September 14. The day today was cleared and I was able to use it entirely for the difficult customer. With long breaks to think. Best work.

September 13. It is a sign of how much I’ve become an American just how interested I was in the manhunt in Pennsylvania over the last few days. I really wanted that guy to be caught. And I was devastated when he slipped through the perimeter. I thought he would surely be gone by now. I pulled up the news a hundred times a day. And then, this morning, while I was in the shower, they caught him. I am surprised with how little of a relief I feel. My sense of deep injustice when he seemed to walk free was far greater than my sense of seeing things righted now. That low reward of being a vigilante.

September 12. My manager asks if we have an in-case-of-emergeny-break-glass situation. I only need to say yes and everything is taken care of.

September 11. Ten hours of report-writing.

September 10. “Endless” by Keith Jarrett, with Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette, is perhaps my favorite, most important piece of music ever. It is therefore puzzling that in the thirty years since I’ve known it, I’ve never looked to see if there were any other similar pieces by the three of them. It was enough for me that this one piece existed.

September 9. A friend from the past writes that his first book of poetry has been published. Thirty-two pages, no electronic edition.

September 8. Elevators #1, #2 and #3 in our building are being replaced. #3 is finished, #2 is in progress, #1 is still the old one. The new elevator #3 has its own button on each floor. This button will later also call elevators #1 and #2 when they are connected to the new system. At least I think so. Elevator #1 still has its button from the old system. So now there is a button on each floor that only calls elevator #1, and a button that only calls elevator #3. It was obvious what would happen: now everyone in the building presses both buttons when they want an elevator. The one that comes first, you take, the other one stops, a short time later, on that floor unnecessarily. Effectively, this means that we currently only have the capacity of one elevator, distributed over two elevators. J got really furious when, at the beginning, I wanted to press both buttons too. In the meantime, I am completely on the side of those who press only one button. It doesn’t help anything though. As you can easily see, the only way the system could work would be for everyone in the house to randomly press one of the two buttons, but not always the same one. Instead, we stoically stand in the elevator and endure the selfishness.

September 7. Struggled all day with data and measurements, and lost in the end. Next, inform the customer about it.

September 6. It should be added that at Barzini’s and also at the Liquor Store across the street, the plexiglass panels at the cash registers disappeared about two weeks ago.

September 5, Newburgh. We were completely exhausted when we arrived here. Fell asleep at ten. Washed all clothes twice, but the smell of smoke is far from gone. Spent the day working at the dining table, back to Manhattan in the evening.