27 Feb 07

Time:

?

Money:

$4, regular breakfast, red place.
$8, regular lunch, regular place.
$12, an expansion of the regular lunch, but for dinner, regular place.
$12, Fugitive Pieces, in support of a possible Alpha-suggested paper, Astor Place B&N.

More interesting things:

Looked - apparently a little too conspicuously - over the shoulder of my subway-bench neighbor, who was reading one or another of our ridiculous morning rags; as he was getting off at Grand Central, he tapped my arm (I was wearing headphones) and gestured in a way that indicated he was offering the paper to me. I laughed, probably turned a little red, and shook my head, whereupon he asked me if I was sure, smiled, and took off: first addition to the New Yorkers ARE Polite Campaign in awhile, although that's probably more a comment on me than on anyone else.

Stood on line to pay for my lunch to the tune of New York State of Mind. I tried to figure out whether it's especially cool to hear a song about a city when you're actually in that city, but I couldn't think of any songs about places in Florida, which ought to tell you something anyway.

Looked up (literally, I mean; I was craning my neck to converse with the owner of the silver beard positioned directly over my head) from my ed philosophy-related efforts to prepare for class when Professor Alpha plunked his hand on my shoulder and asked who the epistemology was for - and I couldn't believe it when I had the presence of mind to tell him it was for my little nippers. He made a couple of admiring (maybe...) noises and continued down the hall as he noted that I was "really pushing the envelope, aren't you?" It occurs to me now that this is in many ways analogous to the day Dr. W. walked into my classroom to find 28 kids clustered at my knees and based all kinds of complimentary yet perhaps not perfectly grounded assumptions on the sight - but you know what? I'm not going to complain.

Got one more confirmation (as if it were necessary) that the people here - or at least my people - are the opposite of snobs. My students had, for some unapparent reason, congregated in the floor lobby before class and were just chatting away even as I went into the restroom with less than a minute to go before we needed to get started. As I came back out and headed in the direction of our classroom, I "psst"-ed at them and made a small sweeping gesture to herd them with me, but not before I'd noticed that Professor Alpha was also standing pretty close to the group; I avoided eye contact so he wouldn't think I'd been attempting to herd him, for chrissakes - but as I turn at the door to wait for my straggling line of students, who should come up behind me (RIGHT behind me) and ask whether I'd wanted him?! And then, to add to the general classy air, I knocked him in the belly as I made another useful gesture in my demonstration of what I'd been trying to do: wicked smooth, killer. The cool things, though, are that a) he really did not seem the least bit insulted - not even surprised, which may or may not be a good thing - that I had apparently swept at him, b) he stood chatting with me, and at the students, until the last one had joined us, c) he wished us a nice time with the epistemology as he walked away, and d) I didn't even feel particularly awkward or stupid about any of the above, which goes to show what kind of atmosphere they're cultivating around here, because I can definitely think of times and people in my life that in a similar situation would have been associated with a lasting sense of wince-worthy retardation on my part.

Hopped off a shallow step on the second floor of Barnes and Noble and found that I was walking across an old-school hardwood floor. Now that I think about it, I know that's true mostly from giving exams at the "OSS gymnasium," as my dear bio teacher/wanna-be AP put it.