Monday is always a rude awakening. I grouched my way through it, offending a minimum of coworkers.

I just bought a round-trip ticket to Germany for $524. That's 20 hours of flying for $524! Holy freaking shit the world really is crumbling.

In January, I met Pam in NYC for a four-day weekend. She was giving a talk and her employer was picking up the tab for her hotel. She invited me to split the cost of staying two extra days and wooed me with bargain-basement fares between here and there. I couldn't pass it up.

We did New-York-y things. We ate out, saw shows, met people, walked all over the place. We hardly slept.

The hotel turned out to be the New York Helmsley (yes, that Helmsley). It was very nice if a bit dated. It was two blocks from the Chrysler building and three from Grand Central Station. We could get anywhere, uptown or downtown, very quickly. But Brooklyn, not so fast.

We had breakfast at the 2nd Ave Deli at thoity-thoid and thoid, at Tom's in Brooklyn, and at Popover on the Upper West Side.

We spent a day in MOMA, wearing ourselves out. We saw Daniel Radcliffe naked in Equus and watched Orfeo et Eurydice from the cheap seats pressed up against the gilded ceiling of The Met.

We dined at Patsy's, which I wouldn't recommend. I say, never skip Grimaldi's. It's absolutely worth the trek to Brooklyn.

And we ate at Delicatessen, drinking two absinthe sazerac cocktails apiece. I'm still smitten with the Ovaltine pudding.

We strolled an afternoon in Brooklyn, stopping at the too-hip-for-its-own-good Gorilla Coffee (love their branding despite) and Flirt. We wished for more time and more Brooklyn.

Friend-sightings included Brett and Meg and Rosemary and June and Sian, in roughly that order.

We walked and subwayed, and when we couldn't subway, we cabbed. But that was only one desperate time.

We even had time for a sunshiny stroll through Central Park. Imagine!

We did some other stuff, but I can't really remember what all.

Did I mention we hardly slept?