I met a room full of fascinating thinkers tonight.

At a party for Rhode Island School of Design’s new interim President Rosanne Somerson.

One thinker is an architect who is blogging about ‘building a hillside home’.

Padraic Cassidy.  “Building a Hillside Home”.

I told him about my blog and we promised  “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours”.  (Here’s his).

buildingahillsidehome.com

My memory isn’t good enough these days.  I wanted to find him after the party.

Despite my new Hermes orange MOO-made cards in my purse, I scrambled around for old-school paper & pen.

All I had was yellow stationery with the menu printed in the middle and polka-dots on the sides.

I thought fast.  How to get a clean slate?

To make a white space, I hurriedly pasted some of the “HELLO” stickers I’d brought.

I put a third one down near the bottom because I hate having any leftover homeless one-off stickers,

and it seemed tidier that way to give him more white writing room.  I wanted it to be right for an architect.

Bad enough I couldn’t find my business cards.  At least I should give him a place to write.

The last “Hello” sticker went down easy.  It covered the offending menu underneath

and Padraic copied down his info on my less-than-perfect ‘stationery’.

After he handed back the paper,  I looked carefully at bottom-most sticker.

On it Padraic had written:   “I’m filling up this blank

space because you needed to use up these stickers.”

Now I knew for certain I was in the presence of genius.  More importantly — a genius with a sense of humor.