Today marked the second time I have locked myself out of my car. It’s a lousy enough situation by itself, but I seem to have a disposition to pile on exacerbating factors. The first time, I was driving from Chicago to Detroit on a hot June day with the cat in the back seat. I had stopped for some of the cheap gas they sell in West Michigan. My cell phone, newly acquired expressly for the purpose of aiding in any emergencies that might crop up while I was driving a newly acquired car, was of course in the car. But the moment when I realized my mistake wasn’t even the scariest of this episode. That came a few minutes later when I asked the cashier if she had any advice and she replied, in utter earnest and rather eagerly, “You got a hammer?”

If I’d had a hammer, I’m reasonably sure it would have been locked in the car. Damn good thing, too.

I was bailed out that time. While I got on the pay phone to AAA and settled in for a wait while poor Daffy melted away in the car, a local mechanic, name of Papa Bear, happened to pull in to fill up his wrecker. With striking facility he slim-jimmed his way into the car and I was back on the road east, away from this world where smashing a car window with a hammer seems like a viable solution to anything.

Today was different: not hot but cold, no trapped animal but a running car. No Papa Bear. No bailing out. The car and I were idling, waiting for the defroster to melt away a little obstructive ice on the rear window, when somebody started lobbying hard to have my parking space. Much too much the obliging type for my own good, I got out to quickly scrape away what ice remained. Mysteriously to me (gremlins?), the door ended up locked. Inside the car: car keys, house keys, purse, spare car keys, wallet, cell phone. Outside the car: me, scraper, gloves. Those scrapers are extremely useful when there’s ice on your car. Other times? Not so much. It wasn’t even my nifty-keen Red Wings scraper, humph.

The would-be parker rolled down her window, asked whether I’d locked myself out of the car, and registered regret that it was indeed so–regret for my distress or her inconvenience, I could not say. In any case, she found another spot within spitting distance, and seemed to be considering whether to offer any help to me, when out of the blue my friend Katie appeared with her devastatingly adorable child Siobhan and–more important, just this once–a cell phone she could spare for a little while. Ms. Not-Just-Any-Spot scurried into her nearby building, clearly relieved. As bad as the afternoon was, I must admit that Katie happening along was such a stunning little miracle that I almost feel churlish complaining about everything else. Almost.

Long story short: after trying a few local parties (University police, unmanned repair shop), I got in touch with good old AAA and joined on the spot. I even managed to dredge my American Express card number and expiration date from the recesses of my memory, digit by digit, to pay the fee. (Of this I am quite proud, even though all it probably means is that I shop too much on the internet.) They dispatched a locksmith who arrived after about 90 minutes, three times as long as billed. In fairness, Precise-Parking Lady let me into the warm vestibule of her building when she rediscovered me ten minutes before the locksmith showed. By that time, I was cutting quite a pathetic figure (and may have milked it a bit).

All told: Two hours. Thirty degrees. Maximum misery. All my dreams of being a sherpa died today.

I’m warm now. I cranked all the radiators in the apartment, closed what storm windows were still open, put on three layers of clothes and rolled myself up in a blanket until the temperature in here reached 83. After cracking a few windows and closing a couple radiators, I’ve attained a comfy 72–a fine atmosphere, don’t you think, in which to recreate the (actual arts-related) posts lost in the ether this afternoon when a suddenly disconnected modem cable made the ibook seize up, initiating this whole sorry series of events. I’ll reconstruct those for you as soon as I’ve had a little sleep. Tomorrow: much blogging, no excuses.

“As a food and travel writer, what I do for a living may seem trivial, but whenever I think of it as ephemeral to the great issues of the day, I am reminded of a scene in the play ‘The Diary of Anne Frank.’ Isolated for months in an attic but still believing they will soon escape, the family fantasizes about the first thing each member will do when they return to the world outside. Anne says she yearns to go to a dance. The teenage boy wants to go to a movie, a western movie! And the adults all start remembering and dreaming of a wonderful pastry shop, a good stew, a romantic restaurant with thick linen and fine wines. None, not one, declares that the first thing he wants to do is to change the political structure of Europe.”

John Mariani, “Gluttony, Reconsidered” (with thanks to Felix Salmon for the Topic Magazine link)

I am soooo overpressed with sail (see yesterday’s blog for details) that I have definitely decided not to post anymore today. Instead I’ll write a piece, visit a couple of galleries, get my hair cut, see Pacific Overtures, and go to bed at a reasonably reasonable hour. But no blogging. None.

If I post anything, don’t read it.

See you tomorrow.

P.S. Our Girl just called from Chicago to say that her modem is temporarily (she hopes) fried. We suggest you make use of the “Sites to See” module of the right-hand column and visit some other cool blog today.

“Laughton belonged to that generation of Englishmen to whom the nature of English social existence in the twenties and thirties was essentially false–pompous and restrictive. Sex had something to do with it–but language, customs, rubric were even more oppressive.

Hooray, it was only the modem cable! A mere $18 poorer, I’m back in business. If only driving to the computer store had been so easy and cheap…story of my horrible day to follow, as soon as I regain feeling in my extremities.

Surprise, it’s the technologically challenged half of ALN! As Terry reported earlier, I’ve been having modem troubles; for a goodly portion of Tuesday I was not able to hold an internet connection for more than a minute or two at a time. I guessed I would need a new USB cable, or a new modem, or even (shudder) a new computer. Well, glory be: for the time being, anyway, a little ingenuity and–I kid you not–Magic Tape seem to have done the trick. Scotch tape always has been one of my favorite office supplies. But I’ve never fixed a computer with it before; Magic, indeed.

So that’s the good news. The bad? The clocks are scowling 3:00 at me. I’m off to bed–further posting will have to wait until midday tomorrow, 3M willing. In the meantime, good night, good morning, and happy December.

It remains the policy of this blog to answer all correspondence that does not recommend anatomical impossibilities. (Sometimes an occasional e-mail does slip through the cracks, but that’s strictly accidental.) If you haven’t heard from me lately, though, please be patient. I’m chipping away at the accumulated contents of my e-mailbag, more or less randomly, but I doubt I’ll get everything answered for another couple of weeks. Keep reading and you’ll see why.

In the meantime, thanks as always for writing. It’s very much appreciated, and that goes for Our Girl, too.

Seeing as how I didn’t bring my iBook to Smalltown, U.S.A. (and good for me!), I wasn’t able to post the usual Friday-morning teaser for my Wall Street Journal column. This one was a doozy: I wrote about four different shows, two good and two bad.

Topping the list was Doubt:

The best new play of the season is about a Roman Catholic priest suspected of molesting a young boy. Don’t roll your eyes: I couldn’t believe it, either. Not only does the priestly sex scandal offer endless opportunities for tendentious pontification of one sort or another, but John Patrick Shanley, best known for his screenplay for “Moonstruck,” is a gifted but uneven playwright whose previous work has never rung my bell. Nevertheless, “Doubt,” which opened Tuesday at the Manhattan Theatre Club’s Stage I, is that rarity of rarities, an issue-driven play that is unpreachy, thought-provoking, and so full of high drama that the audience with which I saw it gasped out loud a half-dozen times at its startling twists and turns. It’s this year’s “Frozen,” minus the plagiarism.

Actually, it’s not quite right to say that “Doubt” is unpreachy, since it starts with a sermon in which Father Flynn (Br