26 Apr 07

Time:

?

Money:

$3, muffin and some seriously burned coffee, the usual place.
$0, Pad Thai, Apple (because I'd spotted a bill earlier.)
$11, an okay omelet, Dojo (of which I am really, really not a fan.)
$9, wine, apparently made from sugarcane rather than grapes, that enormous warehousey liquor store at Astor Place.
$20ish, cabs to Anne's and then home.

More interesting things:

Kept my eyes on my computer as Professor Alpha gusted past me and into his office to meet the chickadees, mostly because he was moving so fast (he was a little late) that he didn't even say hi. This was okay, though, because a) I knew what his morning was going to look like and b) I had an excellent opportunity to laugh at the abovementioned small birds. I mean, I do that pretty frequently anyway - they are just too cool for words, which makes me giggle at them, but I would have felt the same way at that point, which makes me giggle at myself! - but in this case we should all be glad that I didn't actually snort as violently as the inner workings of my nose seemed to threaten. Anyway, I don't know what they were reading, but Alpha was all into it (of course), and made the comment that in some unusual, backwards way, the story said a lot about a certain type of feminism: fine. Then he asked the chickadees whether they agreed: yes! of course! absolutely! right on! THEN he asked where they saw it: silence! (Well, from them. From me we had, as I mentioned, very barely suppressed not-silence.) I mean, I understand that position - you're so enthusiastic not just about what you've read but about the person with whom you've read it, and it can be surprisingly easy to forget where your actual conclusive thoughts end and your questions begin. Thus the great collective "Huh?" - and, more importantly, really, a kind and accommodating scaffold thrown up instantaneously by a terrific teacher.

Sat in Professor Alpha's office waiting for... oh, for party-email-related instructions and noticed attached to a student's final project something I haven't seen in years: a paper fastener. There is a time in one's life - or at least in my life - when paper fasteners seem like a regular feature of an Earthly existence. Up to maybe first or second grade, you make paper-plate clocks, little books, and who knows what else, but by this stage of the game paper fasteners have largely gone the way of the pipe cleaner. It was nice, therefore, to see one in its natural habitat - roaming free at a school, rather than pent up in some neat little box at the office supply store - and it tells me that maybe, just maybe, it isn't only America's kindergarten teachers who are left to uphold the paper fastener industry, as I had once thought. Secondary teachers, and prospective secondary teachers, can help out too.

Kept sitting in Professor Alpha's office even after the paper fastener discovery. This was partly just because it was nice to sit in there when everyone seemed to be in a pretty good mood, and partly because I had responded to the last (very precise) party-email instruction with a question about signing up for Professor Number Five's summer course as though those two things had something to do with one another. Alpha, of course, looked at me like maybe there was something wrong in my head, so I laughed and explained that I needed to ask fast - he protested, nicely, but I explained that I really did need an answer and didn't want to let it stretch out into just some pleasant conversation. The reaction was quite cool. First he said he thought that class would be fine, then he went to town trying to figure out what else would work (conflating it with Fall and sending "a scout" upstairs for a paper version of the schedule), then he sort of growled in agreement with my comment that it was less about picking a good one and more about fitting something around my other summer stuff, and THEN he suggested an independent study. I told him I'd thought about that but didn't want to take credits for teaching, so he asked, with characteristic and amusing brusqueness, "So is that a yes or a no?" I answered that it would be fine, as long as I was actually doing something, and he said... "No, you'll do your [get ready for this, now] proposal. You sign up for the section under my name, and that's what we'll do." Yow! Awesome, first of all, and, second, when did these people go from toeing the accelerator to stomping on it? I mean, that's great - as I later learned from a lovely conversation with Professor Number One in which she suggested that J. Hardy could be the Third Man, that Alpha appears to want my proposal technically to fall under his supervision means HE IS GOING TO BE MY CHAIR. As they used to say: yesssss!

Attempted to interpret a Professor Alpha Computer Mumble, but failed, so he repeated what turned out to be the subject of some dumb email: Smart Living. I snorted in unison with him, adding that smart living is frequently so much easier than DUMB living; then I thought for another second and added further that this hadn't necessarily stopped me from doing some of the latter on a variety of occasions. And here I got a professor-snort and the same vaguely conspiratorial undertone I've heard at other instances in which he's about to sort of admit to the same issue as I've just shared: "Fff [or however you might transcribe the hmph-y exhale sounds]. You got nothin'...." "On me," was the next part of that, I suppose.

Noticed that, probably in clearing off Table Mountain and the Desk Foothills, Professor Alpha had hung on his door the copy of that kids-in-a-library poem I'd given him back at the beginning of the semester.

Sent, as I explained to Professor Number Four, a "torrent" of emails. The important part here, however, is that I also received a torrent, the vast majority of which were beamed at me in order to express their writers' a) deep excitement about coming to a prof party and b) vigorously enthusiastic plans to attend. I cannot effectively detail the fervor of my interest in forwarding these emails to the mother-fucking dean, but I probably shouldn't follow my interest in this case, so instead I'll record here - to be corroborated by the contents of a folder in my inbox - how the responses came flowing in at a rate of about one per minute for impressive chunks of time starting only about half an hour after I'd sent the invitation. These replies included a number from around the city and the Island (one of which stated in capital letters that the respondent was thankful, thankful, thankful we'd remembered her and would be there with bells on), some from New Jersey, one from Pennsylvania (that person is coming), and one from - wait for it - Colorado. That person is also coming. They cannot wait to help fund this gig. There is apparently quite a strong desire to bring presents. They are coming from all over the damn place, including out of the woodwork when it comes to people we forgot to get the first time. And who, I wonder, will be around to pile their good wishes, their gifts, their beer money, their plane tickets, and above all else, their 40 years' worth of thanks on the heads of the people engineering this great shift? I'm gonna go with: nobody.

Wandered, in a very tired but very contented mood, to the wine store before heading up to Anne's, where the lady who had talked with a store guy about an easy-to-drink wine just ahead of me informed me about her favorite wine back in Atlanta. You can see how together I was as you notice that I have not been able to recall its name for the purposes of recording it here, but still: very nice. (New Yorkers ARE Polite Campaign? Well, it might just be that she has to go in the out-of-towners section with that other one, I guess.)