I had arrived home from work just as my older sister was visiting. I was running around doing chores, fixing things, feeling guilty that I hadn’t greeted her yet. A senior account person from work showed up. He’d been out because of the religious holidays, he said, and now he was catching up on some things. He didn’t like the name that had been chosen for a drug: Zoyotoga Garajagar. I said I knew what he meant, though I thought it sounded all right. I said it’s too bad we don’t have any say in that, other people do, people get paid a lot of money for that. Then his wife, another senior account person, showed up to complain about something gone wrong on another job.

I felt compelled to buy a bicycle. I searched for the best, lightest one. The top result was a foldaway model with three wheels.

I was standing in line somewhere with P.C. and someone else. He said, “We’re getting in!” It was the line to be in the studio audience for Jon Stewart’s Daily Show. We settled in our seats. There was a lengthy preamble of warmup acts, comedy but also music. P.C. became distraught when his wife—his wife’s sister in real life—texted to tell him their unborn baby was of indeterminate sex.