When I worked at the gym at NYU, we occasionally encountered a man who would sneak into the upstairs bathrooms to shave. It was demeaning to all involved to drag this guy out of the building, but the administration was strict.

We didn't know much about him, and, in retrospect, I should have asked. I'm pretty sure that on a few occasions I actually covered for the guy while he finished, although I certainly asked him to leave at times as well. Sometimes, he was only half done shaving, so he'd leave with shaving cream still on part of his chin. He also seemed to cut himself a lot, perhaps from using dull razors or from rushing before he got caught.

According to the assistant operations manager, the man was a former professor. That was why he knew about the gym. At some point in the past he either developed a mental illness, or became an addict, or did something else to lead him to a life on the streets.

There have been times in my life when I've thought about that guy and realized how close I've come to going that way myself. After all, going to graduate school was itself a way of escaping demons. I was galvanized by the death of my friend Rob back in 94. He died of a heroin overdose. Quickly thereafter, I decided I had to take action and do something with my life other than what I was doing: a vague hallucinatory mix of drugs and inertia and strumming guitars. Of course, it's possible I could have chosen that direction anyway, but it's what pushed me to dive in.

I bought some GRE test booklets and spent six months studying the history of English literature. When I took my subject exam, I scored in the 98th percentile, which isn't surprising since I read nearly every major canonical work and memorized a slew of rhetoric terms in Greek to prepare.

Little did I know that I would soon go off to grad school, where a twenty year passion for literature would be extinguished in a matter of months. There's nothing wrong with this. In a sense, it propelled me into history: instead of living and thinking like a pre-post-modernist, now I was in the New New Age and found myself, blinking my newborn eyes, and wondering what wastelands lay beyond.

I have never found anything as intellectually engaging as I did back then, but I have found much that is more sober, insightful, and useful. I am less provoked and more deliberate. But not without my limitations.

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I made lunches for all five days this week and spent only 5.63 to do it. I bought three pounds of pork (on sale), a jalapeno pepper, a head of garlic, and a head of green cabbage. I found some leftover lemongrass and thai rice. The resulting dish is hearty and complex enough to not get tiresome after three or four days. The pork, like most pork in this country, was too lean, and thus slightly dry and tasteless. It was not as tasty as some of the chicken dishes I'd made recently, but I still suspect it's going to be tastier than just about anything I could while on the road. And you can't beat the price.

My local grocery store doesn't have organ meats -- otherwise I might have kicked it up with some kidneys.

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This weekend I applied or made inquiries to Home Depot and the Wachusett Brewing Company. I can now reduce the list of career themes to: food, fighting, fixing things, writing, and teaching. Those are the points at which we now spin.

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One of the guys from William J Malcolm and Son installed our water heater this weekend. It ended up being more complex we first supposed -- our low basements ceilings made finding a suitably sized heater difficult. But, in the end, the plumber did excellent work and we now have hot water. Plus, I still have three dollars in my pocket to last the week! That doesn't sound like much, but it's a cup of coffee on a cold day, and sometimes, that's all you need to make it through. And, given the expenses of the weekend, it's a miracle I came out with a full tank of gas and the hope of a warm cup of the black in the early, cold afternoon.

After helping Tracie move to her new home in Stow earlier today -- she is a jiu-jitsu student who injured her back and recently had emergency surgery -- I insulated the basement against the cold air that was getting in through two boarded up windows. The plumber brought the problem to my attention and reminded me that the sharp cold could cause the pipes to freeze. I did most of the work with some trash bags and a staple gun. Now, the basement is somewhat darker and looks even more forbidding, but it has a touch of warmth, even on a cold day such as this.