Here’s what I did not do yesterday:
Call my brother and my father to wish them a happy birthday.

Here’s what I did do yesterday:

I got up around noon, which is very early for me of a Saturday. I went out planning to deposit a couple of checks in the ATM, drop off a “return to sender” box at the post office, and get my stupid car inspection done. My car inspection expired in January.

I went to the ATM, I went to the post office. Outside the post office were Brownies with a hard sell, so I bought some Thin Mints. I don’t regret this at all.

I knew my car needed an oil change really badly, and I was pretty sure I had a burnt-out brake light, which of course would cause me to fail the inspection. So I drove around a bit looking for a Jiffy Lube. I couldn’t find one, so I went home and looked online. Of course there’s one about a block from where I gave up looking, so I went out and went there. They did their thing, replaced my brake light, and I was in and out in about fifteen minutes. It was my fastest Jiffy Lube experience ever. I was honestly impressed. Also, they seem to have changed their “rules,” because my windshield sticker now says I need to go back in eight thousand miles, not three, and after three I can go back for a “free topoff” of the fluids. It’s about time they were honest about the fact that you really don’t need a new oil filter every three thousand miles, kthx.

Then I sat in the car in line at the Mobil station waiting for the inspection for about 45 minutes. There were two cars in front of me when I pulled up. Half an hour later there were seven cars behind me. Seven! But the line hadn’t moved at all, and I knew I had to go to work. It was about 2:30 by this time, so I gave up and pulled out of the line, and drove into D.C. I was hungry, so on the way I went to the Wendy’s by Lisa’s house. There’s a street with a median there, and you can’t turn left out of the Wendy’s, which I needed to do, so I proceeded to get butt-lost and take about eight miles to get back to the highway. Moron.

I drove into Washington the way I always go, which is the way I went every day for three years when I was working at Bowne. It’s amazing to me how utterly familiar this drive still is. Weirdly curving ramps, changing lanes, unlabeled tunnels, one-way streets, and all, I can still get in and out of Northwest really easily, and I’m sort of proud of this skill. (I can do this provided there aren’t any construction cranes or police blocking streets around the World Bank. When that happens I have a complete breakdown and often cry and end up driving back out to Virginia and taking the train.)

There are always parallel parking spots open in front of my building on weekends, so I don’t worry too much about where to park. Unfortunately, yesterday there was only one open spot, so I had to actually park with skill. It took me an embarrassingly long time to get the car into it. I felt really stupid. No one who learned to drive in New Jersey should have had as much trouble as I did getting into an adequately-sized parallel parking spot.

When I went inside the office, thank god, there was no one there. I put my coat on the floor, took off my shoes, turned the music up high, sang along, and worked for about three and a half hours. I didn’t get all my backlog done, but I got enough done that I shouldn’t be embarrassed about not getting enough done. I got a lot done. More than I would have gotten done in the same amount of time on a regular work day. I love irony.

Lisa called while I was working, because David’s golfing this weekend in South Carolina and her kids were going to be with his mom last night, and we had made plans to watch TV or do stuff. She got all sad when I said I was working, but I assured her I wasn’t going to be working all night, and we should definitely get together. Then she said the best thing: “I was thinking about ordering sushi, but then I was also thinking about going to Captain Pell’s for crabs.” This was the best idea I had heard in years, and I told her so. Actually, I believe I made this noise:

oooooohhhhhhhhh.

So she took the girls to Maria’s, and I worked until about 6:30, and then I went to Lisa’s.

When I got to Lisa’s, and let myself in, and calmed down the dogs, I realized she WASN’T THERE. This freaked me out way more than it should have. I called her cell phone and she didn’t answer. Her car was in the driveway. Her keys were by the door. I honestly looked in every room in the house, including the bathrooms, thinking maybe she had fallen down and cracked her head open or something. Maybe she’d been kidnapped. Maybe she was taking a nap in the spare bedroom or something. Nada. No Lisa. I determined the cell phone was in the car, not with her. Then I realized if the car and the keys were at home, she must have walked somewhere, and the only place she could have walked was next door to her parents’ house. So I thought about calling them or just going over—Lisa’s parents like me just fine—but then I thought, what if I’m wrong? What if something IS wrong, and I scare the pants off her mother, who is a tad high-strung? That would be bad.

This whole time I was working myself up into a worry, the dogs were making this noise:

wwwwhhhhhhiiiiiiinnnnnnneeeeeee

which was not reassuring in the least. They were only upset because there were no Milk-Bones in the house, but they did not comfort me.

So after I’d been there for about half an hour, Lisa walks in. Thankfully the dogs of course heard her coming long before I did, and they barked, and as soon as they started barking I knew she’d been next door. I immediately said, “where have you been?” and scared the hell out of her, which I believe served her right, and I said so. We laughed at how stupid I am.

Then we went out for crabs.

In the car on the way, she played a mix tape for me that she’d found recently, which aged from about our college days, and which contained a song she couldn’t identify. I had no idea what it was either, and the thing is, it wasn’t good. It wasn’t good at all. Most of the songs from then make us go “YES!” when they come on, but this one just made us go, “…the fuck?”

The crabs were interesting. They were out of males, so we ate girls. They were good, better than I’d been expecting. Female crabs are harder to open and eat because their shells are shaped differently, but we worked it out. We had hush puppies and beers, and we had a ball, and since females are cheaper, we got out of Captain Pell’s for only $41 for the two of us. That’s about two-thirds what it should have been. Huge bargain.

During dinner, we discussed what we should do last night. We thought about going to a movie, but nothing sang to us, and I wasn’t really in the mood to do that anyway. Lisa said we should just watch a movie at home, and I said I guessed so, and then I realized what we had to do. “We should go to MY house, for chrissakes,” I said. Lisa’d never been to my house, what with one thing and another. David’s been here once, because he came to get me when they took me to the hospital, but Lisa never had. So obviously this was the perfect plan.

When we got back to Lisa’s, we did lots of Googling with the (minimal) lyrics of the Mystery Song to try and figure out what it was, to no avail. The lyrics are very trite, and most of the song is guitar solos, not even singing. For those reasons we thought it might be Eric Johnson, but the guitar wasn’t good enough. We remain unknowing.

We looked at books (her copy of Ben Bradlee’s autobiography is signed to her, so we talked about Watergate a bit as we often do), and stuff, then we went to my house. I did a shitty job of “follow me” on the way, but she kept up. People kept getting between us, and of course it was almost 10 pm by this time, so I could only identify her in the rear-view mirror by the blinding glow of her particular-shaped headlights. It’s times like these I’m glad I have a vanity license plate; I know it makes it easier to follow me at night.

Lisa was of the opinion that my apartment is “enormous.” She really seemed to like it, which I thought was cool of her. On the course of the tour, I found a jacket and tiny hat belonging to Max in the spare bathroom. Lin, I have a jacket and tiny hat belonging to Max.

Since Lisa got an iPod for Christmas she has been obsessed with one thing: other people’s CDs. So she spent a good hour going through my CDs, and borrowed about forty of them. Then we watched “Mean Girls,” which she had on DVD and hadn’t seen, and which I had seen, which makes the fact that it was her Blockbuster used DVD and scratched and skippy really annoying, but we still liked it a lot. We drank some wine and we ate some Thin Mints. Then she went home, after instructing me to come over tonight at 8 to watch a movie she insists I have to see. Weirdly, I don’t remember what movie it is.

I had a great day yesterday.