6 Mar 07

Time:

?

Money:

$4 (or something), bagel, water, Gatorade, and coffee (I have many liquid-related needs these days), lunch place.
$4, chicken noodle soup with a water on the side, lunch place.
$7, frozen dinner, can of Cream of Mushroom, and yet another glorious bottle of water, Gristede's.

More interesting things:

Left the ladies' room on my floor only to stop in my tracks at Professor Alpha's "There you are!", as though I'd been missing for days. On agreeing that there indeed I was and asking whether I had missed something important, he announced that Rebecca had told him to tell me to go home. This was quite hilarious in itself, but then she yelped from down the hall that she had taken up the post of Official Jewish Mother, with Alpha looking down at me seriously (as possible, anyway) and then responding to my snort-laughing comment that "I don't actually need a Jewish mother, for chrissake" by informing me that everyone can use a Jewish mother. At this point we had returned to the region of my desk, where I flopped, still laughing, into my chair, and Rebecca continued to worry whether she had dug herself a hole from which she could not return, alternating between observations that "No, she's fine, she's fine - she looks much better than she did last night" and "She has SCHPILCUS!" (which is not actually true, incidentally), which Alpha interrupted by asking for my symptoms; to the resulting snorts and looks of absolute disbelief he pressed, "No, no, really - what are your symptoms?" I don't think I told him much, other than that the dermatologist had suggested it wasn't actually flu but was likely some kind of virus, but he seemed reasonably satisfied and closed the conversation (as far as he was concerned, anyway) with the directive that "Listen! If you start feeling bad, you --" and inserting a hand gesture meant to represent "fly away home," I guess. Very, very funny, and another, warmer if somewhat milder demonstration of the same brass which enabled Professor Number Five to ask about 24-hour amusements.

Chalked another one up for the New Yorkers ARE Polite campaign. A lady leaving the train at Astor Place pulled back quickly from the turnstile so I could try to get through before it left - and I made it, earning a nice smile from a green-jacketed rider who was with her ten or so compatriots clearly from out of town, or that would have been two for today; in any case, thank you to the patient soul who let me win this particular round of the Commuter Dash.

Walked past the doorman building closest to my house, where an older lady was just returning with her Golden Retriever. It was a nice, cooperative relationship: the lady opened the door, the Golden Retriever carried his neatly coiled leather leash in his mouth so no one would trip.