I was holding a friend's baby once and he sneezed and brought up all kinds of phlegmy snot onto my neck and shoulder. The mother was horrified. I just laughed and told her, "I have scrubbed canine diarhhea out of a wool rug; let me just use your bathroom for a minute, I'll be fine."

Taylor Dane! You have warmed this AARP member's heart.

Then it will not make you happy to hear that the MTA and its component agencies have huge graphic design teams but they freelance everything out anyway. The huge graphic design teams are there for "review". Which takes months. And lots of input. And this is what they come up with. So many sentence fragments.

We never have bad experiences in restaurants and I think the thanking and complimenting must help. And invariably on our way out the door, as the host(ess) is saying goodbye and thanking us for coming, I thank the host(ess) for having us and ask him/her to thank the server, and my friend will chip in, "And tell her…

I have a close female friend who is a great complimenter. I am a great "Please" and "Thank you" guy. Whenever we go to a restuarant, for example, the server gets about 50% "I think I'll have the..." and 50% "Oh water, that's great, thank you!" and "I love your earrings! So beautiful! Did you get them locally?" We keep…

The LDS and JW have sign-up lists for home visits? That's good to know. I have a couple in mind who might like to talk about the Bible, whether they know it or not. Do they have early morning appointments? Like 6 AM? Maybe even earlier? Sundays would be best, of course. If there's no answer, just keep ringing the bell…

I keep my home office dark so that I can see my monitor better. The home office also houses my homicidal puppy's crate. Many's the time I've almost broken an ankle stepping on one of his hundreds of half-eaten chew toys that he likes to leave around the office chair. I'm sure he LOLs in his own discreet way.

Have you ever gone to an ice cream place when it's snowing outside and accompanied your two scoops with an iced coffee? I know people in MA who do this.

You can transition using e-cigarettes. I did, and I smoked for 30 years. They have nicotine in a vapor compound somehow. So you can actually smoke and inhale nicotine but there's no smell, no ash, no butts, and you kind of forget that you ever smoked. Not nearly as satisfying as a real cigarette but I've been on them…

I am a gay man and old enough to be your father. I admire your courage and your self-wisdom and wish I had had it 30 years ago.

God, that's horrible.

Is that true? Can anyone else chime in on this "uncomfortable situation for a single woman alone in a NYC yellow cab" phenomenon? I am chivalrous (not MRA, just helpful!) and whenever I'm out with a female friend I hail a cab and give it to her and then I get the next one. I must have done this a couple of hundred…

So I'll be drunk in someone else's apartment with a bunch of people watching Donnie Wahlberg and Jenny McCarthy on TV? Seems like a strange way to spend 2015 but I'll take it.

I eat real Chinese food all the time and I love it, and in real life I look like a downstairs extra from Downton Abbey so not your typical consumer of real Chinese food. A lot of Chinese restaurants here in Manhattan have a special section on the menu usually called "American Specialties" or something and that's where…

Does it count if the tall, dark-haired man was your husband just getting back from the gym? And if the "gift" was "It's almost 10 o'clock. Get up and make the bed. I told you you'd regret drinking so much last night." (Well, one of the gifts. The other was a big restorative container of take-out coffee.)

I've only had lryngitis once in my life and I used an old Pictionary game to communicate. If you have one of those lying around break it out!

SPOILER ALERT: Something similar happens on Season Five of Downton Abbey. Just kidding, sadly.

I subscribe to that driver's license photo theory. One year I waited until the last minute to get mine renewed. I hadn't gotten a haircut in months (more procrastination) and it was sleeting that day and I had a miserable cold. Plus they made me take my glasses off (I am never not wearing glasses, except when I sleep;…

I don't think people thought the world was going to end but they thought life would be inconvenient, at least, for a while. My brother-in-law is a software engineer and he worked 18 hour days the entire month of December, 1999. Meanwhile his wife, my sister, was pregnant and her due date was around January 1, 2000, so…

We spent NYE Y2K at the swank apartment of friends of ours in Midtown Manhattan. Slowly but surely every drifted up to the roof of their high-rise to watch the fireworks. Fireworks over we all crowded into the elevator to go back down to their apartment.