3 (black) people (2 of 3): Losing Weight.

The other morning I was going in on the subway and there was this *huge* (young 20s) (light-skinned black) guy in a security outfit going in to work at 7:30am...

He was with someone (black) he knew, and was talking about how he had signed up for a personal trainer and was going to buy a swimsuit, because he was working up to losing weight and once he stopped being out of breath he would start swimming.

Later, he picked up his lunch to get off the train, and there was a 2-liter bottle of grape soda in it.

His bag brushed against something and grains like sugar started pouring out, and someone pointed that out to him, and he said it was salt.

3 (black) people (1 of 3): Starbucks.

The weekend of Thanksgiving I popped into the Starbucks on Sunday to use internet, and the (black) woman (late 30s, chunky) who I always chit-chat with refilled my thermos of coffee for free, and was like, "Happy Thanksgiving," so I put my dollar in the tip jar.

And that's despite the fact that we don't have an exceptional conversational vibe, I think.

Variations.

The one thing that gets me about Hebrew is how many variations you have to remember for each paradigm. They're endless and discouraging!

I think the trick is to memorize them and keep revisiting them and then see them at use in texts when you read, so you don't forget them.

All-American Muslims.

I sent the link for the new TLC reality show "All-American Muslims" (which follows 5 families in Dearborn, Michigan) to my one (Muslim) British friend and several other people with this message:

I hear that some of the Muslims on the show are so all-American, they even beat up other Muslims!

. . .

Bar #s.

I'm not very good at math, and I don't have a calculator at home.

Sometimes, I total up the bars I've been to (luckily my notebook fits 25 on a page, so it's easy to count), and then think about how many days I have left till it's a whole year, and if I can hit 500 bars by then.

If I do the long-division on days left and then figure out bars per day and times it by 7, I have to go to like 12 a week, which is impossible.

If I think ahead to the end of February, though, and think about "10 bars per 7 day period", it seems like I'll make it and then some.

Somehow I'm doing the math wrong, I think with the 1st figures, but I don't quite know how.

A memory of San Francisco: Pigeons.

Coming back from Golden Gate Park and the ocean, I hopped off the bus like a 10-minute walk from my hotel, so I could walk through a different part of the city.

As it turns out, it was a very run-down area full of mentally-ill and homeless people, right around the UC-Hastings School of Law campus.

As I was walking around a corner, there was this huge flock of pigeons, and this old homeless (white) woman shuffling around in a circle muttering to herself "my children, my children..."

Then, as I walk by, the pigeons start flying up and I can't see anything, and suddenly this Rottweiler being walked by a (black) dude in a leather jacket leaps out at me and gets to the end of his leash and is pulled back in mid-air, like 2 feet from my hip.

Before I realize what's going on, the dog pivots and lunges again in the opposite direction, and picks a pigeon out of the air in mid-flight, and gets it down on the ground between its paws and starts crunching it as it spasms.

At that, the (white) homeless woman stops, and this other (white) homeless guy walks up fast to the (black) guy and starts shouting, "YOU CAN'T DO THAT HERE, YOU CAN'T DO THAT HERE, THAT IS ILLEGAL IN THIS CITY, YOU CAN'T DO THAT HERE...!!!"

And at that, I just picked up my pace and kept walking away as fast as I could.

Fun with Latin!

My home-schooled high schooler has been studying like heck for the SAT II subject test.

So, to reward her for the first day after the test, we are going to have a "fun" session where we translate a Latin chant from "Evita", and different verses of the Christmas carol "Adeste fideles".

She told me many months ago that she likes Broadway and would like to read that Latin Chant from "Evita"! The Christmas carol is my idea.