Neither of my planes crashed today, so the photo above is funny to me. Now if you showed me a picture of a cab stopped at a green light while the driver looked at his phone, that would offend me. Around 5:45am, I got in an off-duty on Third Avenue and negotiated a flat rate to LaGuardia. After a polite silence, the driver informed me that his first child had been born Sunday afternoon. “She’s my angel” he said, showing me a picture on his phone until the driver behind us honked. He had a lot of pictures, but each was important. “That’s beautiful,” I said. “You’re lucky to have each other. Green light.” At one point, he missed the go-ahead from a traffic cop. He was so happy I had to tip him immensely. “It’s a beautiful day,” he said, letting me out in the terminal through lane. “You can just run across there.”

Now I’m in Missoula, where the cab drivers don’t give a shit about their kids. It’s spring here, and my fear of missing the lilac bush proved unfounded. The air is crisp and under hot light from a low angle. As I took my dinner at Veselka last night, John the waiter remarked that he hadn’t seen me lately. It’s been about seven years since I ate there regularly. “I’ve been out of town,” I said. “Living out of town, actually.” As soon as I said Montana, he asked if I was in Missoula. “Lucky,” he said.

He was right. I am lucky to have such a friend as Stubble to let me stay in his apartment for two weeks. I’m lucky to know the woman who gave me occasion to go to New York, and the friends who gave me reason to stay. We’re all lucky I’ve been reunited with my electric personal groomer. And once I take a shower and unpack my bags, I’ll be lucky to make it to my bed before I pass out. Good night, eastern time zone, who governs my workings once more. I shall sleep you off.

Combat! blog’s journey into the familiar territory of New York City and the terrifyingly alien landscape of child care continued today with a trip to the Museum of Natural History. We also ate at Veselka, took a jaunt around Central Park, and experienced the ongoing panoply of non-Montanan styles and identities that is the subway. And I got to speak Spanish, thanks to a wrong number call from the Dominican Republican. That could have happened at home. But the important thing is that the boy kept having the time of his life, even if his life has been too short for him to appreciate what a time it was. His mother is the most patient and forgiving woman in the world, which explains why I’m still around at all. I remain lazy and stupid, which is why there’s no Combat! blog today, and why there won’t be until I become childless again on Monday. While I contemplate lives that might have been, how about you read this fine piece of advice from Amber A’Lee Frost on how to deal with your performative male feminist friend? Frost writes a top-notch column for The Baffler, which you should be reading anyway. We’ll be back on Monday, closer to form.

Regular readers may remember last Friday, when Missoulian editor-in-chief Matt Bunk was suspended “until further notice” for bringing a gun to work. Don’t worry—that was all a big misunderstanding. Here’s a statement from Bunk.

One day when I went to work, I accidentally forgot to leave in my car a 100-year-old antique Colt 1908 .25 caliber Vest Pocket model. It’s a collector’s item. My girlfriend bought it for me a couple weeks ago as an engagement gift. Someone pointed it out, and I put it back in my car immediately. I apologize for the commotion that my mistake caused, and to [Missoulian owner] Lee Enterprises for breaking policy.

See? Just an ordinary engagement gun. Normally he keeps it in his car. So all is well at the Missoulian, despite this recent, strange incident with the new editor-in-chief, the wrongful termination lawsuit from the 30-year veteran he was hired to replace, the departure of the cops-n-crime and city reporters last year, the resignation of the city editor this week, the laying off of Chuck Johnson and Mike Dennison, and the closing of Lee’s Helena bureau. You know, when I lay it all together end-to-end like that, maybe everything is not okay at the Missoulian.

But that doesn’t matter, because it’s Missoula’s only daily newspaper. No matter how weird, unreliable, or festooned with pop-up ads it gets, I’m going to keep my digital subscription, because my alternative is to not know what’s going on in the city where I live. That puts Lee Enterprises and the Missoulian’s editors in a dangerous spot. They have to keep making a good product when they know their customers would settle for a worse one. You can read all about the moral hazard of this position in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent, the paper that comes out once a week but remains unarmed.

Will we be back tomorrow for Friday links? Almost certainly not. I took an eight-year-old to Chinatown today. Somehow, I did not sell him.