I sat down in a good mood on a sunny Sunday morning to look at my email and there it was, lying in wait. The email was from a colleague who is in every respect my doppelgänger: same age, same work, same writing style, same graduate school, hair color, sense of humor—same everything. And on this fine morning, she sucker-punched me.

I am late to the party at Downton Abbey; I only just began watching it two weeks ago on DVD and I just … can’t … stop. It’s distressingly absorbing. Yes, the acting is superb, the writing spot-on, the sets too much to be believed. The peek into turn-of-the-century Edwardian life—a life so radically different from our current age—is mesmerizing. I could stop there and say that I am ensorcelled by all of the above, but it’s more than that, I fear.