Good music.

So, the other week I went to the undergrad coffee shop, and they had that one Supremes (and someone else) song "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me" playing, and after I sat down and had my lunch and went up to get some coffee, I complimented the (white) undergrad cashier girl on the music (some other Motown had followed the Supremes, then they went back to "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me").

"What great music you have!", I was like. "Is this somebody's mix tape or something?"

At that, she just looked at me.

"Or do you mix it off i-Tunes or something? Can you even do that, and burn it off a CD or something?," I was like.

"Yeah," she was, but she still looked hesitant at my mention of the CD, and when I asked her about it, she said she didn't have CDs at all, she just got music free off of the internet, since you could do that if you knew where to look, and not get many computer viruses if you were careful.

"Gotcha," I was like.

Then, I was like, "Just so you know, I was around for Napster. You heard of that?"

Post Lady Meeting.

The other week I was leaving for work and when I was leaving, the (black) post lady was in the entryway putting mail in.

"How you doing?", she was like.

"Great!", I was like, like I usually say, and she did a double-take, and stopped putting mail in the boxes, and was like, "Really?"

"Yeah," I was like, "Why not? Life is good, I'm having a good time, I'm getting a lot done, and no major problems in my life either, so why not?"

By that point I was already going out the door, and she was like, "Hey, stop, you gotta rub some of that off on me!", and she had me stand in the doorway while she rubbed my upper arm a few times like she was transferring the happiness.

"Have a good day now!", she was like.

Plywood Sign Bar (II of II): St. Paddy's Day.

On St. Paddy's Day I went in to the plywood sign bar for a drink and some free corned beef.

I don't have the weakest stomach when it comes to food, but for some reason my stomach was turning... The place was full of Mexicans getting drunk, and street people, and smelled like BO, and then in the back there was a card table set up with a crock pot full of corned beef and cabbage and potatos and carrots sitting, and next to it was a stack of paper trays and plastic silverware, and an unopened loaf of off-the-shelf rye bread.

I had 2 paper tray-fulls of corned beef and then left; I couldn't stand it any more, and just being in there made me nervous.

Plywood Sign Bar (I of II): Stories from Phyllis.

The day before St. Paddy's Day I stopped through the bar near me with the plywood sign to have a drink, and Phyllis was talking to the (old) (white) guy sitting next to me about how she was dating this guy who passed away and her little granddaughter went to the funeral, and she stood up on the prayer rail and looked into coffin, and then asked if [the guy's name] was asleep.

"No honey," Phyllis said she told her granddaughter, "He's dead now, and is with God in heaven, but you can talk with him in your prayers."

"Gramma," Phyllis says her granddaughter told her, "Don't ever become dead."

When I was leaving, I asked Phyllis if the free corned beef was happening on St. Paddy's Day at the bar. She said it was, and she was going to be bringing in chocolate cupcakes with green icing, but she wouldn't stay long because of the bartender Sharon who was working.

"You know her?", she was like.

"Yeah, she's been nice to me," I said.

"That's 'cause you're white," Phyllis said. "I've seen so many times she won't serve a black customer, or a Mexican customer, or no-one," and she talked about this regular (black) customer who was coming in for years and would leave a $5 bill for a tip always, whether he had one drink or four, and he would put it out and just set it on the bar when he had his 1st drink.

"I've been in here and seen him wait so many times," she was like, "And she does that to the Mexicans too. That's just not right, I think that's just not right. I love everyone! I say, the more people the merrier, let everyone come in, bring 'em on!"

Life in the U.S.

My one (British) friend was saying that everyone's been telling him to see "The King's Speech", and then he started saying it's funny how people have misconceptions about other countries because of the portrayal in movies, and how he's met Americans who think that all British people live in manor houses.

"Really?", I was like, "Because I think of England as a post-industrial dystopia where people live in small rundown houses wedged together on dingy streets and are trapped in low-wage jobs for which the rest of society looks down on them mercilessly."

"Exactly!", he was like, "That's the England I love."

He was also saying that his biggest misconception about America when he 1st came here was that everyone drove fast, which he assumed happened from all the car chases on television.

My recent sad thought: Printing.

It's kind of sad that Constantinople fell before printing really got started at a massive scale...

Just think how many more Greek manuscripts we'd have if it had held on another 50-75 years!

Though I will never share this thought with Europeans, for fear that they would use it as yet another reason to hate Turks.

Sink fixed, but nauseating results.

They had to take out the pipe from below my kitchen sink to repair it. I don't know what the problem was, but when he was setting out to start looking at the problem and he noted the coffee grounds floating in the backed-up sink, the apt. building maintenance man told me not to put any coffee grounds down the sink anymore (? - I've done that at all the other apartments I've lived, and never had any problem).

So, now I throw coffee grounds into the toilet, like my maintenance man told me.

Only, it makes me sick for some reason, to flip open the toilet lid and knock in against the rim the block of grounds from my stove-top espresso maker, and then see this big block of grounds just floating and dissolving in the toilet...