2 Mar 07

Time:

?

Money:

$4, pretty much the regular breakfast, red place.
$4, milk for my oatmeal lunch and a muffin for the homeless lady (in the bank vestibule, which I wasn't thrilled about), blue place.
$36, 24 lovely champagne truffles, Teuscher on 61st at Madison.
$9, half of a cab ride to Professor Number One's.
$11, cab ride back.

More interesting things:

Arm-wrestled, for some reason I can't quite recall now, with Janna in her office (that is to say, right outside Professor Number Six's) and LOST. However, a) I WAS curling just like two days ago, b) she IS a crazy ice-cream-scooping, spider-climbing kind of gal, and c) I WAS laughing like a loon, since Number Six was making all of these (deservedly) ridiculous comments. On the other hand, not only do I get to show the observation scale to my students, I also get a rematch.

Thought, after Professor Number Six mentioned how well a beer would go with the arm-wrestling match, that he was probably right. To this end, Janna encouraged him to bring some back when he returned from his (rather late) lunch; of course he suggested that we go to a bar (and by "we," probably needless to say, I mean Janna and I - if it had been a more inclusive group I might have been tempted to figure out another plan for getting hold of those chocolates....) Somewhere in there, he also showed me his grandkids - pretty cute - and his dog - not that cute, really, but when he told me the dog had died a few months ago I think he managed to be both sad and goofy: a genuine furrow for the pup and a question of where I had been with my comforting back in June (and so what you didn't know me then?)

Ran - almost literally - into Roey on my way to the N (well, W as it happened) in the direction of the chocolate store. It was gorgeous outside, and it was cool to chat for a few minutes.

Noticed the mosaics in the Fifth Avenue N/R/W (I guess) stop: polar bears. I couldn't really infer the motif until I noticed the baboons next and then, more helpfully, a staircase headed towards Central Park - the zoo.

Waited on the corner near the Judith Leiber store, which I read about I think in that bullfighter makeup book. She was the one, I remembered after a minute, with the little bags, so I checked the windows, and sure enough: no pigs or whatever, but plenty of purses.

Walked back to the train past the (a?) Warren Edwards store, presumably named for half of the underpunctuated shoe "purveyor" Susan Bennis Warren Edwards which Peter Mayle writes about in his Manhattan chapter. This is not a section of the town I hang out around too often, but it sure is cool to see it every now and then.

Decided that it looked and felt more like autumn than most of autumn had, and added to that feeling by making it back to my apartment to get cleaned up right around home-from-school time.

Attained a new and relief-inducing measure of achievement by making not one but TWO trips between one table and another carrying pieces of my professor's china in each hand on top of heels after drinking several glasses of wine. It's one for the record books, folks, and if I ever get the Harvard job test of excavating myself from an uncooperative couch with a cup of of coffee in my hand, I might be ready.

Was told by Marisa, after two of my best impression-rendering efforts, that I do a "mean Professor Alpha." A fine compliment indeed, if I do say so myself!