He flirted with me yesterday at the Crate & Barrel on Madison. He was shopping with his boyfriend, a blond Scandinavian man with thin wire-framed glasses and a square jaw. They were redecorating.

I first saw him looking at me out of the corner of my eye, near the flatware and hand-painted glasses, and when I turned to look at him, we maintained eye contact for the briefest of moments before I looked away, feeling all hot and flustered. Did it suddenly just get warm in the store? He was beautiful. Dark, handsome Italian man with smiling eyes that danced and sparkled under the store's bright lights. He kept talking to his partner as we exchanged glances, he picking up a green hand-blown vase and I a brilliant white candle, each of us acutely aware of the other's presence fifteen feet away.

His partner said something to him. He turned away, laughing. Killer smile, I thought. And oh, the beautiful teeth, how perfect and white.

He took off his coat. He shrugged it off slowly and nonchalantly and deliberately as I watched him from afar, the knee-length winter coat falling effortlessly into his arms. How I wished to be that coat. He knew I was watching him. Under the coat he wore a tight-fitting tee shirt, and his muscles rippled as he flexed gently to let me know that yes, he took care of himself. His partner picked up another vase.

We kept tabs on each other for the better part of half an hour as we browsed the store's offerings, making extended eye contact near the leather sofas on the second floor and again at the picture frames on the first. Oh how beautiful he was.

And as they left his store, I saw him tug at his partner's arm and whisper something to him. His partner turned around to look at me as the beautiful dark Italian man, the one with the bulging biceps and killer smile mouthed two words to me. Very cute. I returned his smile.

And then into the brilliant sunshine and crisp spring air, just like that, they disappeared.

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It's April 15. Tax Day.

I just mailed off my forms to the IRS, procrastinating as usual until the very last possible day. Every year I make the same promise to myself: mail the damn things as soon as I possibly can. Every year I break that promise.

At least I sent them off twelve hours earlier than I did last year.

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The coffee machine has three settings: Light, Medium, Strong. In my early afternoon post-lunch haze I put the empty cup in its place under the silver nozzle and stare for a moment at the three buttons. I press Strong.

It's one of those days.

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It's 8:30 in the morning, and I am sitting poolside watching one last time the sun begin its daily journey over the San Jacinto mountains. We will leave soon for New York.

The hummingbirds are up and about, zipping back and forth in precise but neurotic fashion, making their morning rounds and milking the thousands of flowers for their sweet nectar. The resort's enormous orange tabby is awake too, and as ineffective as she is a bird hunter, she makes a great show of stalking the gray doves from afar. She will have to be content with the scraps of breakfast I feed her.

The past few days here in Palm Springs have been tremendous. Greg flew out to meet me at the end of my conference, and we hiked a few more trails each day, soaking in as much of the California sun as we could before our trip back east. It's truly amazing out here in the desert, but now it is time we say goodbye. Goodbye to the Seuss-like joshua trees, the rocky trails winding through ridges and canyons, the gigantic palm tree groves sipping water at the oasis, the colourful caterpillars crossing the roads, the friendly lizards skip-skip-skipping across the rocks as we approach. I've posted some of the pics from the trip here, and I hope you enjoy them. Truly wondrous, and now it's time to go home.

It's too bad that Greg and I are flying out of different airports on the way back. We're celebrating a quiet birthday for him today, and he will have to spend much of it in transit. Happy birthday, hon. I'll see you back in New York.

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The conference is over. I checked out of the Marriott this morning, happy to leave the enormous hotel behind. Huge hotels like this aren't my thing, and I breathed a sigh of relief as I welcomed the vacation part of the trip.

It's the excessiveness of it all that I just don't feel comfortable with: the indoor boats ferrying us from one end of the hotel to the restaurant of your choice, the flocks of pink flamingoes and swans swimming about as though it were the most normal thing to be a pink flamingo or a swan in the desert, the dozens of Amazon parrots sitting in the lobby, free to move about as they please, flightless and trapped in a cage without wires.

Fake smiles are everywhere, and it's everyone's job to keep you happy. Yet that does nothing but make me feel even more uncomfortable and awkard. So it was quite understandable my gladness when the taxi rolled up to the little resort in Warm Sands; I checked in with renewed gusto, a smile on my face and a song in my heart.

Vacation time, take two.

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On the way to another solitary afternoon hike today, I had a little, uhm, fender bender. There I was, singing along with Christina on the radio about how beautiful she was, the dry desert air rushing through my carefully pomaded hair and my backpack keeping me company in the passenger seat. I was in California bliss. Then suddenly, at the intersection of East Canyon and Escoba, just when she was getting to the part about how beautiful she was in every single way, a gray Cadillac going the opposite direction swung out in front of me and made an accelerated left turn. I did the best I could do. I smashed headfirst into his passenger side.

My tiny rental Neon spun out into the middle of the four-way intersection, and as the airbags popped I heard the screeching of tires as cars around me swerved to avoid hitting me. Then I heard another crunch as the Cadillac smashed into Horea and Stella. Poor old retired Horea and Stella, they were on their way to their hotel from a round of golf with their brand new car. "Tut, tut, tut," Stella later said to me, looking at the Cadillac, "crazy drivers I tell you, crazy drivers."

I sat dazed for a few minutes, examining the rug burns on my forearms from the exploding airbags.

"Are you okay?" I looked up at the tiny crowd that had gotten out of their cars and gathered around me. A man with gigantic gold earrings and face orange from sunburn came up to me. "I mean, are you okay?" He shook my hand as though I had just performed a great stunt. "That looked pretty bad."

"I'm okay," I said. "Just a bit shaken."

A woman pushed him aside. "Hey, I saw the whole thing," she said. "It was totally his fault." She pointed to the gray Cadillac, nodding vigorously as though agreeing with herself. "And if you ask my opinion, it looks like he was trying to, you know, flee the scene." She introduced herself to the crowd. Her name was Lola. Lola Rossi, she told us.

As the police came and took our reports, Lola took charge. She told the police everything, from the second she knew something was going wrong to the time she swerved out of the way to avoid another crash. I stared in wonder at her purple and black sheer coat and her jangly jewelry as she excitedly waved her hands about, telling the story over and over. "I saw it, I saw everything," she kept saying.

Lola stayed with me a few minutes, constantly asking me if I was okay and telling me she knew it wasn't my fault.

"Thanks, Lola," I said.

And as she made to leave the scene, she pulled me aside. "Hey, I've got something for you," she said. She scuttled over to the passenger side of her car and grabbed a bag. "Here," she said, "I'm in the business." She pressed a CD and newspaper into my hand, beaming proudly. "Give it a listen and let me know what you think." She stood, hands akimbo as I examined her face plastered on the cover. "See, that's me," she said, smiling broadly as though it were her mission in life to distribute her music to accident victims across the country.

I looked at her. "Thanks so much, Lola. This is wonderful. Thanks for all your help." She looked as though she was going to give me a hug, but I was terrified of the suffocation potential of her enormous breasts, generously proportioned as they were, and I politely backed away. "Thanks so much again."

I'm sitting here now, listening to "Favorites: For Our Family, Friends and Fans" as I munch away on some dinner. Somehow I feel safer knowing that Lola is here, singing quietly to me.

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Three days down, five to go.

It's amazing what a few days away from the office can do for you. The hot Palm Springs sun has melted some of the stress away like ice cubes left to dry on a summer porch, corporate tension disappearing into the dry desert sky.

The conference is going smoothly. It's a strange juxtaposition of work and vacation, and it is at once bizarre and somewhat surreal to see your colleagues walking around the enormous hotel full of hundreds and hundreds of corporate types, mostly middle-aged men waiting for the discussions to be over so they can run off to play a round of golf. It's certainly a refreshing change to be away from the office, but there's only so much talk of Sarbanes-Oxley and SEC proposals that I can take without going bonkers.

On Sunday, I broke away from my colleagues and hiked solo down the West Fork Trail at the Indian Canyons. It's therapeutic to walk alone through the desert, listening to nothing but the beating of your heart as the sun burns and burns and burns. It's definitely something I need right now. Just, you know, to sort things out.

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