Small World

Yesterday I met up with my mentor, Mike Lemonick, who is a wonderful writer and is great fun to follow around and ask random questions from. Everyone stops to talk with him, or at least say hi, and he's teaching a science journalism grad class at NYU this semester so I went out to lunch with them.

The most entertaining thing out of all this, though, was how last night during the science writers party at Fenway Park he mentioned that his brother was from Pittsburgh, and did I know Shady Side Academy because his nephew and niece went there. "What year?" I asked.

"The nephew's a senior in college right now and his sister is two years younger," was the answer, and I promptly felt like an idiot for not thinking about Mike's last name more.

"Your nephew is best friends with my brother," I explained, "and he was over at my house nearly every day in high school. And I still see him, a bunch of us went to Penn House Brewery over winter break."

This of course resulted in a prompt comparison of notes on every angle of the subject, including the conclusion that we both knew Lake Winnepesaukee in New Hampshire very well as Mike had worked on Three Mile Island several summers ago. Which isn't surprising at all, because I knew his brother had met his wife there and my brother's friend did as well... I will note though I did feel a bit better at all this, because when I first saw Mike he looked strikingly familiar and I couldn't figure out why!

Oh, and if we're keeping track of the "does Yvette like scientists or science writers more" tally, score one for the science writers last night as their party at Fenway was just awesome. They had a plethora chocolate covered strawberries, free drinks, and a great band and dancing, and I can't say the scientists have ever really done any of those.