"Now, that's something that looks better with pants on." - Sullivan

So I have this Black Irish friend, let's call him Sullivan, who is another 'work at homer.' We are both part of a strange new class, people who use computers, cell phones, faxes; who primarily perform their day-jobs from home. I'm in marketing, Sullivan is an engineer (he's working on cooling towers for a project in Puerto Rico at the moment). You will see folks like us at your local Starbucks, sipping expensive coffee concoctions, logging onto the web, typing furiously on our keyboards, surfing the world wide web, talking on our little silver cell phones.

Anyway, Sullivan, in the way that he always does, left me a message that he was coming over, he was riding his bike over to my apartment, and he was meeting me for lunch. Since, he knew I wasn't big on lunch, we were going to go to Starbucks and have coffee together. This is how it goes with Sullivan, he calls, he tells me when he's coming over, and what we're gonna do. It's his way; I go along with it, because he's a genuinely funny guy, he usually has me in stitches with his dry, Black Irish humour.

He comes over, we go to Starbucks, it's beautiful outside, so we decamp to a bench in the park and sip our iced venti skim lattes (these are the magic code words strung together just so). We had a great talk. Sullivan, as usual, had me laughing so hard, I almost keeled over. To passersby we may have looked like two middle-aged street bums, (and hell, would they be wrong?). We both had these maniacal grins on our faces, the laughter came out in ribbons. I can't really relate what was so funny, I wish I had a tape recorder, but without the full picture, Sullivan's sharply chiseled features, his massive and inviting forehead, his crooked grin, so much would be lost even on audio tape.

We walked back to my apartment, he hopped on his bike and that was that. I might not hear from him for months now. But then, sometime (who knows when?), out of the blue, Sullivan will emerge, he'll open me up, and the laughter will flow once again.