40
If you’ve been reading this blog—and you haven’t—you may be wondering where I’ve been for the past few days. Well, my parents have been married 40 years—20 times longer than the sturdiest relationship I have ever achieved—and kinfolk from all around, Europe even, have converged on New York to celebrate. The official observance was yesterday at a restaurant on the Upper West Side, an area I think owes its existence to something that can only be described as the brunch-industrial complex. Really, brunch is everywhere. Walking up Amsterdam, you’d get the impression that the NYC zoning authority is in the pocket of Big Hollandaise Sauce. Anyway, it was just fine, though there were 12 of us, and I tend to get the people sweats in groups larger than, say, four. At one point, I had to leave the table just to stand outside, let my thoughts drain. I met a basset hound named Charlie. He was cute but had no job leads or, more likely, was keeping them to himself.
Actually, just a couple of days after I derided online job listings, I heard back from The Onion regarding the assistant editor position. Apparently dreams—or interviews for dreams contingent upon how my writing test pans out—do come true.