Another misspent day

Ever had one of those days when nothing goes right—and it all works out great? Today A and I headed downtown to get a bite to eat at the new Whole Foods and take a guided tour of the sculptures of Battery Park City. Our Plan B, in case of rain, was to see a movie at the BPC multiplex. But we got downtown too late to eat at WF, couldn't find the dearly named Teardrop Park in time for the debarkation of the sculpture walk, forgot all about the movie and ended up winklepicking for hours amid an endless parade of Halloween pixies and parents that wended through the vast atria of the World Financial Center and the Winter Garden. In the quarter-century that A and I have known each other, we've lived in each other's pockets at work, shared childrearing upheavals, taken road trips together, blabbered endlessly about this and that. So I thought I had unearthed everything there was to know about her and her family. But somehow there's always some new vein to mine, and today I struck gold yet again in mesmerizing stories A's mother had told her about her World War I girlhood. So an afternoon of intentions gone awry turned out to yield unplanned pleasures.