Searching Time for Mayda

I first met Mayda Kaplan at the Cyber-X Internet Cafe on the southeast corner of Lake Street and Lyndale Avenue in Minneapolis the Sunday morning before Thanksgiving, November 19, 2000, around 10 AM, specifically, as I was editing an article for one of the new news media websites that I was contracted to as a contributor of articles and news analyses on international politics. My deadline for that article was precisely November 20, so I had planned to edit and upload it online that morning. Normally on Sunday morning in Minneapolis, I'm usually at home with my kids (more about them later). But that Sunday morning their cousins were in town from Madison, Wisconsin, where they live, and so their mother had picked them up around 8 AM so that they could visit with their cousins. And I took the opportunity to go to Cyber-X to work on my article. Mayda was working at the workstation adjacent to mine. The cafe had just a few patrons, as it was still relatively early on Sunday, at least for that part of town.