The leak in the deli turns out to have been olive oil, watch the spelling, and the source of it was a container with roughly enough olive oil to feed the Roman Army that the guy in the apartment above had got for a barbecue several months ago. He hadn't used the whole thing, and had just left the can of oil laying around in his closet, and in time it started leaking and the leak made its way through the ceiling. Even with that fully explained it doesn't seem to quite make sense, but there's no sense being in a city if you don't want to have things like that happen around you.
The deli did give me the chance to add to my long list of slightly awkward social situations into which I stumble without ever knowing what happened. While the owner went in back for something (I think he was washing his hands) I stepped to the fridge by the side of the counter to slide it open and get out a soda. A guy came in and asked me if he should come around back, which inspired my eloquent question, ``What?'' He tried again, asking where the owner was, and I told him he'd gone in back. ``Of here?'' Well ... I was fairly sure of that. Mercifully the owner came back in front and knew whatever it was the guy was talking about -- I think he was trying to deliver something -- and it appears that he assumed I was working at the deli because, I guess, I was the only person in sight.
Whilst reading the Reuters news feed I ran across a headline about Johan Santana breaking the Minnesota Twins single-game strikeout record in a Sunday game against the Texas Rangers. The thing which had me confused: the dateline was New York City, which as far as I can tell hasn't got anything to do with anything in the story. I'm sure that everyone appreciates how all worthwhile news, if it doesn't emanate from New York City, must at least pass through it to be transformed into something which might be of any interest to the unworthy masses, but there's a point where the dateline just becomes distracting. Particularly because it turns out the article, a summary of baseball activity on Sunday, was written by Mike Shalin in Boston.
Trivia: The original six newspapers forming the Associated Press were all New York newspapers: the Sun, the Tribune, the Herald, the Journal of Commerce, the Courier And Enquirer, and the Express. Source: Gotham: A History of New York City To 1898, Edwin G Burrows, Mike Wallace.
Currently Reading: The Basque History of the World, Mark Kurlansky.