That familiar booming laugh and voice on the other end of the phone came from Christine Quinn.

The former City Council speaker and one-time mayoral candidate gave me a call after I was curious about a lengthy e-mail she sent out to former supporters yesterday, updating them over what she's been up to this year.

"Sending that out has been on my to-do list since July 4th but I finally got around to it in August,'' Quinn said of her e-mail which immediately made some of us wonder – myself included – if Quinn is considering a comeback with the mayor's current poll numbers stuck in the doldrums.

"I said since the day I lost that I hope to have the opportunity to run again but I'm not challenging Bill de Blasio,'' Quinn told me.

"Many good things have been happening. Pre-K, more cops are on the street and small business fines are going down. There are list of things that have been accomplished and that list has been significant,'' she said.

But Quinn's own list on her e-mail shows that she's keeping busy -- from teaching at Harvard's Kennedy School earlier this year to taking a very public role in the Cuomo administration – a team that typically has only one member who is out front and public.

Quinn said it's taken some time for her to recover from her third-place finish in the 2013 Democratic primary.

"You try to give yourself all the little speeches afterwards but at the end of the day, losing stinks."

While she's working for Cuomo, Quinn says she refuses to draft a blueprint for her return to politics.

"You hear about people with their five-year or ten-year plans and there's just so much overthinking,'' she said.

"There were people talking about 'When Hillary Clinton becomes president in 2009 and Governor Spitzer appoints David Paterson to the U.S. Senate' and you see how well that chain of thinking went,'' she said.

Quinn also says she doesn't think too much about her controversial decision to push for the extension of term limits – which allowed Mayor Bloomberg to run for re-election in 2009,  perhaps dooming herself politically in the process.

"God bless me for not replaying that decision,'' she said. "And maybe it was the right decision."

Meanwhile, Quinn seems to be happy going about her life while Bill de Blasio is getting it from all sides in the arena.

"Being mayor is tough and it's grueling and the mayor should just keep doing what he's doing and he'll be fine and the city will be fine,'' she said.

"Everyone is rooting for the city, their city, and that helps,'' she said.

After our brief chat, Quinn was on her way to spin class on the Upper West Side with her spouse, Kim, where the only music played is by Bruce Springsteen.

Its name? "Born to Run."

 

Bob Hardt