So I jump into this cab at the corner of 54th and Fifth. I’m schlepping maybe four bags….my purse, my gym bag, leftover sandwich from lunch, a giant CVS bag….you get the picture.

Anyway, I’ve barely settled in when the driver turns around and yells, “ I know you! I watch you all the time on Channel 11! You guys are great!’ (I’m not making this up. Those were his exact words.) He is so happy I have to remind him not to TURN COMPLETELY AROUND to talk to me WHILE DRIVING! But, small matter. I mean, come on! He is a real fan, and sweet as anything.

Okay. I said in my last blog that I would regale you with more stories about the way my name has been butchered over the years. Before I do that, let me tell you where my name comes from and what it means.

In Chinese my name would be pronounced “Doong Kai-TEE.” I was given this name by my maternal grandfather who was a learned man. A scholar. It is from the Confucian Analects and describes a prince. In other words, it means ‘princely” or “with princely qualities.” To the Chinese ear, it sounds masculine. Because it is.

When my parents came to the States, they decided to get Western names. My mother picked Anita. The only problem was, almost all her Chinese girlfriends picked the name Anita, for some reason, so there were an awful lot of Aunt Anitas around the mahjjong table!

There’s a methadone clinic right next door to my apartment building, which used to be a department store. I see the guys waiting for treatment when they’re on the sidewalk, smoking. Know a few of them by name, and they know me. One gave me a couple of bobblehead dolls the other day, just because.

Across the avenue is a former nightclub whose heyday has come and gone. When I moved into the neighborhood about 14 years ago, the club was still going strong, though the profile of the clubbers had changed. In the 80’s, what we can remember of it, this place was happening. The kinds of celebs who frequented Studio 54 also loved to come here. Everyone from Calvin Klein to Boy George.

Loved my pal Watkins blog on Bono! And that picture of Jim with the bolo tie! Let's not even TALK about his hair. (Lauren, you look as beautiful as ever.)

Made me think of how much we’ve all changed over the years. This is a picture of me when I was in graduate school.

At the time, I was trying to get my Ph.D in Chinese and Japanese studies at Stanford University. My hair was so long, I'm actually sitting on it, in this photo.

I got an interesting question from N. Miller in response to my blog “Hair Today….Gone Tomorrow:” She asks me about my very long hair in a photo of me when I was in graduate school. I explain, in the blog, that it is SO long I am actually sitting on the ends. (An aside: I don’t know what I am looking so haughty about in this pic, framed as I am by big, brown paper bags!)

Anyway, back to my hair. Miller was curious as to whether I chopped the whole thing off when I finally got around to cutting it, or whether I did it in increments. The answer: I chopped it all off at once.

I remember the day clearly. I was suddenly just tired of all that hair, even though my boyfriend at the time loved it. But hey, it was MY hair, okay? So, against his wishes, I went to a stylist just off the Stanford campus.

Here’s a New York story I’d like to share with you.

It’s 1983. I had been working in New York for only a year and a half when I got a call from a casting director who asked if I would be interested in appearing as myself in Paul Mazursky’s new movie, Moscow on the Hudson. I told him, no I wasn’t interested. I was way too busy anchoring the news with Roger Grimsby. WHAT????!!! Are you kidding me? OF COURSE I was interested!

First of all, Mazursky is huge! A Brooklyn kid who started out as an actor (played a juvenile delinquent in The Blackboard Jungle, for one), became a screenplay writer, and prolific director. Among his long list of directing credits, Next Stop, Greenwich Village, Down and Out in Beverly Hills, An Unmarried Woman, Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, to name a few.

And then, when I was told the star of this movie was ROBIN WILLIAMS! I am SUCH a fan. He is an insanely talented guy! I could not believe my luck.

You know that McDonald’s commercial that’s on the air right now?

Yes you do! The one everyone is talking about...

A mounted fish on the wall (the plaque under him says Frankie the Fish) starts singing, while some burly, bearded guy munches away placidly on a filet-o-fish burger, watching it.

Vanessa Tyler has a story on the newscast tonight about New Jersey possibly banning the Brazilian. I'm talking about the wax, not the model.

Now I normally would not share something this intimate, but, oh, what the hell!

It's the summer of 2004. I'm sitting in a salon that no longer exists on 3rd Avenue and 50th Street, getting a manicure. A group of us gals getting our nails done, shootin' the breeze. And then someone asks me, have you ever had a Brazilian? No, I reply innocently, I haven't. Then everybody gets very enthusiastic about the wonders of the Brazilian as opposed to just the usual bikini wax, and before I know it, I am lying on a table in a private room, and Georgette, my strong Roumanian aesthetician is barking orders. "Keep your legs up! This isn't going to hurt a bit!"

Went to the eye doctor this afternoon. Now I’m sitting at my desk, trying to do some work, and I CAN’T SEE!” Because of those drops that dilate your pupils!

I really should be used to not seeing. My mom eventually needed reading glasses, but otherwise she has good vision. My dad had perfect vision practically his entire life. He was a military man, and took great pride in his eyesight. I think he was actually a bit disappointed that his kids didn’t inherit that trait.

I started needing eyeglasses by the age of 9. But I had a crush on this boy named Doug, and even though I was nothing to look at, with or without glasses, I tried not to wear them. I KNEW that ‘men don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses.” That was what I believed at the time.

All right, so Doug was hardly a man. He was older than me, though. Nine and THREE-QUARTERS years old. At that age, the fractions are important. (BTW, Doug didn’t know I existed.)

Now, let me make it clear right from the get-go, that Mr. G gave me permission to write this blog. In fact, he encouraged it. He said he wanted to talk about it tomorrow morning on the radio show he does with Dan Taylor. G and I have been friends for more than 20 years, so I think I know him a little bit.

We decide to go to a nice little Italian place for dinner, very casual and inexpensive, about a block from the station. It begins right away. With the bread. I have had many a meal with the G-man, and every time, I tell him… gently and sweetly like you might to a four-year-old... don’t shove your hands into the breadbasket, rummage through the bread like you’re looking for loose change, then tear up a roll, and stuff half of it into your mouth and the other half back into the basket!

So that’s exactly what he does. Regaling me with some story or other, G soon has PILES of bread pieces and bread crumbs all over our table. These he politely pushes onto the floor. We are soon sitting in an ever-growing ring of breadcrumbs that crunch softly beneath the feet of the waitress as she approaches us.

Enough of you have asked me how TALL I am, that I thought I better address it.

Instead of just coming right out and TELLING you, I’m going to ask you to guess. I’ll give you some hints.

Every night when I anchor the news with Jim, I sit on not ONE, but TWO cushions. My chair is cranked all the way up, then those two pillows. This is so there won’t be a distracting difference in height when I sit next to my partner. (Who, just between you and me, is kind of TOO tall. Great-looking guy. But I think the problem here is HIS height, not mine.)

Personally, I think instead of making me balance on those pillows, Jim could just sit on the floor. It would almost work out to the same thing.

You cannot imagine what a pain it is to have to sit on pillows. My feet dangle. That’s right. My feet don’t touch the floor. Anthony, one of our crack stagehands, God bless him, has placed what we call an “apple box” under the desk so I can rest my feet on it. That does help tremendously.

Okay, some really good guesses so far. (I refer you to previous blog, Kaity Reveals an Off-Camera Secret!) But I think I can squeeze another blog out of this before answering the momentous question: how tall is Kaity, exactly? Not, I know, as pressing as how am I going to pay for next month’s mortgage or will I lose my job, but you know what? I appreciate that so many of you are on the same page as I.

We KNOW there are many worrisome things in our lives, we deal the best we can with the things that make us anxious, even sad. But in the meantime, we can all help each other by sharing a laugh or two.

Now back to my height. So many of you made guesses that came very close but NOT QUITE on the money. Let me give you one more hint and in the process share a little story with you about my early days.

Walked out of my apartment building early this afternoon. Waved hello to the guys smoking on the sidewalk, waiting to get their methadone treatments at the clinic right there. One of them dressed in full clown regalia, makeup and all. Didn’t have time to stop and ask what THAT was all about. Got distracted because they were shooting a movie on my street.

All the telltale signs. Huge trucks lining the street, crews in jeans and t-shirts running around, thick cables all over the place. Turns out it’s not a movie, but a new drama for NBC. No one I asked seemed to know the name of it. But they were shooting scenes inside the gym on the corner. Tried to peek in, but couldn’t see anything.