Two Saturday Visitors

#1: Aubrey drove up, waving, just as I opened the garage door. She used to live next door, and I was lovesick for her for a few weeks, and I hadn't seen her since she moved to California three years ago. This week she was in town on business, and this sunny Saturday she was driving around her old stoming grounds with her mom, who came up on the train from West Palm Beach. The probability is 100% that I'll never again see her or her mother--or her two wonderful children (pictures of whom at right).

#2: So I'm trying to get e-mail on my new laptop (my lifeline for the next two years), and the doorbell rings. It's one of my scientists--well, mine except that Minute Maid laid us both off last week. He has dropped in unannounced. He goes on about how stupid the layoffs were, how shortsighted the R&D strategy, how strange life is. As if this this is news. He wagged his finger at me (no, he's not Dutch): I must have set my house's price too low if it sold so fast. He asked if I was bored at home. Uh, well, no, after all I have three days to pack for a international move. This question, and he is the one still going to the office a week after they laid him off. I saw that movie: Falling Down. Finally he left, and it would have been better to remember him without this last bit of pathos.