mini splurges

Ira Glass is coming! He who in my head looks like the nice nerdy guy from the Verizon commericals will be speaking at NYU and I will be there looking on adoringly. Although I don't usually manage to listen to the show on WNYC, the podcasts make for diversion at work. (As do, by the way, the Lovecasts. Dan Savage is so much more gentle with people on the phone than you'd expect.)

This makes for a great pop-media live troika for me this spring, since I'm also seeing Nellie McKay at Joe's Pub and Shalom Auslander at BAM. Have you read SA? You should! Unless you're my father, in which case, Dad, I apologize again. He bought the memoir Foreskin's Lament after I raved about it and he couldn't get through the first chapter; he ended up exchanging the book for two Klezmer CDs. (Oy.)

Mr. Ben and I are living in a construction site, or so it seems. We're moving this weekend and prep makes a mess: empty boxes from the liquor stores, half-filled suitcases, stuffed full bags of clothes to be donated. To add an extra frisson of tension, while I was cooking on Sunday night the gas went off. We called Con Ed yesterday and they informed us that they don't provide our gas.

Neither does our building, as further probing discovered.

So who does? Why have we been enjoying free gas for three years and why is it abruptly stopping now, a week before we move out? These and other stressful questions answered when we return.