The pleasant denoument to Grillgate '08 was that I got a nice letter from a neighbor who is also a co-op board member apologizing for the chastizing memo and stepping up in favor of good, sane, neighborly, delicious barbequing. I ran into her and a couple other residents at the grocery store after work tonight and we mourned the fact that some people just aren't happy unless they're pissing in someone else's pool. So to speak. The laundry room is the next target for the co-op's malcontents.

I'm finding that I have a fairly populist viewpoint: fewer rules and more common human decency for all. Can't we all just get along?

Personal Jesus and Fuego are heading to New York on Wednesday. I can't imagine a less likely place for them, but they're visiting for a couple days while checking out grad schools. We have been housemates at various times, of course, so it's nothing new to parade around each other in our pajamas. They do have offspring now, however. Mobile offspring. That should be interesting.

My apartment is exceedingly well-suited to the needs of a 35-year-old single person. This morning I started to eye it as a massive death trap. Sharp corners abound, glass objects are in easy grabbing range, and I keep all manner of poisonous compounds in lower cabinets. An evening of preemptive tidying should take care of it, but I'm considering presenting my guests with a roll of duct tape and a bottle of sedatives. Just as an option.

Oh, the obligatory meet-up to return stuff that someone you used to date left at your house. Three months ago. What fresh hell. We met at a Starbucks in Washington Heights this afternoon. I got there first and, stuck for something to do, ordered an iced coffee I didn't really want. Handing someone a video takes all of two seconds, but there I am, drink in hand, and it seems only polite to ask the usual questions -- what are you doing now, are you still moving, how do you like your job, etc? So we did that for 20 minutes, as blandly as possible, skirting the issue of social life. Not that it's an issue. Just that we don't want to be there having the conversation at all. And then she's going out to San Francisco to do some political organizing, and maybe I could give her some names of people who'd like to work on the campaign? I realize there's no way to get around it without being a jackass but, um, no. Not because of the cause, but because I don't feel like offering up my friends as fodder to someone I'm pretty ambivalent about. If they want to fight for the cause, they'll find their way there on their own. I feel like an ass for thinking this, but there it is. Yes, my petty personal discomfort trumps my desire to support grassroots politics. So that was fun.

Her phone rang. A friend in crisis. I took my leave. I figure it's 50/50 on whether it was a real emergency or a preplanned "ugh, I'm going to have this awkward interaction, please call me in 15 minutes and save my ass by having a crisis" call. Either way we both won. The apartment is a clean slate.

Apparently my grilling exploits have attracted some attention. A memo in the co-op elevator scolds about the communal grills being "dominated" by certain residents. I've used the grill three times -- twice for large cuts of meat, and during off hours. I've shared it twice; once no one was on the roof except someone who chastised me for using it for several hours... just in case someone else might want to. Which they didn't.

The rules are fine. Treating neighbors like children and assuming they're incapable of sharing or compromising amongst themselves isn't.

But the upside is that I totally love the idea of being known as the Barbeque Dominatrix.

I've been thinking a lot lately about place. Some people have their spot, geographically, that fundamentally satisfies them. Sarah is one of those people. It showed up early when we were playing one of those "Would you rather..." games: "Would you rather live forever in your home state and never be able to leave it, or leave your home country and never be able to return?" She picked California in a heartbeat. I was ready to grab my passport. I think of my uncle as another person who found his spot and stayed there and lived happily ever after. He's the fourth generation in the family to live in the same small town in Oregon. It suits him, and he's invested a lot of himself in making it a better place for other people to live. The other day I had an e-mail exchange with a coworker born and raised in Westchester County, mere minutes from the city. She works in the city. She lives in Westchester. And I got the sense that she knows it's the spot for her.

I admire the certainty and contentment these people display, but it flat-out baffles me. I have an easier time relating to people like LitChick and Realty Chick, both of whom tried out a few different cities before flat-out falling in love with New York. They have a statistical sample to choose from.

For everyone I know who found their Spot, I know a dozen more who found their Pretty Good. My beloved friend Waffles digs New York but fantasizes about Vermont or North Carolina. Team Fuego made the best of the bay area but fantasizes about finding someplace misty and mossy enough to call home. A lot of people, I think, aren't particularly compelled to look for a Spot of their own. Their family or their career is all the grounding they need, and the rest is scenery.

I haven't figured out yet if New York is my Spot. Or if I have one. There are places that satisfy my sense of well-being, places that satisfy my career goals or desire for novelty or entertainment or natural splendor or diversity. If I found them all in one place would I stay there and never leave?

Have you found your Spot? Do you need one?

I had a meeting at work today with a company that could become a collaborative partner on some projects. Heading up the other delegation was my old boss, Reggi, who hired me in 1997 in DC. She left that company not too long after hiring me (events that were unrelated, I swear) and I hadn't seen her in 11 years. She hadn't changed a bit. If I recall correctly, at the time I was a 23-year-old snot-nosed twerp who badgered her into giving me a managing editor job. So I'm hoping sincerely that she thought I had changed just a little.

You know how when you have to face your worst fears they aren't that scary any more? Thanks, Joe.

I love it when people surprise me. I've always said that I am more than happy to be surprised for a good cause.

When I started working in Connecticut a year ago, I was tasked with forming a working relationship with Minion. Minion had been running her own ship for a while, and I came along and took charge of it by decree of upper management. I adored Minion. Flat-out adored her because she brought everything to the table that I lacked. She was organized and methodical and detail-oriented in ways I could never hope to achieve. We gave each other a lot of space, but eventually I came to think of us as sort of a dream team -- we picked up where the other left off. I would confront management and talk to clients off-handedly, but she was always there with the detailed, protocol-exact point to back it up. She made me more organized and diligent. Maybe I made her trust her instincts more, because they were good instincts. Whatever, it worked and I was really sad to leave her.

One of the great things about leaving the job is that Minion and I still talk almost every day -- family, digestive distress, job complaints, whatever. And for as exacting as she is on the job, delightfully so, she has a surprisingly bawdy side. I freakin' love it. When I worked in Connecticut I brought in a small bowl and a betta fish named Juan as a way to keep some humanity in the workplace. Whenever I was out of town, Minion looked after Juan with affection. When I had to put him down, I waited until she was out of the office for fear of upsetting her.

This morning I told her I was thinking of getting a new betta to liven up the new office. Did she have any ideas for a name, I asked? She wrote back that her father-in-law had a betta named Masta. Masta betta.

I love Minion.

My last day in Asia last December I was in Bangkok, bored and hot and faced with a full day to kill. My flight left at midnight. After hiding out in the air-conditioned comfort of my hotel as long as I could, I took a klong bus/boat down to the Jim Thompson house and from there gave up entirely and spent the rest of the day in several of Bangkok's many air-conditioned malls. I rationalized that I never go to malls at home, so this was a new cultural experience. Indeed, the infinite stalls full of cell phones and dried squid snacks and Hello Kitty merchandise were fascinating. Eventually I wanted to sit down and watch a movie and spend quality time with more air conditioning. My English-language choices were the Chipmunk Movie and I Am Legend. In retrospect I wish I'd chosen the former.

I Am Legend is a pretty good movie through the first two thirds and then it strains credulity, even for a movie about most of the world's population being wiped out by a supervirus and the remainder turned into flesh-eating zombies. I mean, there's a limit.

I watched the movie, hung out some more, wandered back to my hotel and took a shower in the mop closet and left for the airport. I slept a few hours on the flight to Seoul, had a 12-hour layover, and slept a few more hours on the flight to New York. I got home, slept a few more hours, and started a full two-week process of getting my internal clock back on track.

The zombies haunted me at every turn. After three weeks in Asia, I never had any idea where I was when I woke up, and starting on the flights home I had vivid dreams about the zombies regularly. I wake up terrified and it takes an hour or so to settle back down, usually with the lights on and fiddling around onlineIt's tapered off somewhat, but last night I had another.

In this one, a coworker and Realty Chick's friend the conductor and I are hiding out from the zombies. The conductor says one might have scratched her. For some reason the scratch is on her upper gum. She shows it to me and I matter of factly go to my bedside table and pull out a pistol. I'm not sure what was more unnerving -- the potential for zombies, or gun ownership. The conductor looks at me incredulously, but I explain that if she's about to turn into a zombie, I'm going to have to shoot her. We sit down a few feet away from each other and wait.

Conveniently, I woke up at that point, sitting bolt upright and sweating, although to be fair it was hot last night. I read an article by Calvin Trillin about chicken wings in the New Yorker food anthology and had a glass of water. Eventually I fell back asleep.

Last week I was discussing this with some other coworkers. One can't drive and has anxiety dreams about being forced behind the wheel of a moving car. Another has the garden-variety dreams about showing up for a final exam after a whole semester of missing class. Another has violent dreams about being hunted down. Me, I've got zombies.