I stopped at a red light on my way home from work tonight, and two roses were lying in the road, devoid of color on the shimmering black pavement made wet by the falling rain. I was the only car there, in a lane to go straight, and the roses lay three feet away, just out my driver's side window.

I thought for a moment to open the door and pick them up, but I wondered what the point would be. It's just that they were pretty fresh, as if they'd been dropped there recently; they certainly hadn't been run over yet. I've always thought that anything discarded that still looked clean and new should be picked up, that it was a find.

I wondered who dropped them there, if it was on purpose or a mistake. I wondered if it was a woman or a man, if she was mad at him, if something happened. It seemed sad, these two roses lying on the wet pavement on my way home tonight.

I was listening to "What a Good Boy" by Barenaked Ladies. I've always liked that song, the soft melody and the nostalgaic air to it. But I never really understood it. I do that sometimes: There's a song I know and love, can sing along with no mistakes � can often sing without the CD � but then one day I stop to think about the lyrics, about what the song means, why it was written.

So sitting there at the red light, rain tapping on the car roof, wipers streaking across the windshield, roses lying on the dark asphalt, I just ... I don't know ... felt as if I were somewhere else. Someone else. I didn't feel like me.

Today was a weird day. I went to see "Saving Silverman" with Will, who's on a break from the movie business, having just finished working on "Death To Smoochie" in New York, and we laughed at the flick. Afterwards, we just sat around and flipped through the channels, eventually stopping on "Baywatch" and performing our own version of "MST3K," making cracks about the show and David Hasselhoff's body hair.

And at work tonight, I found out that the word came down from On High (note extreme sarcasm) that the paper would not be paying for me � or any reporter � to cover our new minor league team on its road trips, with the exception of the opening series in North Carolina. I should've been more disappointed; I was looking forward to traveling around the southeast this summer, writing about baseball. But I wasn't more upset because, in the back of my mind, I knew it wouldn't happen.

At times the song seems sweet; at times it's sad. I feel like I should be able to figure it out, be able to crack Steven Page's code, his intent in writing the words. But I don't really try to hard, because I like the different moods the song takes, depending on if I listen at night or during the day; in the car or at home; alone or with someone.

I chickened out myself. I've been meaning for some time to ask out this girl at work, Andrea, but have never walked up to her and done it. I'm a shy person when alone, when pitted one-on-one in meeting someone for the first time. In groups, even with one other person, I do quite fine. I just would've felt weird walking up to her when I know who she is, but she (for all I know) has never seen me. She now works in a different office. But her birthday was last weekend, information I found out from an office-wide message sent out on our computer system by someone wishing her a happy birthday. So I wrote that I hoped she had a nice weekend, and that she got to go home to visit her family (earlier she had sent a message to the office asking if anyone could take her Sunday shift so she could go away for the weekend).

So tonight, I just sent that message off to her. She'd gone home for the night, but she'll see it tomorrow. And maybe she'll respond, maybe I'll never talk to her. But it was like I wasn't even thinking when I wrote it. I wasn't worried about how I might come across; in fact, I didn't even care whether or not she responded. It's like I didn't care about it at all.

I was just doing it for the hell of it. Which is the key, I guess. But now that I think about it, I did it because I wanted to wish her a happy birthday, albeit two days late. And that is the point: I wanted to be nice, maybe make her smile. You should always wish someone a happy birthday for his or her bithday.

So the song has been with me all night. I actually heard most of it on the way into work, cutting off the last verse as I pulled into the parking lot. But the lyrics stuck with me throughout work, and when I drove home, I started the song over again. And I listened through the rest of the CD on the drive, yet the words still ring in my head now.

So maybe tomorrow Andrea will write back, and maybe we'll meet soon. Or perhaps, as with Christine, I'll hear nothing. And if I listen to the song tomorrow, I might hear it in a different way. Music is wonderful that way.