My neighborhood's like a small town.

Not only does the one hardware store that I go to sometimes close up early, but the other day when I popped in to get some weatherstripping right as the owner and his wife were closing up early, I was short ten dollars, and they said to just stop by later and give it to them.

Class dynamics at school.

I do office hours by appointment, and one freshman writing student had swim practice and was hoping to meet during the day rather than early evening, so I set up a lunch meeting with him during my break from my 9-5 shift at the library, but he got confused on location, and so I left when he wasn't there and rescheduled for two days later same time after a very professional, apologetic email from him.

At that second meeting, though, I was tired from working my near minimum wage job a lot that week and having my lunch taken up with the meeting, and all of a sudden I just "clicked in" to the situation, and realized that I was taking on too much between my two jobs, to let him get away with not having to miss what is essentially a daily leisured hobby.

That made me super disgusted when I thought of it that way, that I'm this highly trained professional who has to work 2 jobs and even then can't achieve a modest or predictable income, and I'm rearranging my life for the hobby of a 19 year old.

It's not his fault, but eff that, what nonsense...

It's surprising how easily I slid into it, though, because I always try to "fit one more thing in" and arrange writing workshop meetings to take into account students' extracurriculars if I can, and I did the same in this situation, without stopping to think about what was really going on.

What nonsense.

I'm so glad I decided to get the f*ck out of higher ed, and I only hope it's soon, that I can disconnect.

Potentially awkward encounter with a student.

The other week I was at school downloading all these pdfs from the major journal of sexology, since in a few weeks I'll be having coffee with a grad student who's been part of the major research on "So what the f*ck's up with tr*nny-chasers?" (the subject of the articles are phrased a bit more academic than that, admittedly, but that's honestly what the research amounts to).

Anyhow, I was checking the pdfs to make sure they downloaded properly, and I had one up on the screen with a title of something like, "Sexual Arousal Patterns in Crossdressers," when all of a sudden I heard a cheery and pleasant "Hi, [My first name]!" from behind me, and walking past me right then is one of my current (white) (male) freshman writing students, in a moose antler hat since even though he seems kind of sweet and dopey, he's probably pledging some fraternity.

I said hi back, but I was cringing inside.

I don't think he saw the screen, but what would he think was going on if he did?

It was like 8pm at night, and it was obvious I had had a long day and was still in the school library, and I was sitting there, reading that?

It would have come off as mega-weird, if he had noticed.

Library antics:

The other week I had shifted books to the point where I could reach across the aisle and pull a book, and then shelve it right in front of me.

The next time I worked, I shifted all day, and got to the point where I was at the end of a row, and for a bit I could reach through the shelf, grab books from the other side, and flip them around and shelve them right in front of me.

Dollar store clerk's Thanksgiving.

The other week I was in the dollar store and ran into that one (young) (hispanic) clerk whose girlfriend's (evangelical) parents made him change his dyed hair if he wanted to keep seeing her.

I asked him how his Thanksgiving was, and he said he had spent it with them, and it was kind of nice.

"Why?", I was like. "I thought they were giving you shit about your hair?".

"Yeah," he was like, "But that's all gone now, I just got it cut, and the last of the dye is gone."

He then said that he appreciated their Thanksgiving, because his family's is a drunkfest, but with theirs, everyone paused and said what they were thankful for, and then later everyone had a little something to drink with dinner.

"Yeah, drinking can be too much sometimes with family dinners like that," I was like.

"Yeah," he was like, "I wanted to skip because my ex was there, but then I'm glad I missed because my mom was so drunk, I was getting texts all night."

He then said this his (Mexican) family plays that lotteria game, and they had shots on some squares, and his mom got so drunk that she broke 2 of his aunt's shotglasses, and they were from her special collection from different places she's been in the U.S., and she was pissed.

. . .

I could see that kid as a convert to evangelicalism...  Very passive, kind of likes some things about the culture, would probably take the rest of it with a grain of salt.

Very disturbing.

Bar convo (2 of 2): 80-some year old man story.

That same night at the bar, this guy was saying he took his 80-some year old grandfather to the doctor, and that he had last been to the doctor in 1969.

They checked him out, and everything was fine.

"You want a flu shot?", they asked him.

"You haven't put anything into me for years," he was like, "And you're not going to start now!".

Bar convo (1 of 2): Thanksgiving Santa.

The other Friday night I was at the one (too brightly lit) neighborhood bar near my apartment, and this (younger middle-aged) (white) woman a few stools down was talking a bit too loudly to her friend and the one bartender who was working.

She used to be the 2nd lead bartender at a major chain restaurant that was a sponsor of the city's Thanksgiving parade, and she said the place was always slammed afterwards from the advertising, and because a Santa who was on the float was there after the parade, too, for the kids.

She said he was nice, and would hang out after his Santa-ing and drink Jack Daniels.

Every once in a while, too, he'd pop in during the summer, and he would always leave whoever was working a nice tip.

2 of my 3 upstairs neighbors:

The Sat. of Halloween weekend, I got back to my apt. and went around back to go store my bike in the enclosed back porch, and some people were out smoking at the back picnic table.

And, they weren't my upstairs neighbors who I hadn't met yet, but they were good friends of theirs, and they invited me up to the Halloween get-together that was happening that night without my knowing about it.

The party turned out to be mostly college kids from the nearby engineering school and people they know, and among them was 2 of my 3 neighbors who were home:

1) A physics major who's taking a year off from school to make money and is working at the local New Age shop mixing potions and candles part-time, which he's cool with since it's fun and he freelances and he's not against it because even if it's not real, which he's not sure it isn't, it doesn't hurt anyone; and

2) This recent (white) (bearded) grad who's a computer programmer and has long stringy hair and painted fingernails and wears skirts and plays a lot of video games like "Skyrim" and was raised Pentecostal in the 'burbs but deconverted after reading a footnoted book with cultural parallels to the Bible from the wider Ancient Near East.

They were very considerate too, and said they had been wondering who I was and if they ever made too much noise, because if so, I should just let them know and they'd try to be quieter.

Different worlds in the same city, money-wise.

The other week I was on the subway and it was packed, and two (middle-aged) (Asian) women were standing right in front of me with their bags in my face while I was sitted down on the subway seat...

When it was getting close to my stop and I was going to go get up, one was like, "Oh, are you getting out?", and I was like, "Next stop," and then I chit-chatted a little bit like I often tend to do and I said I was surprised at how crowded the train was, for like 9pm on a weekday evening.

"Shopping," she was like.  "We were at Macy's, if you spent two hundred dollar, you received seventy-five dollars free."

At that, I thought to myself, that I didn't have two hundred dollars to spend on shopping, let alone for gifts.

Later that week, I read in the free newspaper that single young people making something like $75-$135K are the fastest growing group of people in the city.

Who are these people?, I again thought to myself.

Such different worlds, all in the same city.

A coworker's sublimated reaction to the presidential election.

Like me, my one library coworker who I've known for a while goes out and knocks on doors for Dems in competitive races during all major elections...

I had met her years ago as a student, and now I work with her, and she's this (later middle-aged) (white) woman with a Ph.D. in ancient languages who now works as a bibliographer, who grew up in rural Missouri and has like a high school- or college-aged son and has lived in the city for years now.

This past week, I was working and sitting and organizing some books up on the one floor near where her office is, and all of a sudden I hear a cheery "Hey, I haven't seen you since the election!", and I look up and it's her.

And, next thing I know, we talk for at *least* a half hour, maybe 40 minutes, all about politics.

At one point, she told me that the election results "touched her core" because it's people like where she came from who voted Trump in.

She said she tried not to think of the election for a while afterwards, but then like 10 days to two weeks out, she wasn't even thinking of it and she was just in her house and some classic rock came on the radio, and next thing she knew, she found herself giving two middle fingers at it and saying "FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU!".

"It just poured out of me," she was like, "It was all in there."

Then, after a slight pause, she was like, "All my memories of high school are poisoned."

The death of Zsa-Zsa Gabor.

As soon as I heard that Zsa-Zsa Gabor died, I texted my one art school colleague who wears women's clothes, since he truly enjoys and also likes to camp up celebrity culture.

He texted back like right away, saying someone else had texted him five minutes earlier, and he closed the text with -

THE GREAT MAGYAR HAS FALLEN.

- (all in caps).

. . .

What a (demure) (cornrow-haired) (biracial?) (female) freshperson wore to class the other day:

A black t-shirt with bright red, yellow, and green accents, with the phrase on the back,

RASTA REVOLUTION

. . .

An observation of my uncle, on me:

My (dead) (maternal) grandfather who I never met would have liked me, since he was into "causes" and was "always a friend of the working man."

I found that striking, both in terms of the take on my grandfather's personality and in terms of the phrasing, "friend of the working man."

"Friend of the working man."

That phrasing sounds very old-fashioned, and good-hearted salt-of-the-earth.

Dogwalking finds of my mother from this fall.

This fall while walking my brother's dog out and about in the woods and on walking paths near my parents' house, my mother has found:

1) A turkey caller.

2) A wrench.

3) A ten-dollar bill.

. . .

I asked her about the turkey caller, and she said she assumes it fell out of someone's pocket.

Two movies with the Sudan.

The other week I went out to dinner with some people, including my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend (the sister of the brother and the sister who I'm friends with).

I had texted her right after I saw Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and so I followed up and asked her if she had finally seen that movie yet (she likes blockbusters).

"Yes!", she was like.

"I thought of you when they mentioned the case of the young woman from the Sudan," I was like.  "Now you have to tell [her boyfriend's first name] not to ever fuck with you, otherwise you'll go all obscurial on him."

At that, she laughed.

Then, she was like, "Did you see Arrival?".

"Yes," I was like, "Why?".

"One of the twelve alien ships landed in the Sudan," she was like.  "You didn't notice that?  It's like, 'Yes, we've finally made it!'," and as she said "Yes, we've finally made it!", she raised up both arms in the air like in victory.

Third rude awakening by a text before 7am!

That same Monday morning, I got a *third* text from a friend before I had gotten out of bed that woke me up, like at 6:50am.

It was from my one friend from high school who does (domestic violence) work, on dates for a possible weekend visit to go see her and her husband.

She must have texted me in the middle of her morning (getting ready for work, getting the kids ready), and with her early rising and the timezone difference, it woke me up early, though I was getting up at 7:30am.

Pleasant Monday morning ride in!

The other morning on a Monday I was dogged tired and riding in to school, and on the last leg of my commute, this quiet leafy boulevard with a nice big bike lane, I was passing an elementary school that had started for the day, just as a (middle-aged) (black) (female) crossing guard in a neon green vest was putting her stuff in her van near the bike lane.

"You have a nice morning!", she said to me as I passed by, though we didn't make eye contact.

"You too!", I said as I sped by.

Then, I turned around and was like, "And you have a good week, too!", but she didn't seem to hear me.

Still, it was a lovely intereaction.

One day's library antics (3 of 3): Bathroom sight.

On that same day, too, in the middle of that reshelving task, I popped into the bathroom to take a piss.

A (young) (skinny) (dark-skinned-ish) (Japanese-looking) guy had his bare foot up in the bathroom sink, and was washing it.

He was still doing that, after I took my piss and washed my hands and left.  He didn't seem to pay much attention to me, while I was there.

One day's library antics (2 of 3): Missing book.

That same day, me and another coworker were shifting books upstairs, taking them from one section to another because of some massive reshelving plan that our supervisor was putting into effect for some reason.

As I turned into the aisle to go and put books onto my cart, this one (Asian) guy was standing right there inside the entrance of the aisle and was seeming kind of lost, looking at the empty book section where we had just taken stuff from.

"Hello sir," I was like, "Do you need help?".

As it turned out, he needed a call number that we had probably just shifted, so I went out into the major aisle and directed him down to where my coworker was unloading books.

Like five minutes later, I went out pushing my cart down there, and I met my coworker coming the opposite direction.

"Hey, did you meet that one guy who was looking for a book?", I was like.

"Yeah," he was like, "He found it."

"Sweet," I was like.  "Where was it, was it on the shelf already, or on your cart?".

"On my cart!!", my coworker was like.

. . .

...of all the books that that guy was looking for in all of the library system, he was looking for one particular one that in that ten minute window we were in the middle of shifting, what's the chances of that...

One day's library antics (1 of 3): Fire alarm.

So, the other day I was working in the library, and the fire alarm goes off, and everyone floods outside.

Amongst the crowd, I saw several people I knew, and I made the same joke to each:

"I almost expected we'd come out into machine gun fire or get herded into cattle cars or paddy wagons!".

Then, I'd add, in a low, sort of conspiratorial tone-of-voice, "You know, it's Trump's America now, and that'd be a good way to purge the intellectuals, just send people around to pull the fire alarms in all the university libraries, then do that stuff to them..."

Comment of one (elite university) student to another after Trump's election...

At the school where I go and teach, a (white) (undergraduate) (female) coworker was saying that one of her (white) (female) friends had been putting post-Trump activism plans up on Facebook, and then some (non-white) (undergraduate) (female) acquaintance of hers was like, "That's your privilege, to be active at a time like this, I can't do anything most mornings because I'm so worried about my family."

And, my coworker told me this like that statement was something profound.

I mean, do these kids even know what they sound like?

Something is *way* the frick off with mainstream activism culture at elite universities (or at least *most* mainstream activism culture, barring certain exceptions like with sexual assault activists).

Rude awakening, twice in a row!

I'm trying to round up GOTV friends from the next state over to come to my city for the opera, and a few had been AWOL with texts...

Until a Monday when one texted me at like 5:50am, waking me right up out of bed since I had my phone sound on for the alarm (she's a teacher, she texted me before school started)...

And then the next day, a Tuesday, when another one texted me atr like 5:50am again, waking me up right up out of bed again since I had my phone sound on again (she has some sort of job and was getting back home after a late shift, and decided to reply to my text then).

Rewarding encounter...

I approached a library colleague who I hadn't met about unionization, and someone else I had talked to had already told her about it, and she was excited!

First time that that had happened, and I was stoked.

So rewarding.

Advice of a Hungarian friend on how she survives Orban:

1) Read the news once a week, on a day when you're on an even keel.

2) Stick to your people and "tune out" when you're in environments with his supporters (e.g. on public transportation, turn on your music).

3) Focus on daily life, and maybe local things that you have control over and can change...

She told me that this was the way for me to survive Trump with my soul and my happiness intact.

I think I'm going to follow that advice, and focus on my freelance writing and my local unionization efforts.

Anecdote of a bartender from a new brewery taproom bar the other week:

Back when he was college and in a fraternity, everyone got back from summer vacation and opened up the fraternity house again for the year, and when they were doing that, they discovered that someone had left a bunch of chicken legs in the freezer all summer long.

And, they had shut electricity down in the house all summer.

The smell was so bad in the kitchen, he actually started having involuntary gags that were escalating to the point of a vomit, and he had to back away...

"Hey, let me get that," this one guy was like, though, and barging through the crowd was one his frat brother who had grown up above a funeral home.

As it turns out, the guy put on gloves, but otherwise he got all the rotten wings out without a mask, and the smell didn't faze him one bit.

"I bet that freezer must have stank after that," I was like.

"It did," he was like.  "We had to throw it out."

"So why didn't you just chuck it out with all the rotten legs in it?", I was like.

"Too heavy," he was like.

Anecdote of my new landlord (3 of 3): Talk while repairing deadbolt.

After he put some W-40 on the front door's deadbolt and got it working again, he showed me how to work the door.

"You gotta push in when you lock it," he was like, showing me.  "See?".

Then, he was like, "You could leave it loose, but that way it's easier for someone to kick down the door.  That's not gonna happen in this neighborhood, but hey, if they do, what a surprise they're gonna get, it'll hold and totally kick back at 'em!"

When he said that, too, he seemed almost gleeful, his face just good-natured and radiant.

Anecdote of my new landlord (2 of 3): Talk while repairing toilet.

While he repaired the slow water leak in my toilet, he was saying he wanted to replace the tank with one of those variable flush toilets, where you can press one button to use a gallon for pee, and 1.6 gallons to use for the other stuff.

"I like to save water and money, man," he was like.

I then started telling him how I was transitioning careers, hopefully into renewables, and had been learning a lot about energy efficiency.

"Hey, it's the future, man!", he was like.

Anecdote of my new landlord (1 of 3): Answering machine.

The other week I called up my new landlord, and his message on his answering machine was :

Automated voice:  "Please leave a message, for..."

Record voice (in low drawn out voice): "Jooooooooooooooooeeeeeeee..."

. . .

Sight on my bikeride in the other morning:

The other week as I walk to go get my bikeshare bike in the morning, I see this (college age) (Asian-American) guy on this little contraption that's a wheel with a top on it and an indented space in that for two feet, and it's automated and he's just going along the sidewalk, studying out of some notes he's holding out in front of him as he's heading off to wherever he's heading.

After I get my bike and doubleback across the neighborhood and start going in on my way to school, then, I suddenly see him on the sidewalk just before I cross the highway, and am surprised he made it so far in such a short time, since I didn't think his little wheel contraption thing was actually moving that fast.

I also wonder if he's an engineering student, off to the school nearby and studying on his way as he uses his eccentric contraption.

On the aftermath of Trump's election:

Everyone is shellshocked like in the days after 9/11.

But, the complacency of wealthy students is just simply gone.  They had been floating in a bubble of wealth, and now something finally shook them out of it.

My mother on the Trump election:

"People came in from the swamp to vote for him.  And now, the swamp people have spoken."

Trump supporter bullying in my city...

The other week I was going to go see a midnight movie with a friend, but it ended up being sold out when she hopped online to check on tickets like 11pm, so she cancelled, and I just stayed at the (new) bar where I was for a 2nd beer and then I went to go get a slice of pizza, and then after wolfing down the pizza I decided to go to the one trashy late night club I like...

So, in order to go there, I was heading from the (fratty) area of the city over towards a main street in the (gay) area to walk down it and go to the club, and I was on this one east-west street that's a decently major artery but was unusually deserted.

On the south side of the street, there was construction and a temporary walkway extending out into the street with concrete barriers between you and any traffic, and as I was walking through that, like 4 or 5 (middle-aged and late middle-aged) (bearded) (flanneled) (white) guys were coming the other way.

I had my head down and passed them, and as I passed by one, he must have turned after me and called out, "Hey, did you vote Trump?".

I pretended like I didn't hear and just kept walking.

In all honesty, I think it was an overture to get in a fight and beat the shit out of me, at like 12:30am out in a so-called decent neighborhood of the city.

I have been in that neighborhood a ton, and have never seen anything like it.

I also wonder for some reason if they were homeless; they seemed a bit more unkempt than normal, and I had passed by some younger homeless guys in a convenience store parking lot like a block before, and they might have been going there to rendezvous with them.

A post-Trump sight in the Detroit area:

As I go past a school, I see a hijabed woman walking across an otherwise empty yard, holding the hand of her toddler, and I think, "I wonder what they might have to face now."

New supermarket giveaway.

Like last month, this new upscale supermarket opened up in the (black) neighborhood to the east of the neighborhood where my new apartment is at.

And, they sent fliers around, where you could pop in and get a free pork slider and a free blueberry muffin during this one week, and since they also have a winebar in the store that I'd have to go to as a new bar in the city, I thought I'd multitask and go get some free food and then have a drink at the new bar in the store.

Anyhow, I finally get there, and the place is *packed* with mostly (African-American) shoppers, and I scope out where the deli is, but as I head over there, just when I'm getting there, a (larger) (early 50s) (black) woman in a dark purple coat scoots into line in front of me.

And, as the deliworker comes up, she pulls out the same coupon I have.

"I recognize that!", I was like to her.

"Ha ha haaaa!" she said, her face just aglow, and she shot out her right fist to give me a fistbump.

Then, she explained that she had been there the previous week, too, to get the gelatto deal with the giveaway coupon that they put out that week.

"And it was good," she was like.

After she left and I finally got my pork slider and I wolfed it down, I went to the bakery part of the store, and it just wasn't clear where you had to stand at the long, long counter, to get the free muffin.

And then I spied that same woman's purple coat, and the (black) countergirl was handing her a paper bag with presumably a free muffin inside of it.

So, I walked over there and was like, "I couldn't figure out where to stand for the longest time, and then I saw you again!  I should've just been looking for your coat from the start."

"Ha ha haaa," she was like.  

Then, she went to walk away, and as a farewell, was like, "Enjoy!".

Problems at my new apartment:

1) The inside doorknob of the front closet falls off sometimes, and I can't figure out how to screw it back on.

2) The caulking is coming away a bit at the base of the sink, since I lean on it sometimes to brush my teeth, and that must pull it down just enough to separate off some of the caulking.

. . .

That said, I finally am getting memorized which color-coded keys work the front and backdoors, and I know which switches turn on lights vs. the fans in my living room, dining room, and bedroom.

Song of a child and father at the supermarket:

The other Sunday at the supermarket in my neighborhood, this (Latino) dad and his little toddler were pushing up the shopping cart together into the rack just at the same time that I was going to get one out, and they were singing together "Raaaaa-men nooodles, raaaaaaa-men nooodles," in their own little song together about ramen noodles.

Bedbug neuroticism, redux:

One evening I kept waking up in the middle of the night because my skin was dry and a bit itchy...

And when I'd be half-awake and go to scratch a spot, all of a sudden my heart would leap out of my chest b/c I'd think for a second that I had gotten a new bedbug bite, in my new apartment, and that the horror had returned, just when I thought I was finally safe again and back to normal.

A dream of Rimsky-Korsakov:

The other week I dreamt -

I was in a non-descript office-like modern college building, and this little old plump Russian woman who was very demure in appearance and behavior and had an inward-turned body posture and a score clutched to her chest but a glowing face was there with me, and as she began walking ahead I followed her through the building.

She was Rimsky-Korsakov and working as a composition instructor at the university, and I was going to be honored with an early hearing of a commissioned work she was working on.

. . .

Class comments that I should check...

...when discussing writing with my freshpersons:

1) Regarding an example of extreme violence against women in a Roman text that we read, I was like, "That treatment of women is so extreme, even Donald Trump couldn't conceive of it."

(At that, one freshperson added, "Or rather, even Donald Trump would be shocked!").

2) When they were super tired and couldn't focus on papers, I was like, "What the heck, people, isn't this why you take Adderall?  What the piss happened, did someone sell you some bum Adderall?".

(With that comment, I actually restrained myself from putting on a parodic little kid voice and saying, "Gee, we got f*cked twice, first with the money, and then with all the work we couldn't do!  Man, that third year dealer kid really f*cked us hard!")

Odds and ends (2): Sheet.

The other week I woke up to find that I had kicked part of my sheet off my bed, and it draped off my bed onto my floor.

At seeing that, I was horrified, since I thought at once that any bedbugs in the apartment could have crawled up the sheet and onto my bed while I slept.

Thankfully, no bites emerged as I ate breakfast, and I realized that I was indeed overreacting, I think.

It's hard to shake the feeling of your apartment being unclean, I've lived with it for so long.

Odds and ends (1): Shit.

The other week I was shelving books in the library, and I was shelving by a shelf right outside the bathroom when some guy walks by me, goes into the bathroom, and then I can not only hear a noisy shit, but also the sounds of him rolling out and tearing off toilet paper and then pausing to wipe his ass after he's all done taking his noisy shit.

As he does that, I think to myself that perverts would find that part of my job pleasurable, and I wonder if some people take jobs like mine just so they can listen sometimes to other people shitting.

A dream of my new apartment:

The other week I dreamt -

I'm planning to get some paper to put up on odd high windows in my apartment to keep people looking in from the back porch or to block views into the top part of a closet from my foyer, but I get out my lease and I look, and there's clause after clause about what patterns I can use if I choose to buy paper like that, since I'll more than likely leave it in the apartment after I move out and then the person who comes after me will have to deal with it and live with it.

. . .

(In real life I actually have these windows, and I've been meaning to buy some paper and some glue dots and slap some up to cover up the windows.)

Complaint of a library coworker:

She's voting in her first presidential election, but her absentee ballot from Georgia didn't come with the cool sticker that you see everyone there wearing, the words "I'm a Georgia voter!" overlaid onto a picture of a peach.

"I was totally bummed," she was like.  "I was hoping they'd slip one in the envelope."

Finished "Don Quixote".

So, I finally finished reading "Don Quixote", after working on it on and off for more than a year (usually right before bed).

It feels so fresh, but it went on a bit too long.

That said, the last hundred pages were like crack, where it got all into criticizing a second part of Don Quixote written by another author, and then described Don Quixote's death.

I wish more of the book could have been like that...

It's hard to believe it was written in the very early 17th c.

A dream of decay - bicycle.

The other week I dreamt-

I go to get my bike, which has a flat front tire, to take it to the shop for repair.

When I go out to my back enclosed porch to go get it, I discover that the back tire is flat as well.

. . .

(The previous day, I had woken up in the morning to get my bike to go to work, and discovered that the tire was flat, but I had to rush to work, so it was on my mind that I had to go get the tire fixed.)

Lifestory of a young female donut decorator at a hipster upscale donut place:

She was a flight attendant, but every day was new coworkers and a new place.

Then, after she quit, to make ends meet, she got a job working the graveyard shift at an all-night donut restaurant.

She was surprised at how much she enjoyed making the different donuts and trying different glazes and anticipating micro sales trends (e.g. "I should make 6 more of that because they sold so well yesterday"), and now she does this full-time.

Seriously.

"It's very chill," she was like.

Horrible dream.

The other week I dreamt -

I was hiking with a friend from high school, up a two-track and through a forest and up onto a high hill leading to an overhang peak with a breathtaking vista over the hill and then even further over a small denuded hill rolling down towards a wooded valley where some small town was located.

As we stand on this overhang, I suddenly notice the ground caving in beneath her feet, but my first reaction is to reach up and grab the edge of the rock ledge high above me, and as I do that, she's already fallen away because of the ground crumbling beneath her feet.

I'm hanging there just barely for a minute or two, but am able to edge myself over a few feet, and then I let myself drop down onto a lower rock outjut, and from that outjut I'm able to ease myself up and sorely hike downhill, and then after that down the denuded hill further.

At some point I call 911, and as I do that I see in my mind's eye her body tumbling through space, silhouetted in front of the hill.

For some reason, though, I go down further into the valley to find people, and when I later return to the foot of the hill, ambulances are surrounding the body, and someone tells me that she actually died six minutes ago.

At that, I'm filled with an overwhelming horror that if I had sought her out immediately instead of hiking into the valley, I could have done something to keep her alive till the ambulances came.

. . .

A problem in my new apartment: Door issues.

My landlord said the deadbolt on the door off the front foyer doesn't work, but it did, until it didn't, and now no matter what I do, I can't get it to open again.

So, I've been using the back door to go in and out of my apartment all the time.

Occurrences on a morning bikeride in.

The other week as I was biking in to school, I passed an old condemned church, and a breeze kicked up a smell of cat piss.

Later, a car was pulled over to the side of the road, and its front right wheel was kind of bent outward just like the axle gave out right at the point where it meets the wheel.

Islam-themed humor from my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend:

1) He says he saw a recent survey, and Muslims were the most hated group in the U.S.

"It's nice to be the best at something," he was like.

2) We pass a sign for a "Mum and Bulbs" sale, and he was like, "Oh look, like ISIS."

"Like what?", I was like.

"You know, they sell women into slavery," he was like.  "Mums."

My one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend on law students:

"They're all the same, you know.  This one's like 'I want to work for a big firm,' then that one's like 'I want to work for a bigger firm,' and then that one's like 'I want to work for the biggest firm.'  It's all very silly, you know."

An interesting side of bedbug treatments:

The other day I took some books out of my freezer where they'd been for over four days at below zero temps, and I put them on my bookshelf.

As I then sat at my table, I could see what looked like heavy steam roll off the books and down the shelf and down towards the floor, though the steam disappeared after about a foot or so.

It must have been something like evaporation or waves of cold, but heavy.

Another story of the British: One Chilean's impression.

The other weekend, a (Chilean) (lab science) friend and his (white) (American) girlfriend visited from the UK, where they're now both doing post-docs.

We went out for dinner in a group and then drinks, and just talked and talked and talked, including about the British.

"Honestly, every time I meet a British person, I think, 'How did they ever manage to get an empire and keep it together?'," I was like.

At that, my (Chilean) friend turned to his girlfriend and tapped her on the shoulder emotionally and was like, "SEE, what have I been saying?!".

He then said that British people are so much lazier than Americans, they never work till they get the work done, they just work till five o'clock, and on top of that they think they're better than everyone else for no apparent reason.

One story of the British: Cultural references.

The other weekend I was hanging out with my two (half British) (half Sudanese) friends and we had dinner and were vegging out and watching shit off Netflix, and when we weren't sure what to watch, I suggested the original Hairspray.

Neither of them really got it, and not only that, they didn't seem all that interested, either.

The pop culture representations just didn't speak to them, to the point where they weren't even interested in watching the re-enactments of crazy dances like the Madison.

Odd CO2 alarm.

The other week I was cooking a ton at my new apartment, and all of a sudden my smoke alarm starts going off.


I turn off the stove - oddly, nothing's burning - and then go into the bedroom.

As I look, it turns out that it's not signalling an alarm for smoke, but rather C02, so I immediately open the windows, and since the alarm was high up on the ceiling, I roll up a thick health insurance pamphlet that had just come in the mail, and I stand on my bed and push in the "TEST/SILENCE" button, but instead of going to test and resetting, the alarm just goes silent, and you can see the CO2 light continue to flash.


So, I go get a folding chair, carefully place it on my bed, and get up and unscrew the alarm.

Then, I take it down and take the battery out and put it back in to reset it, and then I hit the "TEST/SILENCE" button again, but now instead of going to silence, it actually runs through the test like the instructions on the back says it will.

Then, it never signals the presence of C02 again.

I wonder what's up with that...  I'm thinking the heat and moisture from the cooking may have caused a brief malfunction.

A Disturbing Dream of Skin Cancer.

The other week I dreamt:


I'm watching old TMZ red carpet footage of a (white) leggy (female) model/actress who recently died of skin cancer at too young an age, and me and the other person I'm watching with pause the tape, and right there on the top of her upper right breast is this huge misshapen mole the size of a half dollar, you can see because she's wearing a low-cut dress.


We both wonder how no-one noticed, it must have been there for so long, and it's so easy to see.

Two shopping cart conversations.

The other week when I went to go get a shopping cart, I didn't have a quarter in my pocket to insert and pull out the cart, so I waited till another customer came up so I could give them some loose change I had equalling twenty-five cents.


Almost immediately, this (younger middle-aged) (Chinese) woman pushing a cart and tugging along a young kid came up, and I asked her if I could use her cart.


She didn't speak English, so I showed her the change in my hand, and she began saying something in Chinese and nodding her head, and I dropped the dime, two nickels, and five pennies in her hand.


"Is that a penny?", the young boy then said to her, pulling at her coat.


Later, after I got out of the store, someone had just rechained their cart to the last one in the row, but without pushing the basket into the basket, so it was just this loosely connected cart sticking out and getting in everyone's way.


"What is that?", this (middle-aged) (white) woman asked me, as she was standing there looking at the cart and trying to figure out what was going on.


"I was just trying to figure that out myself," I was like, and I went to the other row to go push my cart in.

The tenured aristocracy.

I'm getting more and more fed up with the tenured aristocracy.


I sit in class as a freshman writing TA, and though I grade half the kids' fucking papers, I make a third of the money, maybe less, and with much more instability.


It also pisses me off since if I could have just slid over this financial hump and actually got into applications and secured a position, I could have been teaching the class as well, which I'm perfectly capable of doing at this point in time.


I've very much enjoyed my library job too, but lately when I've been shelving books, I keep thinking, "Who returned this, some tenured f*ck whose career I'm propping up with my work?", and it makes me sick to think that they get to research while I have to scrape for money, including by shelving the books they glanced at.


Honestly, more and more I feel like a trapped indentured servant, teaching and correcting and shelving for these assholes who don't appreciate what I do and who I can never become, since the tenure track promise is broken.


I simply cannot wait to be out of this negative atmosphere.


Also, the atmosphere of higher ed is getting shittier and shittier and much less enjoyable, so although I'm sad becuase of the trends towards inequality, it doesn't bother me at all that the jobs of tenure-track profs are getting more and more unpleasant.

Those people deserve it.

Income inequality on campus.

Just the other day my freshman writing supervisor said that the gap between the "haves" and the "have nots" on campus is getting wider in society and is now becoming much more visible on campus, too...


I had had some very weird dynamics last year in sections where students were treating me like a servant in evaluations, and after I did some (tactful) pedagogy on income inequality (treat feedback like any other, be non-judgmental, clue in larger contexts, all in less than 5 minutes so as to not use up much classtime at all), 2 students complained to the prof, who bitched me out for it and left a nasty note in my file, I guess.


(The supervisor was on board with my pedagogy btw, and was surprised at both the student complaint and what the prof did; interestingly, a secondary supervisor had suggested last spring that the key number was "two", and the students complaining to the professor was likely a result of 2 very young people talking together one day after class or sometime and egging each other on until it escalated to a complaint.)


Anyhow, I can completely agree with that...  Both with teachers and students, money is mattering more and more.

I mean, honestly, 2 rich kids bitch to a rich prof who sides with them?


Gag me, I just want to vomit.


Anyhow, they just built a new luxury dorm, and not only is it that every time I see it I think "they built that off my back," but also that they have street-level shops in it and one custom bikeshop sells $400 messenger bags, some undergrad said on Facebook.

Disgusting.


I'm so glad I'm getting the f*ck out of higher ed.


It's just more and more like a service industry catering to the wealth, and more and more it's making me think, "What the f*ck, are we back in the f*cking eighteenth century where I'm a tutor dependent on an aristocratic family?".

My new landlord on my first day:

My (Polish-American) landlord was cleaning the already very clean house when I came over with the first load of my stuff, and I had to tell him that the apartment was already clean well beyond my expectations, so to save himself some work and just stop.

"I'll be okay if you're okay," he was like.

He also told me he doesn't like to do work in an apartment unless a person is there, so some time in the next month or so I should give him a day's notice for a Saturday or a Sunday when he can come over and fix the bathtub grout.

He then led me into the bathtub and showed me two small places on the grout where it had gotten mildew-y.

"You can't get that out," he was like, "so you have to replace it all."

He also showed me how I should just put the rent check in an envelope and slide it behind a light fixture in back external-but-enclosed staircase, and that's where he picks it up.

"You never have to see me if you don't want to," he deadpanned.

New neighbors:

This old vaguely brown looking man walks a small dog, and when we talk, his name is [a hispanic name] and he's taking care of his daughter who lives in Miami's dogs.

Later, I meet an older woman out in the immaculately cut small yard of the house, and she introduces herself with a hispanic name, Rosy for short, though she says my landlord calls her "nosy Rosy" because she likes to know everything that goes on.

She also says she'd be happy to watch my packages for me like she did for the woman who formerly lived in my apartment because sometimes there's strange people walking up and down the block looking close at every house, and also to be good to my landlord, because if I'm good to the apartment he'll be good to me, but if I'm not, he'll keep all of the rent deposit.

She also said she was glad that I'm not a black tenant, since the last black tenant they had there was always people over, and they parked motorcycles outside.

Final moving indignity.

The day that I get up to move, I'm going around the apartment getting the very final stuff ready, and I start feeling an itching on my lower back.

I scratch and I scratch, so I go to look in the mirror, and right above my butt crack is a bedbug bite.

Later that evening, they start itching again, and I go to look in the mirror again and notice that it's actually three really close together (the bugs shift feeding places as you move while you sleep, that's why the bites are so close together).

Interestingly, the morning of the move as I was going outside to run a pre-move errand, I met a new guy who was living downstairs as a subletter - and when I asked him if he had noticed anything, he said lately he had been waking up itching in the morning.

I think he has the bedroom directly below mine, so it must be that the bugs are in the walls!

He also must be one of the people who feels bites, but not severely like me.

Great opening class question...

...to students, by the instructor I work with:

"What do you collect, and why?".

It brought out the quirkiest answers (dead insects, scarves, postcards, trips to national parks), and you could see some entering students really bond.

A few were into non-digital music, one because she fears what'd happen to her collection of songs if her iPod or whatever had a glitch, another b/c she had learned about the music industry and wanted to support the artists she likes, which you really can't do through streaming services, which are exploitative and benefit the big recording companies that have a stake in them.

The instructor I work with, who's from Singapore, said in one class that for a while she had a collection of letters from ex-boyfriends, but it weighed her down too much and so she got rid of them.

"TMI!", she joked with the class, and in the second class she didn't tell that anecdote.

Now, she collects mid-century furniture, which she thinks ties in to her fascination with the era of decolonization that birthed Singapore.

She is super cool, and I'm excited to work with her...

After the first class, we had a break for lunch, and then we had to be back in an hour-and-a-half for the second class.

"Rinse and repeat," she was like, saying farewell after the first class.

A secondhand tale of suicide.

The other weekend when I was out by the lake I bumped into a friend who I did my masters with, and later that night we ended up going out for a drink together at the (black) neighborhood bar.,

Somehow we got on the subject of autoerotic asphyxiation, and she told me a story that a friend of hers told her years ago:

Some guy that that guy knew grew up in an uber-conservative Catholic family in the Midwest, and he committed suicide.

Because they were embarrassed that he'd go to hell, that guy's family cooked up a story that he died from autoerotic asphyxiation, since although that was shameful, that way the suicide was accidental and not intentional, and so none of their friends or family would think that their kid went to hell.

Can't wait till I get a new job.

I can't wait till I get a new job.

I'm so over teaching freshman writing.  It has its nice moments, but the admin put in place conditions where you don't get respect, and it's ill-paid, and I deserve more and better.

Interesting library shift where I got to shelve...

1) A few books related to African-American military regiments from the Civil War era, where a designation like "4th", "29th", and "30th" appeared in the otherwise regular Library-of-Congress call number.

2) A book by radical mid-19th c. Unitarian minister Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who actually led an African-American military regiment in the Civil War (!), as I found out from reading the back of the book.

3) A book that I had returned a while ago, that I had checked out and used in my dissertation intro.

. . .

It's funny, you have to do a test cart and then 2 probationary carts before they let you go shelve for real, and my last probationary cart was on the first day of the term.

"It's the first day of school and you guys are giving me an exam, what's with that?!", I joked with my one supervisor.

Bedbug neuroticism.

So, it hasn't been as bad as I thought to plastic sealtight bin up my stuff for my move, but you do get very neurotic.

The bins are a bit expensive - like over $15 each - and I was trying to figure out if I should get a few more for my bathroom and kitchen stuff, though there's an incredibly low chance that any bedbugs would be in there, what with no natural fibers and the great distance from my sleeping area.

At first I leaned against it, thinking I'd just fill up a box and haul one box of that stuff over with every trip and put it in my kitchen or bathroom, but now I'm learning towards actually sealing the stuff away and then going through the sterilization routine.

It might be a bit overly neurotic, but it's a bit like "better safe than sorry", and it's not that much more money or that much more work.

Great bartender who likes films.

So, the other week after seeing a movie downtown, I hit up some new bars, and at one I started talking with the (early 20s) (black) (female) bartender and we started talking movies, which she used to watch a lot with a boyfriend and now she does herself as a hobby a lot.

So, I asked her what recent film she liked a lot, and she not only told me about "The Revenant", but also gave a really cool, informed perspective on the acting.

Then, we started talking about other movies we've liked.

"You know what I saw for the first time last summer and I can't stop talking about?", I was like.

"What?!", she was like.

"This old movie called 'Imitation of Life,'" I was like.

"No way!", she was like, and she then started telling me about how it's her favorite movie of all time and her and her mom watch it together like once a year, and her favorite scene is when the Sandra Dee dancer character is on a rotating stage in a martini glass.

GOTV story: odd volunteers.

Last Saturday I went out for food with some folks from the campaign office after doing a few canvasses.

At one point, someone mentioned this odd couple who were in there for a while.

The guy had a duct tape patch on his t-shirt and was carrying a suitcase, and the woman said she was Canadian but couldn't back across the border because she had been  in the U.S. 40 years without papers.

And, they kept taking absolute *piles* of food from the snack table, just heaps and heaps on a single paper plate, and then another plate just like that right after that, and at one point the guy went to the back fridge and helped himself from there too, even though volunteers aren't supposed to do that (because it's the campaign staffers' food?).

"I think they were homeless," one of the other workers was like.

"But did they volunteer?", I was like.

"She did," one of the other workers was like, "And she was really good on the phones, I heard her."

"How about him?", I was like.

"He just sat there and watched."

Later, someone said that they thought that they were probably living out of the suitcase, though the couple said that they were just taking a bunch of books back to the library to return.

A dream of class.

The other week, the week before school started, I dreamt -

I'm in in a classroom as a writing instructor, and I notice a couple students from last year's section, and then another one in a seat against the wall beyond the table.

(There's a row of students there, since the classroom is over-capacity.)

I acknowledge them and surprisedly say hi, but I'm unsure if they have to retake the class for some reason, and so I don't want to acknowledge them too much.

Dollar store convo.

The other week I was picking up some stuff at the dollar store near my house, and the (younger) (quiet) (Latina) cashier asked me how I was.

"Hung over, honestly," I was like.  "Too many martinis yesterday, and I stayed out till four."

"That sounds like fun," she was like, "But I can't because of this," and at that she patted her belly.

"Oh," I was like.

"December," she was like, "Just in time for New Year's."

"Congratulations," I was like.

Then, quickly, as if she hadn't even heard me, she was like, "Though, that's what got me here in the first place," and at that she looked at me and laughed.

Chit-chat with a drugstore employee.

There's a few drugstore employees I know from the one drugstore near my house, including this one (mid-20s) (black) woman who at the most recent visit I noticed had tattoos up and down her arms, she had her sleeves pushed up.

"How are you doing?", I was like.

"Okay," she was like, "Just getting ready to go back to school this fall."

"Really?", I was like.  "Like what are you taking? What are you going for?".

"A lot of biology," she was like, "I want to do mortuary science."

"No way," I was like, and then I started telling her about how my one neighbor growing up was a mortician.

"Corpses are supposed to move when you go to cut them open," she was like.

"Is that true?", I was like.

"I don't know," she was like, "But I want to find out."

"Damn," I was like, "That's some serious serial killer shit."

At that, she laughed, quizzically, and I said good night.

Ability / Disability.

The other week I had to switch a ton of my addresses (magazines, health insurance, gas and electric, etc.), and when I was punching in my account or policy number for one of those, this one time I kept hitting the wrong numbers accidentally on the screen of my smartphone.

At that, I paused, and I thought how frustrating it must be to have something like Parkinson's or the shakes from getting older, and how close we all are to disability.

Pleasant bus driver.

The other week, I headed up to a store to get a ton of seal-tight plastic bins to put my stuff in prior to my move.

I used bikeshare to get up there, but on the way back home I took the bus west, and then waited for another bus south.

As I got on that bus loaded up with tons of nestled bins in my arms and some lids sticking up out of the top, this (thin) (late middle-aged) (African-American) (female) bus driver looks at me as I round the corner in the bus, and is like, "For meeee?".

I was like, "You like containers to organize stuff?".

"Yes!", she was like.

Laundromat woman's life.

So, the other day when I was doing a lot of laundry in preparation for my move, this one woman who works at the laundromat, who's some kind of Americanized hispanic, got talking about infestations because I was talking about bedbugs, but instead of bedbugs, she started talking about lice.

"I told my daughter I'm gonna whoop her ass if her kids come home with lice one more time," she was like.  "I told her, you got to bathe them, you got to use that comb three times a day, and you got to stop hanging around with the boys on the corner and leaving them at your nasty-ass in-laws."

I sympathized.

Polling place fears in an age of Trump.

I'm kind of worried about doing election day volunteering in an age of Trump.

In the swing state that I go to, a lot of people have guns, and the economy's been bad.

All it takes is one nut job to go after someone going door-to-door, or to show up at the campaign office, or to even come to the election results viewing party.

I'll have to keep my pulse on things when I'm out campaigning the next few weekends, and I'll have to see how much Trump keeps up the "rigged election, watch polling places!" rhetoric between now and the election.

Trivia from my one neighbor from New Orleans:

At LSU, cheering from the football stadium is so loud, it registers on the Richter scale at the geology building across the way.

Moving apartments, and I hope to escape bed bugs.

Big news:

I got a new lease at a different place, but now I have to figure out how to move without taking bed bugs with me.

From what I've learned online, I'll wash and garbage bag all my clothing, and my other stuff I'll put in plastic bins and keep sealed up till I can rotate it in and out of my home freezer, which at the lowest setting goes below zero Fahrenheit, which kills bugs and eggs after stuff is kept in there for 4 days.

Otherwise, I'm throwing out my mattress and box spring, and buying large amounts of rubbing alcohol to just dowse all my furniture and carpet and bedframe...

I'm also buying bed bug interceptors pronto to put around the legs of my furniture, to see if any bugs are coming off them.

If they are, I'll throw the furniture out, and if not, I'll spray and keep it.

Waves make for sore legs.

The other weekend I was at the beach, and it was a beautiful day, but huge waves were just rolling in.

A few people waded out to the shallow part and would go dip in from over there, but overall they would mostly just stay in the shallow part and run into the waves and or wade in a bit further and jump up with them as they came in.

Mostly, it was adults, though it was a few kids as well.

After I read for a few hours and got hot, I got in there to go cool down, and I stayed in for a surprisingly long time, it was so much fun to play with the waves.

When I got out, though, it was tough to walk, since all my legs muscles were sore from having to constantly shift amidst the waves to keep me upright.

A German on capitalism.

An adjunct colleage is from Germany, and the other week I bumped into her at a unionization reception and we really had a chance to talk and get to know each other.

For one thing, she did a degree in Catholic theology, and she says she doesn't believe in miracles or anything, but it really has influenced her to go for unionization, to make things better for everyone.

"You know," she was like, "Growing up in Germany, we were taught that capitalism is hell.  And you know what, now I am in hell, and it is!".

(She was referring to the United States, and how awful it is to its citizens, which she's talked about before.)

So checked out.

I'm so checked out of teaching right now.

Since I made the decision not to pursue any academic jobs, I just feel like I don't care anymore and like I'm going through the motions, though I still am pretty darn conscientious...  It's almost like I'm there and just want to get the class done and leave, and I'm almost certain it must show on my face, since I'm not good at hiding what I think.

I wonder if the freshmen notice.

I mentioned I wasn't pursuing any academic jobs to the prof I work with, and she said that it made sense and she's throwing in the towel and becoming a yoga teacher if nothing pans out after this post-doc.

"Academia's going the way of the dodo," she was like.

My father on Trump:

"He's one sick f*cker, that's what he is."

He then went on to specifically mention Trump's calling his daughter Ivanka sexy.

"You know, he's got a long history of this," my dad was like, going back to the topic of discrimination.

"There's supposedly tapes out there of him saying the n-word," I was like.

"Well, there you go," my dad was like.

New bar story (2 of 2): Former bar bouncer.

At a different new bar the weekend before that, I was talking with a (young) (pleasant) (bright-eyed) (white) guy who used to be a bar bouncer in the big bro neighborhood near the major baseball stadium here.

One time, he saw a guy standing in the corner of the dance floor with a pint glass three-quarters full of vomit.

"That's impressive, man, and I appreciate not having to clean up the mess, but I'm going to have to ask you to leave," he told me he told the guy.

Another time he was working on the patio, and someone got thrown through the open window from the bar.

It was a drunk customer, and another bouncer came outside and through them over the fence!

"The owners know the police," he was like, "So if there's ever any questions, the bouncer shows them how his hand got hurt from punching the guy's face, and they haul the guy off for assault."

New bar story (1 of 2): Cuban immigrant.

The other week when I was at a bar in a Cuban restaurant, I talked a bit with the owner before I left.

He came to the U.S. in 2003 via Mexico.

Basically, he said bye to his family, took a plane to Mexico City, hopped a bus to the U.S. border, and then went up to a border guard and claimed political refugee status, and then gave them his various IDs to prove it.

They registered him and asked him where his family was, and he told them the name of an uncle in the city where we live, and he's been here ever since.

Momentary hammock horror.

I get home at like 2am and go to get my hammock off the back fire escape, and it's not there.

"Some motherfuckers stole my hammock," I think, and I suddenly realize it's expensive and I shouldn't have hung it out so blithely to dry after boiling it against bed bugs, it was a sitting duck for the heroin addicts who live here and there in the neighborhood.

As I stand there drunkenly and then start looking around the yard, I'm filled with horror on where I could sleep that night to avoid being bitten up by bed bugs, or to avoid having to lie in my current bed, which has some diatomaceous earth lying out on it, since some had fallen onto it simply weeks ago back when I was applying it elsewhere in the room.

Fortunately, I think to look in the yard next door, and I can see my hammock lying among some weeds, and I realize that when a quick storm came through, a gust of wind must have detached it and carried it off the fire escape.

The front gate to the next yard is unlatched, so I go get the hammock and shake it out, and then I go home and re-hang it and get in bed.

As I lie there and stretch, I find like 3 burrs attached to the nylon.

The horror of moving when you have bed bugs.

So, it's an unbelievable pain to move apartments when you have bed bugs.

Since I don't have money for pesticides, I have to cleanse all my stuff to make sure I don't take any bed bugs or eggs with me.

For clothes, I can wash and put them directly into clean garbage bags that are rubberbanded, and spray them on the outside with rubbing alcohol in the off chance that any bugs or eggs are on the plastic.

For furniture etc., I can spray them down thoroughly with rubbing alcohol till it drips off, since that should kill bed bugs on contact as well as dry out any eggs.

With personal possessions like books, however, it gets trickier.

Bed bugs and eggs will die if they're below 0 degrees (Fahrenheit!) for 4 days straight, or above 120 degrees for 90 minutes.

Or, newly hatched bed bugs will die in 3-4 months without food, and adults after a year.

So, I bought 2 plastic bins at Target, along with a bunch of black Halloween napkins.  I taped up the black napkins on the sides of the bins, loaded some books in, and put it out on the back fire escape where the bins will be in direct sunlight; ideally, as I've read, on very hot days the heat will be trapped if the bin is in direct sunlight, and the internal temp will reach above 120 for at least 90 minutes.

I also got a thermometer and put it in the bin where I can see it without opening, but the weather's been cool and cloudy, so the temp in the bin hasn't been more than 10-12 degrees above the air temp.

I guess if there's not enough hot and sunny days before I move, I can always get seal-tight bins and keep them in my new apartment and freeze or heat the stuff as weather allows over the next year, or just not open the seal tight bins for a year until all the bugs starve and I'm safe again to use those possessions.

Dreams (2 of 2): Plague.

The other week I dreamt –

I wake up and look over to my right, and there’s a (blonde) (male) (undergraduate) library coworker who I've known for like a year and he's my roommate and he’s getting up out of bed, and he’s wearing a t-shirt and boxers and is groggy, and he’s lifting the leg of his boxers and looking at his thigh and there’s just welt after welt after welt in big clusters from bed bug bites, and I feel sorry for him.

Dreams (1 of 2): Contact.

The other week I dreamt –

I open up my email inbox, and there’s an email from a friend who I hadn’t heard from pretty much all summer.

. . .

The next day, I got an actual email from her, in reality!

I can’t remember the date, if she sent it on that actual day after my dream, or a few days prior, and I was only actually checking my email that day.

Crazy night of celebrating finishing my dissertation.

It was multiple multiple $7 martinis, then a club night till 4am, and a lot of people came out, including my one (Asian-Canadian) friend, my one art school colleague who wears women’s clothes, and my one language coordinator friend.

The next day I woke up, and on my cell there was this text message at 3:44am from a number with no linked contact, and the message simply said:

Suck

. . .

New library job.

So, my one library job ended, and I’m starting up working for the shelving department in the basement of the library.

On my very first day of work, they pointed out this one very tall cart with five shelves where books are preliminarily shelved per library floor before they’re preliminarily shelved in a more ordered manner per library floor before finally being put onto a cart to be taken out and reshelved.

“This is what we call a supertruck,” my one supervisor was like.

Later, as I was doing preliminary shelving, I could see all of these books from my dissertation that I’d been returning whenever I came into campus, tucked here and there among all the other books people had been returning.

A day in my neighborhood.

I sit in my dining room, and I hear ice cream truck music.

First it’s “Clementine,” then it’s the “Theme from Love Story” again, and as I glance out the window, it’s a Mexican paleta vendor, likely the same one who I had heard playing the “Theme from Love Story” the last time around.

Then, the music stops.

Later, I go stroll up on an errand, and see a (black) (druggie-looking) guy out in front of a building where I hear there’ll be a one bedroom available.

He tells me he’s looking to move out because of the roaches, which are just everywhere and caused the people who just moved out to move out.

“Sometimes I go in the hallway,” he was like, “And it be like stepping on Cheerios.”

Later, after my errand, I go walk up to go see another apartment, and as I walk down a side street, there’s a little (Asian) kid hanging out of a building’s front window and his mom is saying something to him in Chinese from out of view, and the smell of homemade Chinese food is just pouring out the window and open door and onto the sidewalk, it smells like the inside of a Szechuan restaurant, only out on the sidewalk.

Messed up reaction to bedbug bites.

So, a few weeks ago after I thought the bedbugs were gone since I didn't get any bites for a week, I woke up with 9 bites, and some of them swelled up and itched horribly.

So, I kept thinking to myself, "They're body trials," like my one art school colleague who wears women's clothes had said, when he said it was like I was some weird Catholic saint because of all the welts and scabs from itching and stuff.

Oddly, though, since I've been reading books by Mother Angelica, that line of thinking quickly segued into a type of thinking that I like to call "God as giver of pain," since facing difficulties as trials to improve character can lead you to think of the difficulties themselves as providential.

"God must love me to make me suffer like this," I thought to myself, after setting down the Mother Angelica book and feeling these huge itchy welts on my back, buttocks, and thighs.

"Jedi mind games."

One of the many ways that tenured professors are appalling is something that came up with my committee in the very last stage of my dissertation:

Sometimes, they don't keep basic track of the project across interactions, and instead just "shoot from the hip" half-formed and sometimes even ill-grounded thoughts like everything that dribbles out of their lips are these great pearls of wisdom to help you through to dissertation completion, even when the thoughts are simply bizarre or are even moving in a different direction from what they said as recently as a week ago.

And, even if the comments are unfeasible, you can't necessarily interact, since it's not really about the dissertation or the project, but it's about the professors' sense of superiority, though they don't think so since they've absorbed the message of the system so well.

So, even though our culture thinks these people are super smart and super critical, they can actually be appallingly lacking in self-reflection, and so you have to nod or act gingerly, and on top of all that pull "Jedi mind games" to get them to say the dissertation is done.

For example, a prof I know recommended that I send my complete draft out in the required final formatting done to a "T", because the committee would unconsciously react to the official-looking formatting with less feedback.

Tenured professors are just ridiculous, they're so self-absorbed.  They deserve academic freedom, but they don't deserve lifetime jobs, since it results in absolutely absurd behavior like this.

I no longer cry when I hear about universities shutting departments.

Maybe a few nice folks are washed up in their late 40s or even 50s without a good springboard to other careers, but most of them are assholes who deserve to see hard knocks.

This kind of behavior simply wouldn't fly in other sectors, as a friend of mine who's a psychology researcher now going back into academia pointed out.

"You can't keep track of the major direction of a multi-year project?", he was like.  "Give me a break."

An approach to perverts.

My one art school colleague who dresses in women's clothes really, really hates perverted people who just want you to play a script, and he especially detests people who expose themselves in public, like this one guy he saw by the lake this summer, this (old) (white) guy in very tight shorts that showed his junk, and who was sitting with his legs open for hours on this bench, so people would see his shit as he was lolling about and feel uncomfortable for noticing.

"That's what he got off on," my one colleague was like, "Causing people to feel weird that way.  He set them up to see, but if they saw, they would think he didn't know and would feel uncomfortable."

So, he did what he always does in those situations, he charged right up to the guy and and was like, "I see what you're doing, I see what you're doing, how about you just whip it out?!?!".

He says when you make what they're doing explicit like that, perverts always get scared and leave, which this guy did, jumping up and acting indignant like he didn't understand what my friend was saying, but blanching and choosing to leave anyways.

"It's funny, I forgot this is a big city sometimes," I was like.

A compliment to millennials.

Millennials are really, really awesome at identifying agendas present in communications.

I had heard Larry Lessig say this years ago, and he attributed it to growing up in the internet age without a dependably objective mainstream press.

I recently saw an instance of this at my school, and their astuteness was impressive.

On the other hand, I remember once this summer or the last talking with my parents about climate change, and they had a hard time grasping how a politically-aligned thinktank could sow misinformation in a pretty major national newspaper.

"But the study said...", they kept saying.

No source critical perspective at all.

And, it was a climate change doubter talking point meant to slow a transition away from carbon by inflating difficulties, and it reeled my dad in even though he has 2 science degrees and believes in climate change and decarbonization!

That conversation was quite shocking, because it made me realize how out-of-it older generations can be.

Odd condolences card to a former student's parents.

One of my art school students from my sex class this past term died in a very very tragic biking accident this past month, as I found out from an email sent out by the school to everyone.

I got her parents' address to send a note, but it was tough to write.

I think she was a lesbian who was experimenting with identity and was just beginning to explore trans* stuff, and she had very tentatively said the pronoun "they / them / theirs" when I asked for pronouns the first day of class, though she had a clearly female name...

All in all, it seemed like a first, gingerly step towards trying some of this genderqueer shit that's floating around nowadays.

Towards the end of class, though, she had a lightbulb go off from reading a primary source, how self-hating your gayness might make you go trans*, and I had wondered at the time where that realization would take her in life.

It was just a comment on a line in one primary source, but you could tell she really noticed herself in the text, and it seemed like some kind of breakthrough in the opposite direction from the pronoun experimentation.

Anyhow, as I wrote the card, I tried just to use her name and avoid pronouns altogether, but eventually that got too hard and I ended up just segueing into "she / her / her".

I honestly have no idea what pronouns she used with her parents, and if they'll call me out for not using "they / them / theirs" with their kid, or if on the other hand if I did that, would it be like a knife twisted in their heart, because this nice condolences card would always be a reminder of how the trans* cult took their daughter away.

A happening on the commute to school (2 of 2): Very minor bike fall.

The other week, I was biking in to school, and as I was going over the overpass over the highway past the subway stop, my book bag shifted and burst open and all these books that I was taking in to school to return started spilling out, so I slowed down and edged my bike over, and then as I swerved to avoid biking over a falling book I ended up gently falling over onto the (at that place on the street greatly elevated) sidewalk.

Immediately, I got up and started gathering my stuff, and I hear someone shouting from across the street, "Are you okay?", and I turn and look and it's a (middle-aged) (black) (male) driver stopped in traffic, who had rolled his window down to call and check on me.

I was like, "Yeah, thanks for asking!", and I gave a wave and a thumbs up.

Then, this (black) (teenaged) girl on the sidewalk stops and starts to kneel down and pick up my books, and I have to be all like, "Oh, thank you so much, but I'm good," and she smiles and nods pleasantly and goes on her way.

Can't people be nice sometimes?

A happening on the commute to school (1 of 2): Rain.

The other week, as I bike in to school, I cross 38th St., and suddenly everything is wet.

At that point I realize that the dark clouds just to the south a bit earlier in the day were actually rain, and that the rain clouds must have passed through only on the southern half of my commuting route.

Odd gym lock coincidence:

I go to the gym at school, and I get a lock with the combination 2 - 32 - 2.

The next time I go to the gym, I get a lock, and as I'm walking up the stairs towards the locker room, I start unlocking it, and I notice again that it's 2 - 32 - 2, and I see a former (black) (female) (undergrad) student of mine walking towards me, and I'm like, "You know what's weird?", and I then I tell them about how I got a lock with the same combination two times in a row.

Then, the very next time I go to the gym, I get 2 - 32 - 2 a third time!

It was only the next time after that that I finally got a different combination.

Biking sight:

As I bike home late at night through a quiet (African-American) neighborhood, a (fat) (late middle-aged) (black) man is sitting out in front of a retirement / disabilities home in a motorized wheelchair on the sidewalk on my side of the street.

It's lightly raining, and I silently nod hello to him, and he does the same back.

We're the only two people around.

Anecdote of my one art school colleague who wears women's clothes:

Back in the 90s, he and a friend were having lunch at the edge of this one park in Manhattan, and his dad was going to meet them there, and out of the corner of his eye he sees his dad, who's a police officer, circling the edge of the park.

Next thing he knows, his dad sees that he sees him and cups his hands to his mouth and bellows up the street to him, "HEY, WHERE DID ALL THE JUNKIES AND HOOKERS GO?!?".

"You know," my one art school colleague was like, "New York City really did change fast, just like that."

Two comments of my one art school colleague who wears women's clothes:

1) After we talked about my bedbugs and the effects of living in what he calls "the bug house", I mentioned that I get painful welts that I often scratch the skin off of to get relief, to the point where I have tons of unsightly ass scabs, and he was like, "My G-d, you're like a freaky Catholic saint with body trials!  You're like some freaky Magyar saint."

2) After talking about my successfully opening up a government investigation into discrimination at the art school, he began discussing the issue in terms bordering on a personality conflict, a common phenomenon among academics and one where I'm fearful about the consequences, so I made sure to gently point out that the step was serious and was taken in order to ward off any negative future consequences from the actions of malfeasant staff.

"Oh, I know!", he was like.  "I get you, you're like a 60s nun."

Beautiful sight at the beach:

The waves are huge, and in the troughs in between every wave, in one place right along the rocks the water can get so low because the bottom is so high, that the sand gets kicked up there and swirled around in all the waves that go by right before they crash onto the shore.

A disturbing dream of bedbugs:

The other week I dreamt-

I wake up in my hammock, and there on my bare left pectoral right above my nipple just starting to form are three bites in a slight horizontal row verging on diagonal going up towards my neck, with the bites just starting to rise and the skin getting pink beneath them.

I'm horrified, because I thought I had thoroughly boiled the hammock the night before.

. . .

(When I actually did wake up, I had no bedbug bites at all.)

A positive dream, for a change:

The other week, I dreamt -

I open up my mailbox, and there in it are 3 new issues of all the magazines I subscribe to, Rolling Stone, National Catholic Reporter, and GAMES World of Puzzles.

At seeing this, I'm very surprised, and pleased.

A tale of Long Island.

The other week - actually, the same night I heard the stories about the two trans*women I know from clubbing - I was talking at a hotel bar with 2 New York businessmen who were in town to sell television ad time for extreme sporting events.

We ended up talking a lot about "What's up with Bruce Jenner?", and I think it made their night, and it brought a lot out of them.

One mentioned that on Long Island, there's a lot of stripmall gyms for musclebound Guidos, and there's always saunas where the really muscly guys just hang out with towels on after workouts.

"It's not totally like this, but there's a gay strain in there, too, I think," the one businessman was like, the younger of the two.

Two stories of trans*women I know from clubbing.

The other week I was getting pretty blitzed on a weeknight at one of the only 4am bars downtown, and this (part Moroccan) IT worker drunkenly confessed to me that he's interested in trans*women.

"There's this club...", he was like.

"[Name of club]?", I was like, mentioning the name of the late night club I sometimes go to.

"Yeah, that's it!", he was like, and he then told me that a couple times he's hooked up with a couple trans*women from there.

"There's this one really pretty one who's kind of nice...", he was like.

"You mean [Female first name]?", I was like.

"Yeah, that's her!", he was like, and he then explained that unlike other trans*women there, she didn't try to sell herself as soon as you started talking to her, and she came back to his apartment downtown to socialize, though after her talking about wanting "to party" and him not giving her any cocaine, she left.

"We didn't hook up or anything," he was like, and then he said that he also didn't hook up with the one other trans*women he had brought back from the club one time, the only other one who was kind of nice.

You mean [Female first name]?", I was like.  "The one who's always packed into a short dress and has big hair and a lot of makeup?".

"Yeah!", he was like.  "I took her home and we made out for a while, but I had to stop, the smell was so bad."

Then, he was like, "I don't get it, you spend all that time on your hair and makeup, and you forget to wash?".

Report of a Barbra Streisand concert.

The one usher I know from the summer music festival downtown had been to a Barbra Streisand concert with her daughter, and the next time I saw her she gave me a report.

The first thing she noted was how many cracks Streisand had made about Trump and Republicans.

"I had been wondering if she'd do that!", I said straightaway, and I mentioned that I had read an article that said she was putting herself out there for Hillary.

"Most people didn't mind," my one friend the usher said.  "But, I was sitting near some Republicans, and they kept yelling, 'Shut up and sing!'".

(I found that reaction very telling, it's a very instrumental mentality where it's like, "I paid my money so do what I want!".)

She also said she later found out that some of her other friends went and were sitting in a different part of the stadium, and some Republicans near them were booing.

"But there were so few of them," she was like, "It's not like she could hear those reactions on stage."

New stuff by my house:

The tree on the little piece of earth jutting out by the driveway just west of my apartment building that's technically the neighboring garage's had gotten cut down last year for some reason, maybe because it was a bit too big and would interfere with trucks coming and going from the garage...

But, by this summer's end, the tree is still alive, and had shot forth all these tiny branches, and now looks like a healthy bush.

I noticed that the other day when I was opening my front window in my living room for air.

Comment to a (younger middle-aged) (black) (female) Walgreen's cashier...

...who asks me "how I'm doing" as I put a small premade Italian sandwich and a pack of dark chocolate Reese's peanut butter cups on the counter like 10:30pm on a weeknight:

"Great, I've had a couple beers, in case you can't tell from this."

At that, I gestured to the food I was buying, and she laughed.

Dream of a zit:

The other week I dreamt:

I look at my arm, and notice that a piece of skin the size of a quarter is puckered out a bit almost like a tire turned inside out, and across the surface is a dull slightly white color like dried vanilla frosting on a cupcake.

I then realize it's a giant zit that I forgot to pop, and so I take my fingers and push it out from underneath, but instead of a big pop with oil and puss squirting out, the consistency is like frosting and it just kind of oozes out while maintaining its shape, almost like frosting coming out of the tip of a large tube.

. . .

(The beginning of this dream was probably me looking at the remains of my wart, since the skin had been eaten down away from the edges of it, leaving a formation much like a tire turned inside out, I had thought at the time.)

Observation of a tenure-track prof at a state school:

The other week at a concert downtown I was talking with the opera professor friend of a (Russian) writer friend I sometimes catch music with, and I mentioned to him that I was finishing dissertation but not pursuing any academic jobs because the sector was "unstable" and it just didn't make sense any more.

"Yes," he was like, "The sector is very unstable."

He didn't elaborate, but my hunch is that he meant in terms of state budget cuts, liquidation of quality jobs to gigwork, and the amount of competition for every single job out there.

It's weird to think that I've been set on a path forever and have done everything I've needed to do to set myself up for jobs, but when you take a step back and look at the big picture, attempting to pursue this path is just too uncertain for someone with nothing to fall back on, and the consequences too severe and worsening for every year I couldn't get good employment...

That's in addition to the fact that a lot of departments and positions are being closed right now, and there's growing indications that tenured profs are getting busted with salary and forced into teaching higher amounts of classes, since they're sheeply people with low job mobility who are captive to admin.

Plus, a significant minority of millennials are assholes, and I have better things to do with my time.

Another dream of decay:

Every time I'm in my kitchen, I smell the slight sickly sweet smell of mold, and I trace it to the fruit that I keep on a dish on the top of my fridge, and when I go look there, I overturn a grapefruit only to discover that the bottom half is a solid mat of white-grey mold, everywhere I couldn't see when I first glanced at it.

. . .

(This happened in real life, and then I had a dream of the same thing at least 3 or 4 times.)

New Britishcism:

"First past the post."

It's a phrase used where Americans would say "winner takes all", it seems.

The other week my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend (the brother of the brother-sister pair I'm friends with) used that phrase when he was telling me about an interesting article on representative systems that he had read.

British people are ridiculous.

"First past the post."

Insect invasion.

I'm astonished by the amount of insects in my apartment this summer:

- a few earwigs I've seen late at night.

- a couple pillbugs on the walls.

- one night when I got up late to go to the bathroom, a cockroach on the kitchen floor.

- a few ants (including one carrying an egg) scurrying across my kitchen table (these might have gotten into my backpack when I was at the beach, since my backpack was on the chair next to where they appeared on the table).

- a couple carpet beetles I caught on my pillow when I was on the lookout for bedbugs.

- bedbugs (which I can't see, but whose droppings I find).

What's astonishing, too, is that I have diatomaceous earth laid out pretty much everywhere because of the bedbugs, so you think that would kill all of the crawling insects pretty quickly...

Why would they all be in my apartment now?

Factoid on the British high school curriculum...

...that my one (half Sudanese) (half British) friend (the brother of the brother-sister pair) went through:

They had a British lit class, but no American lit class!

In my (American) high school, I had both.

Insights into my manipulation of people in unionization conversations.

So, a couple months ago two friends of mine - my one art school colleague who wears women's clothes, and my one library circulation desk supervisor friend - both recommended this self-help book by the head of a nationally-known security company, when we were all out talking and I was saying I needed a self-help book to read in order to complete this reading challenge from my local public library.

As it turns out, I *love* the book, and devoured it in a week once I finally got around to reading it.

The purported topic of the book is about protecting yourself from violence, but it's really more about protecting yourself from manipulation.

What got me is that I already do the first 2 things the author warns against, whenever I cold-call art school colleagues for unionization:

1) I always say "we" to create a group sense between me and the cold-called colleague and so subtly increase rapport.

2) I always give a "bullshit story" on how I'm checking around to see if anyone has touched base with them (though I've done my research and know that no-one has).

Interestingly, I also realized that I *don't* do the 3rd thing the author says to be on the lookout for, the insertion of negative stereotypes into conversation in order to get people to react against them and in the desired behavioral direction.

For example, a truly manipulative organizer would be like, "You know, it'd be great if you had a second to talk, you'd be surprised to know how many people don't want to find out how the school *really* works" (= an incentive for them to not be like those people, and keep up the conversation).

So, I'm going to do that in the future!

Really, I'm just reverse-engineering his cautionary tips on manipulative people, in order to figure out how to be more manipulative.

Acquaintance's prediction on Trump.

A few weeks ago, I was at a fundraising party for a friend's film, and I was talking with a friend of another one of his friends, this (middle-aged) (white) (female) software developer from Michigan.

She says that the one thing about Trump that's constant is his narrative of himself as a winner, so she sees 2 options going forward if he continues to lose, especially if he continues to lose big:

1) He keeps trying to push this "the election is rigged!" conspiracy stuff.

2) He has a breakdown.

The one thing that he won't do, she says, is confront the fact that he's a loser.

Hammock musing.

The other week when I got up on a lazy morning, for some reason I was looking at my feet and toes as I lay stretched out in the hammock in my bedroom.

I got to thinking that feet and toes are like evolved hands, and might have once looked something like the feet of chimpanzees, with flexible grasping fingers, especially the big toe as thumb.

That made me think that to state humans' relationship with apes was super transgressive, back in its day, and trippy.

My dad the other week on Trump:

"That guy's just a f*cking asshole, he's not wrapped tight."

And:

"I can't see any good coming out of him."

Courteous bike rider.

The other morning on my ride in to school, the light was just starting to turn yellow as I biked quickly across one lane of a boulevard and then the same on the other, but as I was going through the second lane and the light was just turning red, I could see a(n older) (gray-haired) (African-American) woman on a powder blue granny bike start to brake to a halt crossways to my right, to let me go through, rather than keep up her pace and just cruise through the intersection as the light changed for her.

"Sorry!", I yelled out as I biked by, right through where she should have been.

"Oh, it's no problem!", she called out, pleasantly.

My plastic tupperware died.

I've had these high-grade, lightweight-but-microwaveable tupperware containers forever, but like all 3 of my smaller ones have died.

The 2 round ones got cracked lids, and the 1 square box-y one got a bit cracked from me carrying my lunch in it in my backpack, and then lately the rubber rim holding the clear plastic lid in place got torn off a bit, to the point where the lid fell out of it and can't be reattached.

I've gotten a lot of good use out of them, but it bothers me that this heavy-duty plastic will now be headed for the dump.

I'm still using the 2 round ones, though.

7-11 bullshit:

Like 1;30am after I head out from a bar, I drop into a 7-11 overwhelmed with drunken people, to get 3 taquitos before I go hit the subway home.

As I wait in this long interminable line for the one counterperson, a few people walk in, go stand in front of the taquito and hotdog warmer, and some other counterperson comes out of the back and they say something and she gives them the last 3 taquitos, the very same 3 taquitos which I had been waiting for.

"Oh my G-d," I was like to the person in front of me, and I told her what had happened.

"That's some bullshit," she was like.

I then put back on the shelf the pack of gum I was going to get so I could have a piece so my breath didn't smell like taquitos after I ate them, and I just left the store without buying anything.

Three neighborhood sights.

The other week I ran some errands mid-day, and on my walk home there was...:

1)  Some people rebuilding a shuttered house that had been foreclosed on a long time now, and the new building permit in the window said that the building was being converted to a 2-flat from an illegal 3-flat.

2)  A sunken yard covered in gravel with animal statues of dogs and turtles and squirrels and whatnot perfectly spaced all over and across the yard, all about one foot from one other in a kind of a grid pattern.

3) Some (Mexican) workers mixing up cement or something and hauling it up to the roof of a three-story block-y building using a pulley installed off the roof edge, and a (young) guy in a purple T-shirt  attaching the bucket to the rope and pulling it up gave out a wordless yell to signal to someone on the roof that a new bucket was up there and he should come get it.

Observation of my one neighbor who was traumatized by Hurricane Katrina.

My one neighbor from New Orleans had been opening up to me about her anxiety after living through Hurricane Katrina when we hung out the other month, so the next time I saw her, I gently brought up with her what she had said to me, to just let her know that she had been heard and to let her know that always has someone to talk to.

"It's not that bad," she was like, "It just comes and goes, and sometimes something just triggers it."

Oddly enough, she said, one of those times was when her beat-up car that she really liked got towed by the city.

"It was like this feeling, that every time that I have something I like, it just gets taken away from me," she said.

Detail from my one language coordinator friend.

My one friend who coordinates languages at the school I go to is quite the free spirit.

She's very mellow, but sings jazz.

And, every once in a while she just drops a detail like, "The last time I was in Paris, I meant to look up that one drummer who I used to date, but I was dating someone else at the time and I thought I probably shouldn't."

A sight the other weekend at a lakefront park:

The other weekend out at a beautiful lakefront park here in the city, tons of people of all ages and races and nationalities are out walking, and then there's three (middle-aged) (South Asian) women in hijabs, one in a little amigo since she has some mobility disability.

They're just strolling along and wheeling along, all just part of the crowd.