24 Sep 07

18 Sep

Heard from the advisor guy on our floor that Professor Alpha likes me, which I sorta pretty much knew (not that I'm not always glad to hear it, now!), but this time in a context that suggested maybe he's not always that fond of people? Who knows... but it was funny.

Scored a cookie - "here, have this while you're waiting" - from the Brooklyn-Sicilian guy who fixed my prosciut' sandwich at that deli.

19 Sep

Crossed Broadway behind a lady and two crazy dogs. They were "Goldendoodles" - terrible name, but funny pups who, being six months old, simply could not cross the whole street without stopping to step on each other's head several times. They were, like, tumbleweeding across the road, and stopped so many times to gnaw at each other that eventually the lady sort of picked one up and essentially dragged the other one behind her: ha!

Sat in a supe meeting and admired two of New York's finest moseying by outside, one with two legs, of course, although they weren't on the ground, and one with four.

Enjoyed a trot around to the post office and the bank before lunch with Professor Alpha at Spice and a social hour in the Social Corner immediately following.

Watched, with Anne and Anna, the filming of a Truth commercial featuring some punching bags and a bizarre line about "you might hit your wife!" in Union Square. I'll keep my eyes peeled.

Looked several times to make sure I was in fact looking at a yellow cab with sirens and unmarked-car-style cop lights, shrieking and flashing and trying to pull away down 14th Street. I didn't know they had such a thing.

20 Sep

Called Professor Alpha to tell him that a large box had arrived for him and was sitting on my desk; that was resolved pretty quickly (red jujube moon cakes, don'tcha know) and we were able to get on to the following sentence, after I responded to his observation that he'd had such a nice time yesterday with the comment that I missed him: "Listen, honey, I miss you too! Don't you get that? You're not the only misser here!" HA!

21 Sep

Got on a plane headed south - yeah, baby - in the company of a comedian head flight attendant. He prefaced his announcement that it was almost time to start drinks with "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the sky," as though it were somewhere we had just landed, and reminded us before leaving to "take everything off the plane that you brought on with you... iPods... children." Heh.

14 Sep 07

7 Sep

Passed a van with a license plate holder that said "Schultz Ford."

Linked to a review from Inside Higher Ed that described a cool new book about admissions officers and discovered that it had been written by one of my professors; decided to buy it, double-checked the title, and realized that I already had - at the school bookstore, for one of my other classes.

9 Sep

Got, for the last service before September 11th, the only hymn (?) I can really sing along to: Amazing Grace.

Spotted, on my trip back (I left early because Kevin had to go to a christening), the conductor who lets the kids honk the horn.

12 Sep

Made a deposit at the bank with the help of a guy named Junior Cadet, which sounds a lot more like a title I once held myself than the name of a bank teller.

Sneezed as I walked up Second Avenue with Anne in search of some dinner and got two "bless yous" - one from her, one from a guy crossing the street at the same time.

13 Sep

Watched a lady gallop from the turnstile at Astor Place to the train, the doors of which had just closed but which the conductor opened again quickly, presumably to let her on. She flashed him a big grin and a thumbs-up.

Special Report

All right, so it occurs to me that - not unreasonably - this blog has shifted from the daily fact-driven report implied by the first two words in its title to a record with heavy emphasis on the last three. I am very, very grateful that the life I started describing here a little over a year ago is now so full that there are plenty of nights when I can't sit down to write, but I'm also reluctant just to let this log go. So instead, rather than accounting for the time and money and rather than trying to keep track of every single day, I'm just going to record the "more interesting things," probably more than one day at a time and without worrying about the unnoted days in between.

Okay? So here goes.

6 Sep 07

Time:

?

Money:

$5, D.P. and protein bar, usual place.
$16, an okay salad, what used to be the bug place but now has some improbable Irish/Mexican name. (It's Murphy and Gonzalez, but I wanted to take a minute to make fun of it first.)
$some, mussels, fries, and beer, Belgian beer bar (not that that's what it's actually called.)

More interesting things:

Thought about the propensity of someone I know to strike up conversations with whomever he happens to be sitting next to long enough to make me smile, then looked up from my seat to see one of those subway poems appropriate enough to make me grin: "To You," by Walt Whitman -
STRANGER! if you, passing, meet me, and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you? That would be - you got it, folks - another "thank you."

Watched Anne's class - which was great fun; I hope I'll get to go back sometime - and received a chorus of compliments on my relatively freshly-painted toenails. I'm mostly just impressed that they even noticed, but that they did and then added to it with their very kind observations was pretty cool. (And now I cannot believe that this general topic has been mentioned at least TWICE on this blog. What the hell is my problem?)

Spotted one of those "I am not a plastic bag" bags on the shoulder of someone in Washington Square: eBay, or the genuine stand-on-line efforts?

5 Sep 07

Time:

?

Money:

?

More interesting things:

Found, as usual, that what goes around comes around. In this instance, it meant that my checks would clear overnight (thank you, thank you, thank you) and that my mom's boss called her from out of the blue and volunteered to repay a favor she'd once done for him, making it significantly easier for her to stop wasting time messing around in Atlanta. Sentence of the moment? Thank you.

Enjoyed a lovely (if Dojo-based) lunch with Professor Alpha. The conversation was easy and our parting shots were amusing: Alpha observed that what with all the upcoming Jewish holidays he wouldn't be in class for awhile but that we would meet up some other way; my comment that this was important for the purposes of allowing me to avoid withdrawal was met with "Me too! I don't want to go into withdrawal either!" Ha.

Appreciated the second instance of outstanding staircase timing in two days: yesterday I launched down the steps in the direction of class just in time to catch Kevin leaving; today it was Professor Number Four I happened to catch exactly when I needed him to answer a question about the course I was going to try out that very moment. (It turned out not to fit, but at least I'd had three seconds to ask Number Four about it before heading out!)

2-4 Sep 07

Time:

?

Money:

?

More interesting things:

Enjoyed the most Labor Day-ish Labor Day weekend I can remember having: one boat, on a gorgeous blue Sunday, across the Long Island Sound to dinner in Port Jeff and back; another, on a gorgeous blue (and even hotter) Monday, to a cove on the Sound where we moored up, went swimming, drank beer, drank wine, ate lunch, and talked.

Returned to the city on Tuesday afternoon accompanied by Kevin, who was headed to class at the same time I was, making the trip to Grand Central a lot more fun than it usually is.

1 Sep 07

Time:

?

Money:

?, planes, trains, and automobiles. (Okay, well, trains and automobiles, anyway.)
?, pedicure, whatever the name of that place by Anne's is.
?, dinner, Mundo.
?, some more trains, Grand Central (duh.)

More interesting things:

Rode back south wedged gratefully into a seat that happened to be near the motorman's booth. He went around collecting the little kids from our car and led them back so they could honk the horn, which made both me and the smoked-up guy next to me laugh; I really started laughing when the conductor looked over at me with, "Don't tell me YOU want to give it a try" - and believe me when I say that he was saved from a more honest answer than he might have been looking for by the arrival of a stray rugrat.

Enjoyed quite thoroughly a day of pedicures (!), the park, and an Astoria-related feeding time. Happy birthday, Anne!

Caught a cab for Grand Central (yes, again) which was driven by a woman. This is only the second time that's happened since I've been here (and probably in my life), making it worth recording alongside the fact that I thoroughly enjoyed my return to the southern New England region; the kiss and the nail-polish-inspired admiration with which I was greeted did a lot to cancel out the slight anxiety that had built up earlier upon waking up from my doze to find that the train was a) not at a station and b) not able to start moving forward. Oy - but I made it.

31 Aug 07

Time:

?

Money:

?

More interesting things:

Trekked schoolward (to meet Professor Alpha for his last few boxes and things), ambling past a guy cutting luxurious bends and slaloms back and forth across Broadway on his blades and singing throatily: not the kind of thing you get on Glades Road, so much.

Watched the 6 come around the corner, I think at Astor Place, and thought irrepressibly about the trolley on Mr. Rogers.

Jumped (with great abandon, since I didn't know what the result would be) into a cab headed for 125th and Park. Some kid tried to cut the cabbie off and expressed his frustrations with his middle finger; when this earned a middle finger back, the kid decided to escalate to calling the cabbie a faggot. That still wasn't good enough, because the cabbie replied - in classic second-grade style - "YOU'RE a faggot! You are!", this time leading the kid to screech around the cab and hang a ridiculous, squealing left... to the accompaniment of the cabbie's bellow, "Fuck your wife!" - and then a very even-keeled apology to me. I think I thanked him for the entertainment, but if I didn't do it then, I'm doing it now.

Spotted a kayaker on one or another of the rivers between here and the small but lovely rectangular state to the northeast.