Morning News Department: when I walked out of my bedroom this morning, there were a couple of workmen on the roof of one of the brownstones next door. This is why I never got into the habit of walking around naked. You just never know.

Animal Control Department: I spent some time this morning playing with Cricket, using the Cat Dancer toy and a ping-pong ball. She gets annoyed with ping-pong balls because she can't bite them, but she chases them anyway. But where do they go? They all disappear, like ball-point pens or Bic lighters or socks. I'm positive that I'll discover fifteen ping-pong balls under my furniture when I move someday.

Complaints Department: I saw a cop on horseback yesterday, and he wasn't wearing a helmet. His horse was probably sixteen or seventeen hands; a hand is four inches and measured to the top of the shoulders, so the horse's back was about 5'4" off the ground. And everything around here is pavement.

"Wear a helmet!" I yelled to him.

He turned his horse around and came back. "Sorry?"

"Wear a helmet," I repeated. "You never know when you're going to get thrown."

"Do you wear a helmet every time you step out into traffic? You never know when you're going to get hit by a car."

I just looked at him for a minute, wondering how to tell him that his analogy made no sense. Officer, your horse is not a car. Your horse is a variable in any equation. And it's a long way down to pavement from where you're sitting. But all I said was, "I grew up around horses. Be careful."

Duh.