JULY 3, 2026 – (Cont.) A little before 4:00 I pulled up to Sally’s house. Outside were three people—a man and two women, all of my approximate vintage—chatting next to a car. The man was leaning his arm over the top of an open car door, and one of the women appeared to be about to enter the vehicle as well. The second woman I recognized as Sally’s cousin Margaret, who was visiting from California and whom I’d met last Friday at a previous rehearsal. The cousin called out to me, so I diverted my course from the house to the car.
In short order I was introduced to the man—Margaret’s brother, and thus, another cousin of Sally—and his wife. Conversation ensued, and before long, we found ourselves reveling in a double reminder of why as one goes about life, one should always be on one’s best and most amiable behavior: It’s a small world.
Tom and Margaret had grown up in Duluth. Tom played hockey, Margaret pursued the arts. Tom wound up attending Hamilton College in Clinton, NY (east of Syracuse) and playing varsity hockey. One of his best friends from Duluth, a fellow hockey player named Dan Claypool, who went off to played varsity hockey at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, ME. Dan was a friend of mine and a year behind me! Tom remembered playing games against Bowdoin—at Bowdoin—during my years there.
On the heels of that connection, I learned that one of Margaret’s closest friends was Ann Ourada—a violinist who’d attended Interlochen Arts Academy while I was there; we’d played together in the IAA orchestra, and my memories of Ann were that in addition to being a great violinist, she was simply the kindest individual you’d be lucky enough to meet. She too had grown up in Minnesota and before landing a plum job with the Detroit Symphony, had free-lanced in Boston and knew and played with my oldest sister, Kristina. (Later, while Sally and I were rehearsing, Margaret phoned Ann to tell her I was “on the premises.” Ann’s tongue-in-cheek response: “Tell Eric to practice his Galamian scales.”)
The conversation was so enjoyable; these people were so interesting (Tom and Margaret’s father, born in 1923, had been in the thick of the Battle of the Bulge and later, was present inside the courtroom during the Nuremburg trials.
We eventually got around to the Beethoven. Along with the conversation, it proved to be an elixir; the antidote to my extreme frustration with Microsoft.
Upon returning home, I texted the Office365 expert. Could we connect in the morning? “How about after 4:00 tomorrow afternoon?” he replied, followed shortly with, “Or now.”
I seized the moment. “Give me 5 minutes,” I texted—time enough to wolf down a bowl of Beth’s freshly made gazpacho with a side of toasted sourdough bread doused with olive oil. “Sure,” he said.
For the bargain price of $125, in exactly an hour, the problem was . . . solved. I now had access to my account.
And what, exactly was the problem, inquiring minds might ask? Aha! At the risk of a laugh, a whole chorus of laughter, actually, directed my way, the problem was simple—and 100% my fault. As it turns out, I have not one but two gmail accounts. I’d established the second account a whole decade ago for a film project I was then working on. After that endeavor stalled, I quit using the account but never closed it. I’ve had little occasion to use the original account either, however, so that one just sits in the cloud biding its time. But here’s the rub: while the main (original) account is the alternate account for Office365 security verifications, when I click on my “gmail” icon, the second account is the one that opens. Thus, Microsoft had in fact sent a code to me, and I’d technically received it—pretty much immediately—but was unaware that I was in effect looking in the wrong mailbox.
I gladly paid the $125 for my haste, my oversight, my error. But more important, I was grateful that I hadn’t (a) lost all self-control and sanity; and (b) expended any more time or effort drafting a class action complaint against Microsoft. As I enjoyed a delightful two-mile walk after dusk, I decided that “(a)” was the figurative equivalent of white undies showing through the open barn door of dark blue suit trousers and that “(b)” would’ve been ketchup down the length of my tie.
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© 2026 by Eric Nilsson
