People I have seen this week:

Name Unknown, the foreign cab driver who was extremely proud of his hybrid cab when he picked us up at LaGuardia at 12:30 am on Wednesday after a long evening of delayed flights. (The car actually sounded like it shut down when it came to a stop, only to rev up like nothing had happened when he stepped on the gas again. We were pretty impressed by this.) But when New York’s finest pulled him over in a fund-raising sting on the George Washington Bridge (I think) and cited him for his bald tires, he had to ask us, his exhausted business-trip passengers, what that meant. And we were left to wonder how a 2006 vehicle could have completely bald tires, especially when it’s only March.

Name Also Unknown, And Also Technically Unseen, the miscreant and/or drunken asshole who repeatedly tried to get into my room at New York’s grossly overrated Hudson Hotel early Wednesday morning. I heard the key card in the door, I heard the handle jiggle, I was very much awake—and I can’t tell if my heart was racing over the potential fright of it all or from the white-hot anger I felt toward the design tard who decided laminate flooring, with its magical abilities to magnify sound in the middle of the night, was a good idea for a hotel room. (Note to the Hudson Hotel: I know it’s trendy and cool to make your lobby seem like a nightclub, but if your guests can’t hear what the desk clerks are telling them about their bills, then your loud thump-thump music is anything but cool. Besides, “Funky Cold Medina” is what wedding reception DJs play—and what Pat Robertson listens to behind closed doors when he's feelin' kinda sexy. Seriously.)

A giant bald bodybuilder in a T-shirt that would be too tight on me wandering the hallways of LaGuardia before our flight home Wednesday evening. He was notable for his immense size, his extremely handsome face and the fact that there was nobody else to look at in the airport. And because he filled my mind with all kinds of Vin-Diesel-in-the-airport-bathroom fantasies.

Some woman from NPR whose name I didn’t recognize but whose voice I totally did, this afternoon at a luncheon to kick off The Economist’s new Chicago survey. I didn’t realize the event would be a Big Deal, so I wore a foo-foo trendy dress shirt (untucked, just like the gays wear them!) and expensive jeans. Every other man there was in a suit.

Dr. C, the dermatologist who looks and talks like Sherry Stringfield (and if she reminds me of an actress who plays a doctor on TV, she has to know what she’s doing). I had my annual celebrity mole checkup today, and she told me not only that I “did a good job healing” from my biopsy scars from last March (Stop! I’m blushing!) but that I had no new moles that gave her concern. Oh, and she and her nurse agreed that I was in “excellent shape,” presumably for a man my age. (I find it funny that they always make a big production of giving me a moment of privacy to strip to my underwear and put on a hospital gown, only to have me take off the gown the moment they come in to examine me.)

D., the well-muscled fella with the megawatt grin and the ability to inject New Yorker references into any conversation. He makes my calloused, untrusting heart do tentatively bouncy things. And he’s not afraid to give me a peck on the lips in front of his co-workers. We’ve been seeing a (relative) lot of each other these last few months, though neither of us is in the market for a boyfriend.