Riding in the elevation along with me was one of the condo association’s founding residents, who considers herself a high authority on all matters regarding the building. Upon hearing my audible smirk, she informed me archly that the management [of which she is not a member] would prefer that bedbugs not be treated as a joke.

I hate being spoken to archly.

Seeming not to notice, she continued on with dark predictions of what would happen in our building should someone inadvertently traipse bedbugs through the front door. Apparently we would be encircled in plastic and heated within an inch of our lives. You can’t use DEET any more, so you have to cook the little buggers to death without also decimating fish, pet cockatoos, and blast furnace-averse residents. Bedbugs, she said pointedly, can ride along on anything. She looked down at my leather low-rise boots with suspicion.

Here I am, worried about Newt and the European union and space debris falling out of the sky and whether, in an earthquake, I’ll be able to get to my carefully packed emergency bag. Now I have a humorless woman looking with malice aforethought at my footwear.

Happily, the elevator reached my floor and I prepared to exit. I put on my most authoritative voice and told her that bedbugs NEVER attach themselves to leather. The woven bag she carries everywhere is a different story – practically a tour bus for meandering microbugs. Then I wished her good afternoon with all the arch in my voice I could muster.

Now the Epson has decided to print only half of any page I need, and it would cost more to have someone come and look at it than to buy a new printer – which is what I wanted to do anyway. I revved up Amazon Prime, found a decent home version of an HP, and clicked “purchase”.

Within 36 hours of placing the order online, I received in the regular mail two Staples coupons for HP toner and ink. I found the timing fascinating and assumed the two were connected.

Son Matt reminds me they may not have been. I may have coincidentally bought an HP printer just at the time Staples was running a promotion. Or, Staples has an integrated marketing program with either Amazon or the actual vendor of the HP, and the coupon mailing was triggered by my purchase.

With every step we take online we build an identity, and the wireless world responds with what it thinks we might like to do next. When I buy a Kindle book, Amazon often sends me list of suggestions for similar or related books. When I bought a pair of infant OshKosh B’Gosh overalls for Archie, a prompt appeared asking if I’d also like to buy a matching shirt. When I make a dinner reservation on Open Table, the site suggests other restaurants in its inventory that I might also find appealing.

Sometimes the algorithms get it wrong. My father’s family lives in Iowa, and although I don’t travel often to that state, a trip there is well within the range of something I have done and will do again. On my last visit, I was turned down for a credit card purchase of gasoline for the rental car – which I chalked up to happenstance. Shortly after, my credit card was also declined at a roadside restaurant where I stopped to eat lunch. When I called, the credit card company verified my identity and then restored access. They explained that the purchase of gas in rural Iowa had triggered a fraud alert, as there was nothing in my profile that suggested I might actually be in the state.

By and large I’m comfortable with a world in which algorithms suggest what I might want to do next – as long as I’m free to act on the prompt or not. I often do follow a Kindle suggestion, and have enjoyed books I’d otherwise not have found. I bought the overalls for Archie but not the shirt, and then found one at a bricks and mortar Target that worked just fine. I rarely take Open Table recommendations for other restaurants, and I’m not sure why.

My mother shopped a lot in the Sears Roebuck catalog, which certainly knew what she bought from year to year but did little with the information. We’ve come a very long way from that.

As we get older we become socialized in acceptable ways to express our feelings and needs. Most of the time using culturally appropriate behavior is good, but not always.

In my executive leadership consulting I once worked with a highly intelligent, super-competent, ambitious senior manager in her late 40′s who was finding her job, and indeed her life, more and more stressful and less and less fulfilling. I knew about her long list of professional accomplishments and awards. On impulse I asked her when was the last time she could remember having any fun.

I expected a quick answer and didn’t get one. She thought and thought. I grew more and more curious. Finally, she said she could remember a time but it was long ago and did that count? I said it did. Her face softened, and she spoke of going with her cousin to stay at their grandparents’ farm when the two girls were about 12. From early morning until supper time they ran barefoot and with abandon over the fields, finally coming to rest hanging upside down on a low branch in the apple orchard. For a whole week they’d had an amazing amount of fun.

Despite the presence of my evil twin, I confess to having some of those rigidities myself – and it’s not a good thing. My responses are pretty controlled – even when laughing or crying or hanging upside down would be the more natural thing.

I think I’m going to take a leaf from Archie’s book, and if I can’t imagine myself doing something spontaneous, I’ll think of him.

Learning never goes only one way.

Seattle has a very different climate, more temperate. Within a day or two of the ice storm last week temperatures had risen to the high 40′s, and we had a fair amount of rain. There isn’t a snowflake or icy spot left to be seen.

He can’t eat chocolate chip cookies yet, so maybe plastic is the next best thing.

There’s something reassuring about finding a book that’s about people like you.

I’ve pretty much always known I’m an introvert, although people who know me from social situations don’t believe it. Introverts and extroverts can both be outgoing when necessary. The difference is that introverts find outgoing behavior exhausting and often need to recuperate by following up with considerable time alone. Extroverts are energized by outgoing behavior, and the energy stimulates more and more interaction.

Introverts soothe from the inside out. During my recent major dental work I was in the chair for as much as two or two and a half hours at a clip. My dentist has a very sophisticated program of soothing distractions: earphones with music, the opportunity for a hand massage while she is working in my mouth, the chance to watch TV. I declined all, much to the surprise of the dental assistant. I explained that for me, any added outside stimulation would only increase the sense of discord I felt while the dentist was drilling. I simply closed my eyes and did my own inside-out thing. Periodically the dentist would ask me if I was OK, perhaps just to get some sort of response and be sure I hadn’t expired.

Introverts can be very good listeners. That’s caused misunderstandings from time to time. When I simply listen without commenting, people often jump to the conclusion that I understand and agree with them. Later, when they hear me express sharply different opinions, they may feel misled. I have to remind them that I neither agreed nor disagreed with what they had to say – I simply listened. Silence does not always mean assent.

Introverts think first and then speak. Extroverts figure out what they think by speaking.

Introverts and extroverts are born that way, and you can tell one from the other pretty early on. Archie is curious and social and wants to be with people. His behavior suggests an extrovert in the making.

I can’t wait to get into the book, and I will share the most interesting tidbits as I come upon them.

Tax avoidance.

Tax management.

Mitt Romney is a very wealthy man, as shown by the release of his 2010 tax returns. He’s employing all the strategies available to him to manage his tax obligation and to avoid paying more than he has to. Both of those are legal and perfectly acceptable.

Tax evasion is not legal. Although common wisdom may equate having accounts in the Cayman Islands with shady behavior, that isn’t necessarily true – and it doesn’t seem to be true in Romney’s case.

I’m not sure that’s going to help him as his campaign continues to leak air in the presidential race. He already has the votes of people who earn a lot of money themselves, and who will understand and relate to offshore accounts. He needs to appeal more to the ordinary person who votes Republican and gets his taxes done at H&R Block and wants someone to feel his pain.

Right now it’s not happening, which is a frightening proposition when Newt Gingrich is on the receiving end of the swing in popular sentiment.

Today he got both legs up under his body and arched his little butt in the air: the precursor to crawling. We’re weeks away, I think, not more than that. What a change that will bring!