I’ve spent the last few days in Little Falls, New York, staying at my boss’s house.  He grew up here. His parents also grew up here, and they live down the street from him.  There’s 5,000 people in the town and they all say “hello” when you pass them.

He took us to a street corner and said “This is where I made the decision to move back once I had built a successful company. It was during the town parade, and it was an epiphany.”

I said, “That must have been some float.”

He took us out to dinner. His 15-year old daughter started texting during the meal.  He sent her a text message that said “STOP TEXTING.”

I said, “We had texting when I was in school, but we called it ‘paper airplanes.’”

Later I asked to my co-worker, “Am I making too many jokes?”

She said, “You’re fine.”

The restaurant we ate dinner at is rumored to be haunted.  We watched a VHS tape of a History Channel show that discussed it.  On the show, a frizzy haired psychic said “This place has very dark and negative energy.” But of course she said that. Is a psychic going to walk into a building that’s supposed to be haunted and say “Nah, it’s fine”?  That would be like an interior designer walking into your house and saying “Perfect.  I couldn’t have done better.”

In the morning I went running.  It really wasn’t that cold for a November in New York, and I wore shorts.  Passerbys looked at my milky white legs, running bare at 7:00 in the morning, and probably thought “Crazy hippy Californian.” But it was nice.  The autumns on the east coast are clear and distinct, like a map in relief; autumns in California are blurry and unimpressive, like an afterthought.

We went to a so-called antique store that was really like a large, sprawling garage sale. I found an old ‘60s James Bond lunch box for $45. My co-worker said that I should buy it.  I said I really didn’t need it cluttering up my apartment; I just liked knowing that it existed.

I met the mother of my boss’s executive assistant. She complained about computers.  She said, “Some tech support guy was typing at me, trying to help me.  I said, ‘I want to talk to a real person.’ He said, ‘I am a real person.’ He told me to right click.  What the hell does that mean, right click?  Let me tell you, I’ve never right clicked anything in my life.”

Tomorrow I head off to Boston where I have to actually do some work.  I’m glad I came here first.