Dinner.

Last night I went to a lecture on Greco-Roman monotheism by a visiting French prof and got in on the free Italian dinner downtown afterwards. She wore lots of rings, and had long sweeping curly hair that was a mix of gray and black, kind of like Judy Collins.

I was on the opposite side of the table, and at the end of the night when someone got up to smoke, she called across the table to me and patted the seat next to her, which really impressed me - she made sure to talk to all of the students there that evening, which was simply wonderful. We talked quite a bit, and it turned out that she was Jewish and had always been interested in studying Judaism and Early Christianity, but long ago had made a decision to start studying topics related to those religions from the primary basis of issues in Greek and Roman religion, since she felt that if she started studying them directly she'd become too involved and it just wouldn't be good for her or conducive to good scholarship.

Later, since I had mentioned who my advisor was and she said she was going to meet with her tomorrow because they've been working from opposite ends on this one Christian inscription that uses pagan motifs, she asked me if she checks e-mail often, or if she should try to call her, since they still had to confirm a time.

"Oh, just e-mail her," I was like, "She's on e-mail all the time. I e-mailed her an article a friend forwarded me about Obama last night, and when I met with her today, she had already had a chance to read it and mentioned it to me."

"Oh!", she was like, "Zat is wonderful, my students, zey never send me articles about Sarko-zee!", and she laughed wistfully.