2 May 07

Time:

Local left (without me; it was too packed and I didn't feel like finding a more reasonable car) 0831, another one crept in 0836.

Money:

$5, yogurt-and-granola and D.P., the usual place.
$46, lunch for Anne and me, and a fraction of lunch for Professor Alpha, the Torch Club.
$0, Como pizza (because Anne was paying me back), Piola.
$4, lemon sorbet, Gristede's.

More interesting things:

Noticed this school's version of the big blue "Congratulations Gator Grads!" signs hanging from the streetlights around campus - tall purple banners shouting "Congratulations." Very classy, very cool, and very much another example of how things here are different but not really.

Heard another supervisor refer to someone else as an asshole. This is only worth recording because of the general air of great propriety surrounding the speaker, which she did not, in fact, violate too dramatically: as Anne noticed, it was the most meticulously enunciated instance of that title I've ever heard, as though there were a period in between the syllables. Very appropriate for a former English teacher.

Laughed, quietly, at the wink Professor Alpha aimed at me while he assured the Party Professor that "when you're with [me], you're in good hands, with Marisa, and Anne... good hands... don't worry..." turkey noise turkey noise turkey noise. The thing is, Party Professor is so high-strung that she actually NEEDS the turkey noises!

Invited Professor Number Seven, along with Annette, to dinner with Anne and Co. She declined, although she also added that if she didn't need to finish what she was working on she would gladly have joined us, and you could tell she meant it. The funny thing is that I still remember very well the day we decided to extend our Outback invitation to Dr. P., and how it felt like the absolute height of edginess. Once again, I'll wonder: what is the difference? Am I really so much older? I don't think so. I think it has very little to do with me at all, actually - I think it's them... these professors and their carefully cultivated, genuinely felt sense of community for all of us, not just one community for them and one for the students with some daring overlap somewhere in between. And I'm lucky.

Sat waiting for the "Co." part of Anne and Co. at the corner of Union Square and watched a very hard-core squirrel leap skyward from the tip-top of one swaying young tree to the dangling green branch of another, and as it swung back and forth you couldn't do less than to think of him as a very Tarzan-ish little guy.

Spotted also a guy in black tie. I note it here because at first I thought maybe he was a waiter or something - that seems as though it might be the most likely explanation for a middle-aged man traipsing across the bottom of the square in a tuxedo at 6:00 in the afternoon, but then I noticed his feet: heeled black velvet slippers, the epitome of elegance and so unusual I didn't believe it actually happened when I read it way back when in the 145-2.

Recalled the Metropolitan Diary story about the guy who felt bad lugging his enormous frame pack onto the subway until he saw another person drag a full-size kitchen sink in behind him. It wasn't a backpack or kitchen furnishings that caught my eye today, though - it was a fully assembled coffee table. In Florida we need things like pickup trucks for that kind of business; in New York we just need the local.