7:02 p.m., Wednesday on Magnolia Ave.

I believe in serendipity. Sometimes things just happen that are better than anything you could have ever planned. It's these little surprises that make it worth getting out of bed in the morning.

It was a long day. One of those days where one thing happens and then another and before you know it, it's 7. So I turn off the CPU, grab my bag and begin to head out the door when I see my man, Dan McCarron, Heineken in hand, headed to the fire escape to take seven minutes off of his life. So I grab a cold one and join him.

And in the warm evening sun of a Texas summer, we sit and appreciate the fact that, even though Heineken is kind of a piss beer, sometimes it's just the right thing. It reminds me of drinking beer back in high school, when you were really going uptown if you were drinking Heineken. Of course, that was back in the Eighties when you only had about five beers to choose from.

It's not quite a Proustian memory rush, but drinking a Heineken certainly takes me back about 20 years. And standing in the heat under a wan blue sky in the fading yellows of a disappearing day, telling stories about Coney Island and CBGBs and Joe's Pub and cracking a few jokes with a friend -- I found it an unexpectedly pleasant way to spend a few minutes on a June evening in Fort Worth, Texas.

Yeah, my office is cooler than yours.