Another very humid day in New York, and it got to me just a little bit, for the first time. Just walking to the subway this afternoon, I was -- to use my Mother's lovely turn of phrase -- sweating like a pig. The sights and sounds of August in New York keep transporting me back in time to my early years in Philly - the whirring cicadas in Central Park, the smell of chlorine wafting through the dense humidity.

The latter half of this week has been fairly horrible. To start with, I went back on a medication which is meant to regulate my sleeping cycles. It has the side-effect of making you horribly drowsy for the first three days you take it. And this period of drowsiness coincided with a particularly difficult period at work. So I've ended each day feeling stressed out, exhausted and bad-tempered. And then, of course, there has been the humidity to improve my mood on the walk home.

The reason work has been so stressful is that once again I've been drafted to help out on one of the other two projects associated with mine. And this project just limps along from one crisis to the next. And at each crisis, the tech-lead and the project-manager run around breathlessly, trying to put out the fires, and I get sort of swept up into the general hysteria. A couple of times this week I've felt that I was on the verge of "losing it", such has been the level of tension. There's an air of absurdity about things. During my last spell of helping out on this project, I developed the main suite of software that we're using for this stage of the work. Since then, another developer has totally rewritten it. So now, I'm back again, trying to debug the software somebody else adapted from my own work. Oi veh.

I've become so adapted to working here in New York, though. I've adopted my own little routines already. I get exactly the same lunch every day from a bistro at the base of the building: chicken teryaki with brown rice and vegetables, and a large black coffee/half decaf. I always wonder if people make fun of me for eating exactly the same thing every day. The girls at the check-out in the bistro always argue with each other when filling my order, about how to get things just right. "No, he likes to carry his coffee in his hand, not in the bag." Then it's back into the huge office building. The rotating doors through which thousands of office workers stream every day are constantly in motion. You're expected to time it perfectly and dart into the swinging doors just in time. One false move and you'd be history.

Last weekend, my friends Bob and JRB were in town from Ohio. Saturday night, Mitch and I had dinner with them in Chelsea at the Viceroy, where Bob and JRB ogled the beautiful men. Okay, I ogled them too, while Mitch remained above it all. Then we went to Therapy. I was astonished to realize that this was Bob's first ever gay bar (he's a closeted grandfather). I remember how significant an experience it was for me to go to my first gay bar. But I guess, once you have grandchildren, it's not such a big deal.

On a Sunday that was so humid you could almost carve chunks out of the air with a knife, we took off in Bob's huge Mercedes for the Hudson River Valley, where there was no fresh air to be had, but plenty of beauty. Beauty which, unfortunately, did not translate to film very well, because of the mist. I'd plotted a loop through Westchester County, over the Bear Mountain Bridge, then back down, over the Tappenzee Bridge, stopping at the amazing Croton Dam, Bear Mountain, and the Edward Hopper House in Nyack (which was no great shakes, though Nyack seemed like a nice, lively small town). Despite the humidity, I found I enjoyed the day very much. Good, easygoing company, and fresh sights.

At Croton Dam

More images of Croton Dam

On Tuesday night, C and I went to see the Human League at B.B. Kings on 42nd Street. The Human League were a huge band in the 80s, and their album "Dare" is one of my all-time favorites. I've long ago stopped following popular music, so it's been a long time since I went to a pop concert. But it was great fun to hear the songs, particularly "Don't You Want Me". The band had aged very well, and I got a kick from the supercool, sexy way the blonde with the awful singing voice (you know, the one who sings "I was working as a waitress at a cocktail bar, that much is true" on "Don't You Want Me") carried herself, and danced. I also really appreciated C's willingness to go with me to the concert. I don't think any of my San Francisco friends would have gone.