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I've been thinking a lot lately about my friends and their significant others. Since I have only one living family member, I truly do consider my close friends my family, and I am inordinately concerned with their happiness.

I was speaking to one of my friends last night. By trade, she is an Air Force pilot, as is her fiance. She and I went to bleeding-heart-liberal-arts-university together, where we were both acting majors and spent a lot of time drinking the coffee that wasn't there.

Her fiance is, well, pretty damn conservative, and he has rubbed off on her quite a bit, though she swears up and down she's still a good liberal at heart. I struggle to remain neutral, as I like her fiance, and I'd like to go on liking him.

But yesterday, I was tested. She was supposed to be going to some event where Bush was the speaker, but she's planning on taking a vacation day, since she has been traveling a great deal lately, and has just gotten back from a long trip.

I laughed and said something along the lines of "and you're also not going because Bush is the devil."

She argued that someone like Hitler was more qualified for devil status, and I agreed, then said, "well, he's at least one of the worst, most incompetent presidents this country has ever had."

She repeated my argument alound, within earshot of her fiance. In the background, her fiance says something like, "If you think he's so incompetent, check your pocketbook," implying that I am greedily benefiting from Bush's first class economic policy.

I immediately fired up, barking that, because of my income and tax bracket, I lose at least a third of my money to taxes, but if I made double or triple what I do, I'd lose far less, thanks to this heralded economic brilliance.

Then I cut myself short. I just can't let myself have this argument with a dear friend and, by proxy, her fiance. Besides, another one of her bridesmaids is the president of NARAL Wisconsin, so if there's political sniping to be had, I'll leave it up to Kelda.

Linus was right; the three things it's best not to talk about are religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin.

My 10 year high school reunion is in 4 1/2 weeks, and I'm starting to get excited about it. Well, not about it, exactly, but about the prospect of being in my home town for the first time in 6 years for Thanksgiving, and about staying with Stacey and Allison and seeing their families, and even, yes, catching up with those people I haven't seen in a decade.

Last weekend, while talking to Stacey, she told me she was going on South Beach to get all skinnied up for the reunion. This coming from the woman who turns sideways and virtually disappears.

I turn sideways, and, pretty much, I've just turned sideways.

In an attempt to follow Stacey's lead, I, who have never been on a diet before in my life, am making an attempt to 'eat better.' This is difficult to reconcile with the 5 pounds of organic cheese I had delivered last week from Fresh Direct and which I feel obligated to consume all of lest it go bad and be wasted.

But I'm eating smaller portions, ingesting lots of vegetables, chilling out with the late-night snacking, and trying to get myself on my bike more during the week.

I don't think I'll be the Incredible Shrinking Woman despite my best efforts, but it'd be good if there were just a bit less of me.

I haven't been on a scale in probably two years, but I can still get onto clothes from high school, so I know I haven't put on a significant amount of weight, and am probably much more fit now than I was then.

But all my confidence melts awat the minute I catch a glimpse of myself in the cleverly disguised funhouse mirror in my office bathroom.

Oh, sure, it looks like a normal mirror, but in a normal mirror, I don't look like I've had all of Jennifer Lopez stapled to my ass. Not just her ass, but all of her. This thing is the most soul crushing, image defeating mirror in the world. Under the vicious glow of the flourescent lights, I look malarial, dumpy, and ever so fat.

To compound matters, my full length mirror at home is, as Amanda M. deemed it, a 'skinny mirror.' So when I go popping out of the house in the morning, feeling like Ms. Thing, I am now plagued with doubt.

'What if the work mirror is accurate, and I am a big fat asshole?' 'What if these wildly overpriced jeans just make me look like a fat girl in wildly overpriced jeans?' "Maybe those pointy toed shoes I so favor don't actually do shit in the leg-elongation department.'

And then I waddle out the door and go find a doughnut, and realize, at the end of the day, I'd rather eat well than be skinny, and no man I've ever been with has ever registered a complaint about the size of my ass.

I'm having the kind of day where I know now that I should have listened to my interior monologue this morning, which, upon cracking open one sleep-clogged eye, went:

"Stay in bed. Today will be crap."

Nope, went to work instead, whereupon I discovered that the much flaunted systems upgrade we underwent over the weekend resulted in my not being able to get past the security screen on my computer, which meant no access to email and no access to the internet.

Since my job pretty much relies on access to both, I had a pretty stultifying day until 3:30, when my password was reset. Then I could get into email, only to discover the 'upgrade' had deleted all my folders and rules, and I have nothing in the box prior to 4:30 on Friday, which was when the upgrade started. No one can print, incoming emails are spotty, and god help me for preferring Firefox over IE.

So, shitty Monday, but as I had a lovely weekend, I can't complain over much. On Saturday, I spotted the flock of Brooklyn's wild parrots. Sunday, Adam and I went for a lovely bike ride down Bedford Avenue (which goes from shitty to luxurious in mere blocks), through Coney Island, and up the greenbelt that goes under the Verrazzano Bridge. I road my beater bike, which I love, but which weighs a ton, and now feel I've been neglecting my fancy-pants bike, so I'll clip in tonight and go for a quick spin once I get the laundry dropped off and buy a big ol' bottle of wine to make up for today's crap-osity. 

I have long thought that, while women are generally tidier than men, we are filthy, filthy creatures in the bathroom.

I don't, as a rule,  frequent men's rooms, but on the odd occasion where I've used the gents', I've found that they're not the pee-splashed hell pits I was anticipating (aside from in the diviest of dive bars, but there, all bets are off). They tend to be reasonably clean, the seat is often (shockingly) down, and paper towels are next to the sink, in the dispenser, or near the mirror.

Women's rooms, on the other hand, are straight up foul. There's wet paper wadded everywhere, the little tampon bins are forever overflowing, and flushing seems to be optional.

What's worse, there is someone in my office who is clearly terrified of contracting an ass virus from the toilet seats. Instead of using the little tissue-paper toilet seat covers left for our convenience, she insists on making a nest of paper towels to settle herself on.

That's fine and all, but she leaves them there once she's vacated her toilet space, which I find totally revolting. At least the little tissue paper things are designed with that flap that falls into the bowl and drags the rest of itself down when one flushes.

The paper towel nest just sits there in its ass-contacted splendor, and I am sure as hell not going to be the one who sweeps it into the toilet!

Which is why I'll be eyeing my coworkers with great suspicion in the loo, trying to figure out who the nester is, and how to dissuade her of her nasty little habit.

I have a very strict morning routine, without which I'd never get out the door on time.

My alarm goes off at 7:03. I give myself two minutes of lying in bed, and then drag myself upright at 7:05. I feed the cats and get in the shower. At 7:25 I prepare my coffee - milk, 1 teaspoon of sugar. Skin care from 7:31 to 7:41, makeup application from 7:42 to 7:53, hair drying and styling from 7:54 to 8:10, dressing from 8:10 to 8:20, and out the door no later than 8:23.

I don't need to rely on a clock or watch to know where I should be in my routine, as, for the last 10 years, I have used 1010 WINS as my aural schedule keeper.

"You give us 22 minutes, we'll give you the world."

Damn skippy!

I know if I'm not brushing my teeth by the time the 7:33 weather forecast airs, I'm running behind, and it'll be a close shave type of morning.

The other day, the rapper Fabolous was shot. 1010 WINS was all over this story, first with a recap in the studio of what was known at the time of the report, and then with  man on the street coverage by one of their reporters. He sounds like a white, middle aged, Jimmy Breslin kind of guy.

Which was really awesome when it go to the part where he had to say Fabolous' name. The reporter in the studio got it right - 'Fab-oh-lus.'

But the man on the street guy didn't do quite so well. "F-fab - Fabo . . . "

There was a pause.

Then, like a screaming Chelsea queen, he burst out with "Faaaaaabulous!"

Wrong, but awesome.

Love my 1010 WINS.

CBGB's closed, for good, last night.

Terrible, horrible, a loss to art and music.

And the real bitch of it is, since I thought it'd always be there, I never went to a single show, assuming, of course, that I could catch the next one.

I never went to the top of the World Trade Center, assuming that'd always be there, and, well, look how that turned out.

I never went dancing at the Palladium, and now it's a bloody NYU dorm.

When you live in a city like this, and you're spoiled for choice of attractions, it's so easy to just tell yourself the opportunity to visit them will always exist, and you'll go when there's less tourists, or less snow, or it's a little cooler, or some other reason to put a visit off indefinitely.

I'm the girl who grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, but I've never been to Alcatraz.

Now I'm starting to think I might need to get my ass in gear before I miss out on something else that might not always be there.

So, I'll be needing to hit the Statue of Liberty, Top of the Rock, the Rainbow Room, the Bronx Botanical Garden, Cafe des Artistes, the Dakota, the Imagine memorial, and the thousand other attractions at my feet that I walk past without savoring every day.

They just might be gone tomorrow.

My job might be filled with pressure and stress, but I have the good fortune to work with people who are highly entertaining.

These people are even more entertaining once they're good and liquored up.

Entertainment reaches a fever pitch when my colleagues are good and liquored up enough to karaoke.

I can honestly say I haven't done karaoke since college, but after last night, I'm thinking it may need to be reincorporated into my life. It was, quite simply, wicked awesome.

Japas 38, while predictably full of vaguely creepy Asian businessmen, also has kick-ass karaoke rooms in its basement, which is where I spent yesterday evening, wailing away to:

• a Madonna medley
  
• Crazy (Patsy Kline)
  
• The Rainbow Connection (in the voices of Kermit, Ethel Merman, and Enya)
  
• Two Princes (Spin Doctors)
  
• much, much more, but it's been lost in an alcohol-filled haze

I learned things, too:

• karaoke remote controls are in Korean
  
• none of my co-workers knows Korean
  
• we are, as a group, technically proficient enough to figure out the Korean remote control without knowing Korean
  
• one does not need to be a singer to deliver a convincing karaoke performance
  
• self-consciousness is inversely porportional to the number of Sapporos one has consumed

My head hurts, my throat is sore, I'm a little slow today, and I can't wait to do it again next month!

I just now had a few palpitations when my fancy pantsy iPod froze. I have the damn video one, since it was the only 60G option available, thanks to the pirates and highway robbers at Apple.

How many videos have I watched on it? Basically only the Christopher Walken SNL cowbell sketch (I've got a fever, and the only cure is more cowbell . . . ) and that's pretty much it. It's lovely and all that I can drop two bucks on iTunes to buy video content, but I'm not a fan of weeny-screen viewing, so I could basically care less that the Pod can support video.

I'm after music storage space, not video viewing. It's nice to have, but as far as my useage goes, an extraneous feature.

My old iPod, Bob (Bob's your iPod) died ignominiously after getting damp in a downpour and obstinately displaying the sad iPod face despite my pleading and vain attempts to reboot. Lost 30 gigs of music that I had failed to back up. Muy pissed.

Bob's successor, Bob II, is, as previously stated, all fancy pantsy, but also cops an attitude on occasion. Technology this expensive should, in my opinion, be flawless and perfect, but then again, what in this life is ever flawless and perfect?

So, halfway through a Portishead song, Bob II went mute and ignored my requests to stop! repeat! fast forward! turn off! shuffle! Just give me a goddamn menu!

A frantic Google search urged me to try a reboot, but that's what got me into Sad iPod territory with Bob I in the first place, so I was a little hesitant. Guess what? Haven't gotten around to backing up Bob II yet - but I swear I will!

Anyhoo, with much trepidation, Bob II underwent a reboot, and I'm happy to report all is well, Bob II seems happy, and Bob II has decided I'm really in the mood for a lot of old school U2 today, which is just fine with me.

On the subway, I am more than likely to have my face buried in the New Yorker, and rarely pay attention to anything other than Seymour Hersh' s latest rant or Tad Friend's timely commentary.

But today, for some reason, as the train pulled out of the West 4th station, I was feeling a little queasy, and deciding maybe I had motion sickness, folded up my magazine and directed my attention elsewhere.

The train was squishily packed, so there was a lot of 'I'm not really looking at you, just more kinda obliquely than anything, and oops we made eye contact but you're only a wee bit creepy and are unlikely to follow me to work and kill me in the elevator.'

The social awkwardness eye safety zone in the subway is the row of advertisements that runs the length of the car, about half a foot lower than the ceiling. They're usually ads for Doctor Zizmor, the dermatologist of the gods, or excitiable personal injury lawyers singlehandedly fighting the scourge of lead paint, or Spanish-language radio stations that want to give you thousands of  dollars for screaming "la mega se pega" rapidly on air.

But today my eye alighted on a notice from the MTA about how to claim lost and found items one may have lost on a bus or subway. The ad had cartoon-like illustrations of things you may have lost on the train; wallets, eye glasses, keys, jewelry.

Apparently, though, according to this illustrator, one may also lose the following while riding public transit in New York: dentures, a prosthetic leg, and pants. These are all things I would assume you would notice immediately if you were on the train and, say, suddenly your leg fell off.

But these pale in comparison to my favorite missing item. On the far left of the poster, thrown inconspicuously into the jumble of lost items, is a cobra. A cobra. Really, a coiled up, hood-spread cobra. Honest to god.

I feel better now, knowing that if I ever lose a highly venemous snake on the subway, the MTA is ready and willing to reunite us. Now that's quality!