It all began as a mistake by T-Mobile. We instructed them to allow UPS to leave the new phone on the door step; much more expensive items have been left there without peril, but they screwed it up and demanded a personal signature. Calls to UPS got nowhere and notes ignored. The phone was returned to some UPS center in Miami for pickup and we duly set out yesterday by friend's car only to end up at the airport UPS center after two hours of searching to find out it was not the one. Repeated calls for help in directions were fruitless; the 800 number somewhere in plains of Nebraska could do nothing but tell us it was on Eighth St. of which we found three. To my dismay W. 8 th St. was two mile east of E. 8th St; crossing Lejune Rd. at 79th St. found us on E. 26 th St. How tourists find their way around is a mystery.
We decided to give the friend a break and go home, but within a half hour Leopoldo was telling me he was going by bus to what we had now figured out was the actual home of the phone: North Hialeah. Telling him he was not going alone, we set out and finally reach 79 th St. and E. 8 St. (which is west of W. 8 th St.); there we found out that only in Miami could 60 th St. be North of 79 th (with another 60 th St. South of it). We went North and finally got there. While Leo was retrieving the phone I stared at a bronze plaque of Amelia Earhart stating that on that very site she started out on her last voyage. This confounded me as I thought she had flown out out of San Francisco. At home I looked up the story of Amelia Earhart on Wikipedia and sure enough she started out at first from San Fran to Hawaii only to have the plane have trouble and have to be shipped back to Oakland. Then she flew unannounced to Miami and declared the new attempt in the opposite direction because of wind changes. What would we do without Wikipedia?

And special note should be made of First Annual Brooklyn Bridge Pup Crawl, which should not be confused with Thomas Barker's annual Bar Crawl, will take place on Sept. 26 and benefit animal shelters overcome by abandoned pets especially heightened by the foreclosure crisis. KiKi wishes he could attend, but can hardly walk around the block anymore. He will, however, address the crowd by satellite hook-up.