One hundred and sixty-four steps up, my office is on the ninth floor. I counted today but may have fudged it in an endorphin-rush haze on that last flight. The woman from the high-tech company that just took over the seventh floor (her hair dyed jet black) looked at me strangely but I merely nodded and kept the count in my mind as I strode to the front of the landing and the base of the next set of steps (when did people start saying "I never stepped foot there" instead of "I never set foot there"?), unable to speak without completely destroying my rhythm, taking the headphones off my head and stopping the tape I'd carried from the car, which was in fact making me walk a little too quickly to keep up with the calypsoid lilt of It's Up to You.