8 Nov 06

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More interesting things:

Had a reasonable night's sleep - about six hours - but it came on the tail of an almost-all-nighter: I got up yesterday at 730 and got in bed at 630 this morning. This is the first time I've had to do that since I've been here, and although I hope such activities won't be too frequent, there is something in remembering a sheepish apology to a professor and a hazy but very enjoyable trip to an Archer Road Outback to recommend it.

Thought, just before I fell asleep, that having accomplished my first attack on a literature review my weekly critical summary would seem very easy later on - academic wave training.

Saw, hanging from the hand of an officer who boarded the train I was on, a police hat. I realized that I already knew the underside of the bill was green and that the sweatband was brown, because of course I have one - for "the smallest cop on the force."

Attempted, in my rain-soaked irritation, to take the local from Union Square to Astor Place, and at least I got it half-right; the train did stop at Union Square (obviously, or else I wouldn't have been able to get on), but it blew right through Astor Place - as narrated electronically by the voice that tells us, "THIS is... AStor Place," although "THAT was..." would have been a more suitable opening - and stopped at Bleecker instead. I was, at this point, more annoyed than ever, but I found that there was something useful about the Bleecker stop: it caused me to walk past Eastern Mountain Sports, where I got a normal-people rain jacket at long, long last.

Walked past a small roundish pumpkin in very good shape, just sitting on top of a subway grate close to the curb. It didn't look like it had been thrown out, necessarily; it was not carved, smashed, decayed, or surrounded by piles of trash. Instead, it looked for all the world like it, along with the rest of the rained-on universe, was just standing there waiting for a cab.

Looked up as I persevered down Broadway at a view of a row of tall, tall buildings shrouded in misty gray, each one blurred more completely than the one before it until all you could see was a thick but luminous gray at the end. Sometimes I forget to do that in this town - look up, I mean - and that's really dumb. Maybe I'll set my watch to remind me: one beep to tell me it's time to take my vitamins, one beep to tell me it's time to open my eyes.

Heard the particularly nice secretary on Professor Alpha's floor address him as "Uncle John." That made up for at least half of my weather-slogging irritation.

Decided that one reason tea at night seems like such a nice habit to get into is that part of the motivation to do so is a lot more hard-core rough-and-tumble than Earl Grey. There is something about getting your hands and your insides warm around a hot drink that connects directly to kayaking, rock climbing, Raider meets, and summer camp (even though it's not cold there), and, in turn, a non-wuss, no-furnace method of staying alive in hard weather.