Odds and Ends.

1) I studied a bit at a coffee shop run by this Syrian engineer in the north part of the city yesterday evening. This older boozy professional woman (white) was there chit-chatting with him - she seemed to be a regular - and they were talking about some wedding he'd recently been to. She asked if he kept a handkerchief in his back pocket in case he saw some woman he was interested in, "to wrap her up (i.e., veil her) and take her home".

She also talked about how her old Jewish boss and her used to go get drunk at this restaurant down the block that's not there any more, and he used to steal silverware and dishware he liked because the manager would let him get away with it and write it off as breakage and whatnot, and then one time he was really really drunk and took a dessert cart and loaded it up with shit and took off down the street back to his apartment, just wheeling it down the major arterial road in the city that's right there.

2)I was talking with my one (married) (black) dean and her assistant about Facebook, and she said a (black?) friend of her sister's wrote and tried to friend her and was like, "You have a beautiful picture, let's be friends," and she was like, "Here's this guy I don't even know and he's sleazy, so I'm going to let him into my personal life, right?", and I was like, "So what did you write back, 'Still got it, but no thanks'?", which she loved.

3) The one (black) (lesbian?) committee head liked my one joke a while ago when she asked me to come to a graduate council meeting to vouch for how the committee's done a good job gathering feedback (which I think is true), and since student-administration relations can be hostile right now, I said I would grab the tomatoes out of mid-air as they were hurled at her.

Anyhow, today I apologize for my recent (successful) spate of memos to the committee, and was like, "Sorry if I've been a bit intense," and she, as she was putting on her leather jacket, was like, "No worries, I'm pretty intense too," and I was like, "And that's even before you put on your leather jacket," which she loved.