We are now temporary residents of Murray Hill, the comfortable neighborhood in the East 30's. If it was good enough for Theodore Roosevelt, where his family home is, it's good enough for us.

We're staying at the "W" New York The Tuscany (the name is a mouthful) on 39th Street at Lexington Avenue, just three blocks north of the Pierpont Morgan Library on 36th, and three blocks south of Grand Central and the Chrysler Building on 42nd.

Looking up from our north-facing hotel window we have a perfect view of the upper half of the gorgeous Chrysler Building. I never really appreciated it before. It was battling with the Empire State Building in the 1930's to be the tallest, and lost. If you don't know it, it has the beautiful metal Art Deco crown on top culminating in a single spire, and somewhat below, four huge griffon-head water spouts angled at each corner.

When we checked in Thursday night, the illumination of its crown was turned off, not a happy sign. But as we looked out this evening, normalcy was slowly returning and the Art Deco lighting (Photo by David Shankbone) inside the crown was as brilliant as you could want to see.

So as we were looking up, things were looking up.

I think I used the wrong word when I said I was blasé about the attack. I think I should have said calm; disturbed but not panicked.

As I said, we came to this hotel because we had, as a promotion, two free weekends at a Starwood hotel (Westin, Sheraton, "W", Four Points) and were planning on coming here this weekend anyway (yes, from downtown to midtown for a weekend, but I said it was free). I've now consolidated both free weekends here and they're giving me a decent (by NY standards) rate in between. I'm signed up for one week, and will extend it for a second, in time for our regular commute to Florida on October 1 and arriving the 3rd. Of course, the problem remains that the Lexus is still in the garage diagonally across the street from the Regatta. I've got to work that one out.

As I think I mentioned we had just changed our homeowners policy to Chubb as of Sunday, September 9, and this happened on Tuesday the 11th. When I called our agent, she said she's glad she talked us into the new policy, even at higher rates. She said you'll love the coverage. When I called Chubb, I was directed to the policy pages which said:

DELUXE CONDOMINIUM COVERAGE / ADDITIONAL LIVING EXPENSE ...when your condominium cannot be lived in, we cover the loss of its use. There is no deductible for this coverage.... FORCED EVACUATION If your condominium cannot be lived in because a civil authority prohibits you from using it, we cover any increase in your living expenses that is necessary to maintain your household's normal standard of living....We cover these forced evacuation expenses for up to 30 days....

When I asked about restaurants in addition to hotels, she said just submit all bills. So ... Don't Cry For Me, Argentina.

Yesterday (Saturday) afternoon we had a little extra pleasure. Just the night before the incident I had bought wheelchair-accessible seats at the Cort Theater to see "If You Ever Leave Me, I'm Going With You!" with the husband and wife team of Joe Bologna and Renée Taylor. (She played Fran Drescher's mother on "The Nanny".) It was a lot of fun and a good break of tension. There were lines like:

After all these years, we have all our fights numbered, so it saves time. If he says "I don't like your mother's cooking", I say "That's Fight #7 and I win!"

A man tells the doctor "I can't pee." "How old are you?" "93" "Ah, you've peed enough."

You see how it broke the tension. I'm telling this because shows had been suspended for a couple of days and had just started again. Before the show, the two of them came out and gave a short curtain speech about the incident, saying that people have to get back to what they do, and "This is what we do." I had spotted a guy with the camera behind us, and sure enough, for about 10 seconds on ABC news last night they showed that very curtain speech.

We had time before dinner so we waited at the stage door, which we hadn't done for a while. They both came out after about ten minutes, and autographed playbills. We just waited until they were done signing, since we don't collect autographs, and then I asked them both to shake Bev's hand (I'm shameless) and of course mine, too, and we chatted for a moment about Battery Park City.

Killing time until dinner we walked around Times Square and up to Carnegie Hall. There were relatively few people in the streets for a Saturday matinee afternoon. One fast-food place I saw on Times Square said it was open only for emergency workers.

It has been very nice to receive some phone, but mostly e-mail messages. The night I wrote the first Nine Eleven piece, once I went on line to send it I ended up staying up to 10 to 5 in the morning responding to the first batch. We heard from Florida, Georgia, Tennesee, California, Minnesota, New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania. From outside the US we heard from Canada, the Dominican Republic, Sweden, and Germany.

I want to mention what our friends wrote, the Stradtmanns from near Düsseldorf, who we met last year on the Deutschland. They had been up half the night watching the news from America "mit Trauer im Herzen und Wut im Bauch". That's "with sadness in [our] hearts and rage in [our] gut.”

Here’s what the Stradtmanns said in a second e-mail today: Hier herrscht ein Gefühl wie bei Kennedys berühmten Satz "ich bin ein Berliner", nur jetzt "we all are Americans". You probably got the gist, but it's: Here there's a surge of feeling like with Kennedy's famous sentence "ich bin ein Berliner", only now it's "we all are Americans".

I also read in the New York Times today that even Le Monde in Paris, which isn't always all that America-friendly, published that last phrase on its front page today, but I don't know if they did it in French or English.

So as I say, things are looking up, and it's not only at the illuminated Chrysler Building.