13 June 07

Time:

About eight sweaty minutes, from following the relevant administrator into his office to holding in a shriek as I left down the staircase at a high rate of speed.

Money:

?

More interesting things:

Answered the phone (despite the many signs posted around the weights area indicating that I shouldn't) in between sets of bent rows to find my dad had remembered about my meeting later in the day: thanks, Dad!

Tried not to look like I was ogling - although I was, in fact, ogling - the darkest-skinned man I have ever seen. It was particularly striking because he was wearing a pale pink shirt, but even without that it was impressive. You just cannot find people-watching anywhere else like you can in this town.

Added, for the first time in awhile (which is more a comment on my observation skills of late than it is about what's actually taking place out there), to my New Yorkers ARE Polite Campaign. A woman got up from the subway bench, ready to rush off the train except for the part where a dollar bill had fallen out of her pocket, I guess. She didn't know that, though, until at least two other passengers yelped after her, "Miss! MISS! You dropped your dollar!" And nobody even made a move to look like they were thinking about touching it themselves.

Sat next to Professor Alpha, who had plopped himself down in the chair next to me for some audible introspection. We chatted for quite awhile, almost all of the conversation to do with my impending meeting (which he hadn't realized was about to take place) and featuring a thoughtful line that began, "One hesitates to call it intimate, but it is very personal," with the "it" in question being the process of two people working together to turn one of them into what the other already is: a holder of the doctorate. I would have been sorrier than I was to let our chat end except that E.L. finished it off for us by wafting up the hallway exclaiming over how "cute" her view of our feet - the only evidence of our presence visible from where she walked - had been. (Not a bad way to be interrupted, if you have to be interrupted!)

Went to my meeting - see special report. It was quick and mostly involved promising to be done in two years, agreeing to use all three committee members, and explaining why Professor Alpha, Teacher Educator Extraordinaire, is so important to what I'm doing, all of which culminated in an impressive throwing-up-of-the-hands gesture that, coming from a dean in any other case, really would have made me feel weird (are deans supposed to do things like that?) Here, of course, I wouldn't have cared if he'd gotten the word "OKAY" tattooed on his ass and made me take a picture.

Returned to my desk after class well ahead of Marisa to find that Professor Alpha had his jacket on and his phone out; when I asked what he was up to, he looked up and trilled, "Oh, I was just about to text you" (!) I trilled back appropriately, asking what he'd been about to text, and got "I just wanted to tell you I'm so pleased we get to..." and here he trailed off with his canary-swallowing cat smile and a big furry hug.

Went to dinner with Kevin, who had very kindly called earlier in the day to ask about getting together for purposes of either celebration or commiseration. I was glad to participate in the former, of course, but either way it probably would have been a nice evening involving ninety minutes of chatting in my office lobby, five glasses of wine (with the fifth one split between us field-expediently, since the waiter didn't quite know what to do with our decision to share and left us with no empty glasses), and one or maybe two or three instances of activity causing my neighbors to laugh as they passed us on the way out of my building. (And that, in turn, caused us to laugh, which was really kind of fun. Okay, now no more stories no one wants to hear, I promise.)

Decided... well, maybe I shouldn't finish writing here about a possibly lucky shirt; I don't want to jinx it. So all I'll say is that this was the second time out for this particular clothing item - the first involved one hell of a retirement party.