Geoff was out sick on Monday and still feeling pretty crappy when he got back in the office, so on Wednesday or so we were commiserating about how unable to think we both were. "This is what sucks about being sick," he said. "Every two hours I just want to lie down and take a nap."

I was asking him if he knew when the dates for two things were going to fall relative to each other, and he started, "Well, $thing_A is tentatively scheduled for the end of Q2. Tentatively. That's a strange word. Ten-ta-tive-ly."

"This is what being sick does to you," I said. "Suddenly you're caught in rapt fascination with ordinary adverbs."

"Oh my god," he said, as if I'd just jarred something loose. "I was coming in to work, and suddenly all modifiers were ambiguous. There was this guy handing out papers, going 'Free Boston Now, Free Boston Now'" -- there's a free daily paper called Boston Now (the main feature it has to recommend it is that it has better Sudoku than the other free daily) -- "and for a moment I think he's saying 'Free Boston, now' and I'm like, what happened, what did I miss, are we being oppressed?"

"The revolution begins!" I grinned.

"Oh, don't give me that crap."

THE OTHER DAY, D said, "So I was checking out this forum that some guy at work has been playing with. It's called 'yayhooray.'"

"Wait, is this an instance of a forum or is it a forum platform?"

"It's a site. I don't know what kind of software it's running, it's very minimal."

"What's it about?"

"It's not about anything. It's just random stuff that people post in a forum." We both used to be on another forum that had a theme, but also had a general "Off-topic" board for unrelated stuff. "It's like that," D explained, "only there's nothing but that, and it's by invitation only."

"That's stupid," I declared. "Though 'yayhooray' is kind of a genius name for a domain. Kudos to them for that."

"Anyway, someone posted a note 'Yayhooray is closing down on January 25' or something -- it was a joke, but some people were taking it seriously. And all these people were going 'Oh no! I need an account on another forum!' and there was this one guy posting, 'Please send me an invite to humhum!'

"So apparently, there's a whole slew of these sites out there with these sorts of names. I was thinking of registering 'gabblab' but it's already taken."

"So, what are you doing on yahooray?" I asked when I'd stopped laughing.

"Not much. I have an account, but I don't have any invites, sorry."

"That's OK. I bet humhum is a much cooler site anyway."

THIS MORNING I was out running my usual weekend errands and picking up something for lunch while I was out. I entered the bagel shop, where there were three people behind the counter, standing roughly in an equilateral triangle. Two of them in the back -- one girl and one guy with medium-length proto-Robert Plant hair -- were facing more or less toward me, while the one in the front was facing away with one arm stretched out toward the girl.

"Turn around," said the guy facing me to the one with his back turned. "Turn around," he repeated, when the guy did not.

I figured this was just a "dude, customers, do your job" prod, until the guy turned his head, and I saw a cat nose and whiskers drawn on his face. Which was when I also realized that the girl had his arm because she was drawing on it.

The cat-guy turned to his friend, then back to me, and explained, "We found this crayon that draws on anyone. So I decided I would be a Cat Man today." He reached for some gloves. "What can I get for you?"

I ordered two bagels with smoked salmon and cream cheese.

"I do love fish," he said, "so I warn you, I may not be able to control myself."

"We're getting rid of him by the end of the week," proto-Robert Plant assured me.

"So you're saying it's safe to come back." I've been to this shop several times, and never noticed the Cat Man -- even in his human form -- before.

"How are my cat nose and whiskers? I haven't seen them yet."

It took me a second to realize he was asking me. "They're quite good," I assured him.

"Good, because one thing I would hate is to be a Rat Man instead of a Cat Man."

Meanwhile, the girl was talking to proto-RP. "Falcon," he answered in response to her question.

"Are you guys talking about reincarnation again?" asked Cat Man.

"Yeah. I would be a falcon, or maybe a lion. What about you?"

"I would definitely be a seal that lived in the Galapagos," said Cat Man.

"You'd get eaten by sharks," said proto-RP.

"No, I saw a documentary. Galapagos seals have no natural predators."

"Then why aren't they everywhere?"

"Because, you're in the ocean, and then you get to hang out on the beach in the Galapagos. Why would you go anywhere else?"

While Cat Man made my bagels, the girl got me some chips and the shift manager rang me up. When the transaction was done, and I was just waiting for the finished bagels, the manager said to the others, "You guys are probably too young for this, but have you ever heard of ALF?"

"That sounds sort of familiar," said Cat Man.

"It was this creature, sort of like a lion. It was a TV show. He ate cats."