So. I had a five-hour window between Saturday events 1 & 2, and, being a schlub, I don’t readily go home and then go out again. Particularly during the onset of the fall monsoon season. (We got a break this summer, so Gaia is catching up on her aquifers.) Accordingly, I put the lappie in a garbage bag (hmm, dorkiness/wet laptop, dorkiness/wet laptop. hmmmm), swapped my current novel folder from the desktop to my flash drive (triumphantly unearthed from the pits of the desk), and found the serial killer’s manuscript.

I dug out the fall clothes box (noticing that half the clothes had gone on summer adventures). I remembered my umbrella, the naproxen, my hairbrush and the second elastic needed after braiding at the T (preferred grooming place of the tardy). Lip balm, wallet, watch, phone, and keys. I remembered to grab my earphones, and–to my own amazement–the actual materials needed to find appointment #2. Put it all into my preferred laptop bag, i.e., the bright orange one with Son Goku in Super-Saiyan mode. Despite the complexity of this assemblage, plus washing my hair, I made appointment #1 in time to enjoy the breakfast beforehand.

Unfortunately, the flash drive with the four hours of work planned is still on my desk. I think the moment I realized this on the T was the first time I actually did that thing where you smack yourself on the forehead.

I consoled myself with my serial killer, and reminded myself that I was behind on my other blog. But I’m still less than pleased.

However, under the heading of my favorite German word, schadenfreude, I saw that apparently the suffering was going around. On the way over to my writing nook on the Law School campus, I saw several groups of cheerfully painted chairs in the Yard. At first I thought they had been set up for some al fresco catering thing (you can eat free several times a week at Harvard if you scout around)–but no tables. Instead, they were all circled around facing each other in the manner that screams, “This is the way we will force total strangers to make self-conscious small talk with others, in some fantasy that they will Get Acquainted, especially as we don’t know what else to do with them.”

When I got closer, I saw that the chairs were all locked together with a cable, presumably to keep their occupants from escap–whoops, no; I mean “from theft.” One group had all tipped over onto their backs: Their invisible captives had scampered off into the freedom of the rain. Bravo, I said. May we all similarly escape those damned socializing cables.