13 Jan 07

Time:

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Money:

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More interesting things:

Sat across from a pretty little blonde girl - maybe six or seven - with her mom. I noticed her first because she had on one of those stripy woolen Norwegian-looking hats, with the pompom and the ear flaps and the long ties hanging down at the side, and realized that in order to carry off a hat like that (because I didn't really think anyone could) you have to be a pretty little blonde girl of maybe six or seven. I also noticed, however, that her mom was attending very closely to what she said, most of which was in French, I think, so maybe they were practicing and Mom was listening for, like, verb tenses or something, but in any case that is a kid who is going to grow up not just smart but interested in the world around her.

Ran into a certain spiky-haired guy from Professor Number Two's office as I walked to the subway in the evening. He told me he was out for his nightly walk (and coffee; I told him I might see him in Starbucks sometime), we chatted further for a minute, and then we went on about our business. He is a cool guy, though, so I'll keep my eyes peeled.

Made my way from the 6 at 53rd to the E with a crowd of southern lady tourists who carried on a conversation about the station's aroma that was so loud it reminded me of the Dave Barry column about airplane passengers squawking over seat preferences. One said something along the lines of, "OOH! THE SMELL!" to which one of her companions replied, "OH, YOU KNOW ABOUT THESE SINUSES... I CAN'T SMELL ANYTHING!", which in turn received the response of, "OOH! YOU'RE LUCKY! THE SMELL!" And all I wanted to add to the discussion was that it wasn't any worse than normal, and that every single other person there knew that, so they had now identified themselves plainly and without reservation as tourists-with-a-capital-T. (In case the accents and the volume hadn't already given it away, I mean.)

Looked up as I stood waiting for the E and saw an otherwise uninteresting metal box which looked exactly like the ones next to all the other light fixtures except for the part where someone had worked out a little arithmetic; it was the addition of two double-digit numbers, and the mathematician in question had even remembered to be careful about marking the carried "1" before moving on to the tens column.