Last section.

My last section of the current quarter was yesterday.

I began by being like, "Guys, thanks so much for being in my section all year, and waking up so early! I was going to buy you donuts, but then I realized that you had already filled out the evaluations, so I decided to keep the ten bucks instead."

I brought up the donut theme throughout the class. When someone brought up a particularly good issue to review for the exam (but that everyone else had forgot about), I was like, "Dang, I wish I had brought donuts, so I could award them to people!", and I mimicked reaching into an open box of donuts and gracefully throwing a donut undergrad to the student.

"Or fish!", she was like, and clapped her hands together and did seal noises.

At the very end of class, too, we ended up looking at a passage that we had looked a little bit at the first day, so I ended by drawing a little circle with an arrow on the board, and was like, "Look at us, we've come full circle and learned so much. Isn't that great? Except it makes you think of all the donuts I chose not to buy you."

My poster idea: I've been thinking about it.

I'm going to make up this poster to take the Madison protest tomorrow:

EXPLOIT-O-NOMICS:
BOUGHT POLITICIANS =
BREAKS FOR BANKERS +
WORSE FOR HARD-
WORKING AMERICANS

I hope people like it.

PROTESTS: 1 comment, 1 goal.

Yesterday I ran into my one (British) friend at the library.

When he asked me how I was, I was telling him that I was following the Wisconsin protests like no other, and that I found it all very upsetting.

"I know!", he was like, "It made me realize that I'm not ready to turn in my passport quite yet."

(There's a lot that he likes about the U.S. and he freely admits to it.)

Then, he was like, "Perhaps the people in Wisconsin should get some advice from the protesters in Egypt, since they've had quite a bit of success, or so I've heard."

In any case, I'm looking to go to Madison this weekend! I have a place to stay, and am figuring out transportation!!!

** CONVERSATION RE: WISCONSIN **

I was talking with the older (black) man who works at the main library desk about what's happening in Wisconsin.

"I can believe it," he was like. "He's starting a war up there. In fact, he done started it."

He then added that if the policemen and firemen go on strike, the next thing you'll see is people going around looting and setting fires.

Sink problems.

The bathroom sink in my apartment had been clogging a bit (water would back up and it'd take a bit to drain), but then a few days ago my kitchen sink started doing that too - only the water would stand forever in the sink. I have no idea why this is happening!

Bar #8, and Samba.

The other Saturday I met friends at Bar #8, a hipster micro-brewery that used anarchy- and labor-class imagery as a consumer choice for the bourgeios (sp.?) of my generation.

The place was leaping and pleasantly full, and the microbrews were quite good. The food looked a lot better than it tasted, though; the cheese soup (which everyone but me loved) tasted like that squirt cheese from a can, and a (Brazilian) friend-of-a-friend's hamburger looked great but didn't taste that good, and these sweet potato cakes had a wonderful sauce but were themselves kind of bland.

And, the service was scattered - 3 separate people helped our party (we were at the bar) - and the wooden posts in the bar were expensively-carved forearms with clenched fists.

VERDICT: I'd buy their beer elsewhere and wouldn't be opposed to meeting friends there if they suggested it, but it's not on the top of my list to go back to.

Afterwards, we went to a Brazilian Carnaval party that was in this giant ballroom. There was a live samba band and this (Brazilian) dance leader and 3 former samba queens of the city and some other assorted dancers (in those constumes with the giant feather head-dresses!) dancing on stage before every set of the band, and sometimes out in the audience, which was mostly (Brazilian) immigrants of all ages, including one delightful older woman dressed up in a leopard-skin pant suit with a cat mask on.

The decorations were very scattered and just random Mardi Gras decorations gotten from a drugstore, but the band was awesome, with guitar and drums and even a guy playing a whistle. People just danced and danced and danced, and no-one was obnoxiously binge-drinking, and people were quite inclusive; a few times when a conga line formed, people (incl. one of the samba queens) reached out to draw me into the line once they saw me smiling and clapping my hands and enjoying the music.

Brazilians are quite nice; I'd be interested in seeing what their national culture is like.

I find it very funny that half the men have these names that sound old in English, though, like "Bruno" or "Walter".

Went to that neighborhood bar with the plywood sign again.

The other week I went to that neighborhood bar with the plywood sign again the other week.

It was "dollar draft" night, and the place was full of (Mexican)s, and there was that loud (Mexican) oom-pah music with tubas playing on the jukebox.

The bartender ("Phyllis") also had a lime out and was doing tequila shots with a Mexican woman a few seats down from me, and saying to herself, "If everyone's gonna party, I'm gonna party too."

There were little neon green plastic dishes of free Chex mix everywhere, too, and after Phyllis went to help other customers, I asked the (Mexican) woman next a few stools down for me if I could have some that were in front of her, but she pointed to it and mumbled a few things, and then pushed it down to me anyways. When I went to eat some, I realized it was wet, like someone had spilled a beer in it.

"Sor-ry," the (Mexican) woman was like, and shrugged.

So, I asked Phyllis for some more Chex mix.

"A beer fell on it or something," I was like, and so she pitched it and got me some, but then when she brought me some more, she started talking in Spanish with the woman a few seats down from me, and then was like, "Oh, that wasn't wet, Rosita just likes hot sauce on everything."

At that, the (Mexican) woman looked at me, shrugged, and was like, "Sor-ry," and Phyllis starts talking to her in Spanish, and being like, "Si quieres mas, tengo mas."

Later, Rosita put more money in the jukebox and went to dance by herself in the middle of the floor, and all the (Mexican) men were watching her and clapping, and one older guy kind of stood back with his arms folded a little too close to her...

After ten minutes I hear her yelling and slapping him and shouting in Spanish, and Phyllis runs down the bar towards them and shouts, "Get out of here, we don't need that in here!", and then she went by where Rosita had sat down, crying, to comfort her (in Spanish).

Later, before I left, when there was a pause in everything, I asked Phyllis where she had learned Spanish so good.

"Growing up on the streets," she was like.

Found: My Eraser.

I find it funny how people say I'm like an old grandmother because I do crosswords. People say they like people who are outside the box, but they really don't, they're just saying that because in the U.S. everyone has to support the counterculture (as my one Dutch friend once observed).

Anyhow, people also have made gentle fun of me (to my face!) not only because I do crosswords, but because I keep out a big pink eraser like a kindergartener has when I do them (sometimes I really f-ck puzzles up!).

But, I couldn't find that eraser for the life of me for like 3 weeks, until it turned up in the inside pocket of my overcoat; I had had my puzzle magazine rolled up in there along with my pencil and likely my eraser, and I had forgotten the eraser in there, it seems.

A new height of eccentricity?

I put unused napkins in my back pocket when I get them at restaurants, and I take them home to use them as kleenex.