8 Feb 07

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Money:

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More interesting things:

Waded through a whole morning of weirdness. It started when I (and, presumably, everyone else in the Monday class) got an email from Professor Alpha at about 10:45; between this and the email from EL in which she mentioned considering taking a little assistance from Jack Daniels, I figured Alpha wasn't coming in - he was still up north, and EL didn't seem to be feeling very well yet, so maybe she had let him know the same thing and caused Alpha to decide against coming into the city. Then, just before I was getting ready to go to lunch with Roey, who should show up at my desk but EL herself? She told me she was here for lunch with Alpha and seemed quite surprised when I indicated he hadn't been in his office, at least since I'd gotten in at 9:30, and that I hadn't heard him upstairs either. Apparently on my suggestion that she try giving Alpha a call, she picked up her cell phone and dialed, but listened without saying anything before hanging up. I thought maybe he hadn't answered, but when I asked, it turned out she had only called her voicemail because, she said, she didn't have Alpha's number. (Which seemed very odd, given what I've seen of their relationship and Alpha's almost total lack of secrecy.) I offered to call him, did so, and got a very irritated-sounding growly voice on the other end with the news that he was trying to get through traffic, had given one of the secretaries instructions to tell EL he'd be late, would like me to pass on the message since it had clearly not made it already, and would now hang up because, as I pointed out, he was definitely looking for a ticket by talking on the phone while driving. I shared all that with EL, discussed the merits of alcohol as a soreness remedy (and in particular with respect to Alpha's liberal views on drinking at lunch), and got up to put my coat on - I really had to go meet Roey, but that got put on hold for a minute after EL seemed to interpret my taking off as a sign that she was "cramping my style," which was supremely strange, and I wanted to extend the conversation a bit so it would be clear I wasn't annoyed with her in the least. Having done so, I finally made it off the floor and around the corner, where I slowed down to consider whether I should hide inside or wait for my dining companion in the cold; the decision was made for me when I saw Alpha coming up the sidewalk. I met him halfway, of course, at which point he informed me - in a much more pleasant tone of voice than I'd gotten earlier - that he had just tried to call me. I thought that this, too, was pretty weird (although I appreciated it only in some thus-far unexamined way), and I wanted to say either "Um, you remember you're having lunch with EL, and not me, right?" or "Um, you did call EL from your cell phone the other day - I was standing there when you did it - so why didn't you try to get her?" (Notice the "um's"; those are verbal indicators of my reaction to the weirdness I was sensing, and they feature in such situations quite regularly.) I didn't voice either of these, needless to say, although I can't recall exactly what I did come up with until he had walked past me - I had stopped in front of Apple - and approached a big ice patch; here my brilliance shined through and I warned him to watch the ice (duh). A second later, a little more astutely, I called his name, causing him to stop and look over his shoulder to get my message that EL was a little... [here I tapped the side of my head.] He nodded and kept on his way, and since I spotted Roey down the street, I stood right where I was.

Continued my stretch of mildly unsettling interactions - after a very pleasant lunch interlude - by arriving in my classroom to find some CD entitled "Oh No Oh Boy," with a vaguely American-flaggish print and a note that it had been produced by Asthmatic Kitty Records (in, like, Wyoming or something). I played a little of it just before class started and found that it was exceptionally multiple-personality-disorderish: the first song sounded like something farm-related, the second sounded all industrial, the third sounded like I don't know what, and their singing reminded me of Enya, but in English that was trying to sound like it wasn't English. Very, very strange, as befitted the day, I guess.

Kept up the weirdness upon my return to my desk. Alpha's door was closed, so I figured he wasn't coming back, but just a little later I heard big footsteps and something about happy days out in the lobby. He came back sounding normal - which was a nice contrast to everything else - and after greeting me, agreed that EL was a little funny in the head, that she'd said so herself (which, I added, she had done with me as well), and that, on my suggestion, a glass of wine had done a lot to help her. After dropping his stuff and parking himself at his computer, he suggested that I come in and "entertain" him while he tried to avoid doing any work. A few minutes later he mentioned something about a bullshit email, and, after a couple of trailed-off attempts to answer my question about what he was talking about, finally finished his sentence with, "It's these emails that try to make you think there's something genuinely important, and then they turn out to be for Viagra." Ha. A little more very unpressing discussion ensued, some undergraduate chickadees came by (causing both of us to laugh once they'd left), and then it was time for him to leave. On the way out, however, he asked whether I was going to see that Brooklyn art exhibit I had mentioned in class on Wednesday - this is a guy who pays as much attention to the ostensibly peripheral commentary of others as I do, and remembers it at least as carefully. This is fun, on the one hand, but a little scary on the other: if I should say something dumb, I can't realistically console myself with the idea that he either didn't hear it or won't recall it.

Wondered, not for the first time, I don't think, whether other classes have gotten the same sense of community we - or at least I - enjoy now. It doesn't really seem like it, based on our admittedly infrequent meetings and dinners and so on with the earlier cohorts, and I wonder if there's some dimension of protectiveness or something associated with us being their last group all together, but hey - if there was just one class to get it, I'm not complaining about being included!