but relatively reasonable President's Day workday. So we wound up chilling out and I hit the office in the early afternoon; meanwhile, he prepped himself and discovered the airline swapped out one of his flights (most likely a Jet Blue-related snafu) so he wound up staying at my place until late/early Monday night/Tuesday morning.

I had an early-ish morning appointment to address so I knew I'd be a bit late getting into the office, but while I normally prefer getting in before 9, this was the first time since November I'd gone two days in a row without being in the office before 10. It's a relative conundrum; the City agency at which I spend nearly all my out-of-office time was relocating within their building, so while there was plenty to do on my end, it was sort of like treading water waiting for a race to start. There was, is and always will be pressure on me time-wise, but the urgency wasn't quite there because there was nowhere for me to submit papers, call for verification or status of my matters, or even e-mail or fax to follow up on matters that I'd been balls-to-the-wall busy with as recently as a week ago.

On the other side of the coin, the rest of the office is in full-court press mode; we received the newest annual figures recently, and since then we as a unit have been going 110% since. Papers being printed, papers being received, papers being copied, boxes of papers to be separated, ordered, listed and organized are piling up and, for the most part, there's another month of this frenetic pressure until the middle of March. So while my immediate situation is a bit calm -- oddly so, something I'm far from used to -- everything seems to be moving full-speed ahead.

The weirdest part in all of this, especially spending as much time with my friend as I did, was that I spent very little phone time with Kaia. This morning, as I finished my appointment and headed to the office, I gave her a buzz -- despite it being a bit early for her -- just so I could hear her voice. I'm sure some scientific study could explain to me why the busy pace, the pressure and the chaos seemingly, like magic, disappears when I speak to her for the first time in awhile, but all I know is hearing her voice leveled my artificial horizon and set me back to normal, whatever that is.

The epilogue to this, of course, is my friend got back to Cali, I got to my office, and Kaia got woken up a bit earlier than she expected. But she didn't seem much to mind.

Another happy ending, at least for today.