Thursdays and Fridays are the days when I really get all my personal writing done for the week. Monday to Wednesday I'm tied up with Columbia. So I was rushing the kids to school this morning but in my head I was already back home at the computer when I realized that all the blocks around the school were cordoned off.

Crowds of parents and kids meandered confusedly. It turns out that there was a bomb scare, not in the school, thank God, but in the construction site just across the street. In my mind I immediately linked it to the big Gambino crime family raid last night.

I'm a New Yorker but I was living in LA during 911 so feel oddly disconnected from the defining moment in the city's recent history. To me the bomb scare was obviously a prank, an act of vandalism, not al Qaeda. But in the eyes of the other parents I saw something more ominous.

Eventually, however, we all calmed down and Chet when on one playdate and Ava on another so I could run to the gym for the first time in two weeks and then return to work. I just picked up Chet and put him in front of Burt Lancaster as "The Crimson Pirate." Lancaster was an acrobat in the circus before he became one of my favorite movie stars. Who knew?

Oh, and if you're having trouble finding my book in bookstores please let me know.