I was all set to write about Nicole Kidman's tonsils when some things happened. To be more specific, some good things happened, and some bad things happened. Well, one good thing happened and more than one bad thing happened. It hardly seems fair, but despite this imbalance, I remain your optimistic correspondent.

The good thing that happened was that my younger brother Mike came to have dinner with me the other night. This is the last time I will see him until December, as he embarks on a world tour in June. (This is unfortunate because he still looks older than I do, and more constant reinforcement of this knowledge would better suit my ego.) His girlfriend, Cate (who is lovely and delightful), and his ex-girlfriend Alison (who is also lovely and delightful) joined us at Hi-Life. In addition to refusing to eat any sort of vegetable, Cate refused to tell any of her infamous jokes--which made me sad until I realized that if I told them myself, badly, she would be forced to defend her own honor and tell them correctly. My tactic was successful. Alison saved the entire table from assassins using nothing but bread sticks and a discarded slice of lemon.

The primary bad thing that happened is that some directories on my computer elected to go haywire, forcing a twenty-hour data-recovery session, a complete reinitialization of my hard drive, and a day-long flurry of software installation. I actually did not lose as many crucial files as I thought I would, but it seems like one of the most corrupted applications was my email client. Unfortunately, I lost over one hundred saved messages, so if you are expecting me to reply to something you sent, and I have not yet done so, I have either lost your message or have decided to have nothing more to do with you. (You may determine which is true in your individual case by writing to me again and seeing what happens.)