Helping the world economy.

Whenever I'm in a store and I have a choice of products, I think to myself, "Which place needs my money the most?"

Thus, I buy Michigan apples instead of Washington, for example.

The other day I was at a wine store and chose Spanish and Greek wines.

Hebrew.

In all the languages I've studied, I can look at a word and read it all at once.

If I look at a page of Greek, for example, the words jump out at me.

Hebrew I can't, though. I really have to look letter by letter and at all the dots, and it takes me *forever* to read it. I don't really have a facility!

Changed Thanksgiving plans.

So, I had checked with my one (light-skinned black) friend from Arkansas about Thanksgiving plans, and since she wasn't going home - that was unclear at one point, whether she was - she invited me over to have Thanksgiving with her and her roommates.

Since my one lawyer friend from Missouri is also in town and has wanted to hang out with her more, too, she asked for an invitation, so I got one, and everything was set to go.

Then, my one (light-skinned black) friend from Arkansas made up with her boyfriend and is now going to his parents' for a long weekend! But she texted that we could still have Thanksgiving with her roommates.

She is notoriously flaky, so I just roll with it, and laugh... It's still unclear what's happening.

Addendum.

I forgot -

The other day at lunch with a graduate student, (fat) people came up, and the one graduate student was like, "Okay, so there's a genetic argument for obesity, I understand that, so why weren't there so many fat people in the past?"

He then said that (fat) people should get more exercise or stop eating so much crap.

Bus stop thoughts.

The bus route to the subway goes through some poorer (black) neighborhoods, and since there's bus-stops pretty much every half block, the bus can stop a *lot*, and get caught at lights a *lot*.

Some of these women who get on are pretty big, too, and I always think of what my mom says, "How can people let themselves get that big?" They take up 2 seats, whether on the bus or on the subway, and no one can sit next to them!!!

Anyhow, I just think the city transportation authority should take out every other bus stop. The bus would be faster, and these (fat) women would get more exercise, and everyone would win.

I told that thought to my one lawyer friend from Missouri, and she said that she's always thought they should charge (fat) people more for health insurance plans.

Woman on subway platform.

The other evening I was going home and after getting off the bus was waiting on the subway platform, when this frantic looking (black) woman who was kind of squat with a wide ass gets off, and from looking at her I just knew she was African.

So, I ask her if she's okay, and it turns out that she had slept through downtown, and missed her connection to get out to the airport, and now had to go northbound to get it.

She had planned to get to the airport 45-60 minutes beforehand...

I asked her where she was from, and she was from Benin.

I then started to say something, and she said that her English wasn't good, so I switched to French to try to explain to her that she would definitely miss her flight but there might be a cheap late-night train that could maybe take her to the city, and I realized I couldn't.

My French is gone! Or, as they say, it is -

FINI!!!!

2 morning anecdotes.

1) The other morning I got on the subway, and this older hippie-looking black man with sunglasses who I sat down next to had this sheet of paper out in front of him, and there were insane squiggles all over it. I looked more closely, and they were Egyptian hieroglyphics that he was practicing writing.

2) The other morning I got out of class and was walking across campus, and this adminstrator I know was walking into work, and enthusiastically was like, "Isn't this a great morning, it's salty!", and she said how the brisk fog made her feel like it was an autumn morning on the Atlantic coast.