I was wondering myself under what circumstances an unaccompanied Saudi woman would find herself in a restaurant. How would she get there if she can't drive? Dropped off by a driver? And who would wait on her? Do they have female wait staff in Saudi Arabia? Would a man serve an unaccompanied woman in a public place?…

They were laughing while eating salad, alone.

She's going to be 67 in a few weeks. She took the Times buyout a while ago. I assure you she doesn't live in a walk-up. She's also a cancer survivor, so may she live a long and happy life, despite crap like this.

I think they were supposed to work for a M&A (Mergers and Acquisitions) firm, kind of like a precursor to a hedge fund. They might as well have worked for Mitt Romney at Bain; this is what he did.

That was really well done, "such a long time ago." I wonder if Madonna tried to buy in her building and Anna helped block the sale. That was also such a long time ago but does anyone else remember that Madge got turned down at like two dozen co-ops and ended up buying an entire brownstone, I think?

The entire audience stood up and applauded her! And Hugh Jackman pantomimed unbuckling his belt and the place went nuts. Surely someone reading this was also in the audience? It was a very limited run; there was a horrific snowstorm the day before so only us Broadway diehards made it to the theater...

I thought "A Steady Rain" was very moving and very well done, although kind of a period piece and very specific to its era and location. The play is actually part of a trilogy, the other two pieces of which have not been revived to my knowledge.

It's very Gianni Versace circa 1989. I wonder where he got it?

Did you see Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig on Broadway in "A Steady Rain?" I had third row seats. A very dark play, a dialogue really, but I thought some of the audience members would have to be carried out on stretchers, so taken away were they by their love/lust for Jackman/Craig.

Try working for yourself, from home (and not using Google 20 hours a week or whatever.) I actually had to ask somebody today what day it was because I thought it was Monday. I'm like the Dowager Countess from Downton Abbey: "What is a weekend?" Oh well, I pretty much get to take the month of December off because I had…

I don't think that's true, actually. The Romans were great record keepers, and even in the most far-flung bits of the empire, as Jerusalem was, there are surviving tax records that predate the birth of Jesus. They were also masters of the surveillance state, with spies and informers everywhere, and Judea was a fertile…

I wish your sibling luck. It must be awful to want a child and not able to have one. There is adoption, but my sister didn't want to go down that route for some reason. My coworkers were the best, they were like family, no secrets among us. I went to several of their weddings and when my sister's son was born they…

I was a Scrooge like you but then one afternoon I got a call in my office from my sister who told me that after a decade of trying she was pregnant. I screamed so loudly (I'm a guy) several people rushed into my office to see if I was OK. I shooed them away and my sister went on to ask me if I would consent to be the…

MA native here. The hot dog buns and the hamburger rolls they use are actually made by the Wonder Bread corporation, but they go by different names. My siblings love to host cookouts so I've consumed more Wonder Bread than most elementary schoolchildren did in the 1950s. Vitamin-enriched: It's nutritious!

Completely unscientific response:

Starting when I was about 30 I used to spend two weeks every year working on a college campus and I felt like a grandfather, completely out of touch and old and useless. The other 50 weeks of the year I was a "kid" in my actual office. I don't know how university employees do it.

Do you live in New York? Use the old "strange subway track incident/my subway line was running along another subway line/train was pulled out of service/traffic up ahead we should be moving shortly/please transfer to an uptown X and go eight miles and 10 stops out of your way transfer for downtown local service 'see…

The Alice Springs Chicken Quesadilla Aussietizer was a valuable teaching tool for me. A big gang of family members went to an Outback recently when I was up visiting and I tried to point out that there's probably not a lot of chicken farming in the unforgiving climate around Alice Springs and even if there were the…

At one point Mary (or one of the girls) asks her parents why they don't have separate bedrooms like other people. She deosn't get a response, and probably didn't expect one, but for them to share a bed was odd enough; having a daughter ask it of you would have been inconceivable, I think, unless you were part of the…

Oh no. You're forgetting the "Anna and Mr. Bates post-connubial bliss" mini-scene. I almost took a vow of celibacy on the spot.