18 Sep 06

Time:

From bed to gym to lurking and back again (well, to my desk, anyway) in less than 4 1/2 hours.

Money:

$2, diet lime Coke - not that great - from Glendale Bakery, since I have not given in to purchasing an inferior home-caffeine supply just because it's convenient.
$5, Mud mocha and tip.
$4, nice fresh Gristede's salsa for the tacos I was invited to enjoy at Anne's.

More interesting things:

Remembered two things from yesterday as I got on the train. One was that as I went past the remains of the street fair a vendor's tent inched towards me like some kind of plain white Chinese dragon. The guy who was at once moving it and closing it up all by himself was obviously well-practiced - it was a good-sized tent - but I bet he wasn't making it dance on purpose. The other thing was that on my way back from the gym, two guys who gave the impression that they firmly believed they were hot stuff jumped on the train behind me. The skinny tough guy slid into the seat next to me; the chunky tough guy knelt in front of him and waited while Skinny took something from his pocket. From the kind of sneaky way they were moving and leaning in together, one might have expected it to be either a joint or a switchblade. They reminded me so much of my students, though, that - maybe naively - I figured it would be something more innocent, and I was right. It was a USB thumb drive. The secretive conversation: Tough Guys review how to set up a wireless home network. Awesome.

Got on the train today and wondered yet again what my brain finds so darn tantalizing about the address "Nereid Av." It's in the Bronx, for crying out loud, and not there aren't nice places up there, but.... I think it's partly that I just like the look of the letters together, and partly that it sounds as if someone educated was really thinking hard about what would make a good street name. I want to see this place, but I'm a little concerned its reality will clash unsupportively with my imagination.

Rode the escalator to the surface behind one distressed-looking lady on a sit-up stretcher and her paramedic and police officer escorts. The back of the medics' shirts read NYU, which was cool, but even better a) the AM Metro guy sort of pulled back to get out of the way and offered "Good luck!" to the group, and b) the cop asked the patient for a cell phone number so she could call and check on her. (This was my first practical experience coinciding with a notice I once read on the train explaining that if a customer gets sick on the subway, a police officer or MTA person will stay with him or her until first responders take over. And I realize, of course, that this is very much borne of liability issues - you probably wouldn't want to be accused of abandoning someone who was ill enough to require medical attention and just, like, TELLING them help is coming - but even so. It was good to see that it really works like that.)

Lurked about in search of Professor Alpha (not a number because I don't have his class; Alpha 'cause he's the first one I ever talked to) this afternoon - his office door was open, and I could hear him somewhere on the other side of the floor, so I knew he was around. I was waiting in the lobbyish area, first pretending to be interested in the Chronicle Review and then actually reading an good column on plagiarism, when he appeared, stopped, made some kind of sweeping arm gesture in my direction, and pronounced: "You don't have a job yet!" Well, thank you, you're right, I don't... was there something we could do about that? You bet. "GORDON! GORDON, come HERE PLEASE!" Gordon complied. Now there were two distinguished faculty members bellowing across a meeting room - "DAVID! DAVID! COME ON OVER!" David advanced; I retreated. I felt really goofy. Especially since David (hereinafter referred to as Professor Bravo) clearly did not expect to be bestowed (saddled might be a better verb) with his own personal gofer today. Professors Alpha and Number Four shooed us out, having very clearly decided that Professor Bravo was no longer needed in the meeting (although he himself didn't seem so sure) and encouraging him loudly to show me his office etc. We didn't get that far, though. We stopped long enough in the lobby of his floor for me to write my contact information in his appointment book, and that was it. The momentous occasion was there and gone in the blink of an eye. The benefit there, of course, is that it was so quick I don't even have any material to overanalyze.

Read a sign in a bus windshield on my walk home from the station: NO PASSENGERS - TRAINING BUS. I wonder if the driver felt like I did the first time I worked the SNAP van: excited and not just a little afraid I might forget I wasn't driving my little truck.

Realized that although I am deeply appreciative of the distinctive qualities of this side's line - it's clean, bright, and EXCEPTIONALLY easy to tell where you are and where it's going - there's something to be said for the other side's trains, where, after all, I did do most of my formative subway riding.

Also realized that it's not Gristede's as a whole that's unlovely, it just happens to be the one on my block which is not so fabulous. I inspected a couple others today, both of which were well-stocked and wide-aisled. Yeesh. (On the other hand, my Gristede's DOES have Sticky Toffee Pudding Haagen-Dazs to recommend it, and of course it's closer than any of the others.)