I was going to the Times, where we're early since Will's going away. For the last 2 weeks, I've been unable to connect to the usual printer, and the backup printer worked but was smudgy. Someone sitting nearby expressed surprise that it even works, so we need to resolve this. There's a super-emergency printer I can use 4 floors up but that's a little inconvenient.
I'm not usually there on Saturdays and soon noticed Frank Sinatra-ish music coming from somewhere. I cannot work with noise. I traced the sound to a guy sitting around the corner, and asked if he had headphones as I could hear the music. He apologized and said he's usually all alone and didn't know anyone was around. And he did turn it off. I thanked him again when I left and he apologized again. At my ex-job, before headphones became de rigueur, someone actually argued with me about their need to listen to music out loud in our shared office.
The same guy was at the desk when I got home and gave me a friendly hello.
I finished "What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day" by Pearl Cleage. This was an Oprah's Book Club selection, about an HIV-positive woman who returns to her sleepy rural (all black) Michigan hometown and finds the problems of the big city are everywhere. Interesting characters.
