"That NEVER happens in L.A.!"

I walked to Briazz for lunch today. It's cold and windy, but the sun was out, and I'm wearing black. I had half a sandwich and tried to eat some soup, but the wind was making it splash all over the place, so I gave up and just wrote in my little notebook for a while. I was sitting at a table beside a group of elderly gentlemen, quizzing each other on classic film trivia and tossing out vaudevillian one-liners in Eastern Seaboard accents.

Then, I started heading back to the office, and a black SUV pulled around behind me at a crosswalk and honked, and I heard the driver say, "Excuse me," a couple of times before turning around to see my cousin Patrick at the wheel. We caught up briefly there on the sidewalk. He works close by, lives close by. We exchanged business cards and hugs. And then I headed back to the office. It felt like a New York City moment.