Odd public transportation sight.

Like 3 weeks ago I was taking the bus through a bad (black) part of town like at 10pm at night to get to the subway, and out of nowhere, I can see up ahead this wispy little (early 20s) (white) girl walking past a fried-food place and a gas station to get to the bus stop.

When she gets on, I'm looking at her like "Where did she come from?", and I notice several (black) people doing the same thing.

She got off at the subway, and I asked her what she was doing in that part of town at this time of night.

She looked at me blankly, and I told her that not many (white) people get on the bus there, ever.

"But I live there," she was like.

"Really?", I was like. "Why?"

"I moved to [the city]," she was like, "And decided to live there."

She seemed sweet, but kind of vacant - a little bit like Luna Lovegood! - and I stopped talking, since she seemed a little bit perplexed why I was so hung up on where she lived.

I did ask if she ever had any problems, and she said that she didn't.

2 black women on public transportation.

I was talking with one mid-20s (black) woman on the bus, and it turns out that she lives near the president's house, and she says that whenever he's home, the lights go out, and if you call the electric company, they'll say they'll get to it "in the morning".

"But in the morning it don't matter!", she was like. "I don't know what they're up to."

The next day I was getting off the subway at a busy intersection where you have to cross a busy boulevard with 4 lanes of traffic in each direction, and me and a(n early 30s) black woman were waiting for a break in the traffic to cross to get to the approaching bus, and I was like, "Ok, time for the [name of the stree] Hustle! Five steps forward, a few steps back to avoid a car, five more steps forward..."

She just laughed and was like, "Right!".

Odd college biography.

This one Episcopalian priest I met with had the oddest college biography.

She went to the state's flagship campus and majored in French (and a local mop company even hired her to translate their label into French, for the Canadian market!).

But, she really enjoyed math classes, especially geometry, so she spent a ton of her electives on them.

She said at 1st professors were weirded out, since classes were mostly (male) math majors, but then they began to enjoy the 1st day of class where everyone went round the room and said their name and majors, and she was like, "French," and all the people who didn't know her's eyes would bug out.

those gosh-darn dogs.

The dog of the new neighbor across the hallway, who moved in Jan. 1st, has been barking a lot lately, esp. from like 8-9am (occasionally waking me up, if I'm home sleeping), and sometimes I hear the dog bark and whine intermittently throughout the day, sometimes as late as like 7:30pm or 8:3opm.

I'm guessing she bought a nervous breed, and she leaves the dog alone for up to 12 hours while she's off working and doing who knows what?

I called the maintenance man for the building to complain again, and got no response, but I'll have to keep calling if the problem continues. I almost wish there was some humane agency I could call to report the woman - most of all, I'm sorry for that poor nervous dog who just sits around the apt. and spazzes all day.

Yesterday morning, too, a (white) yuppie mom tied up her dog at like 7:45am and let it bark while she and her little son were inside for her to get a coffee. I opened up my window, waited for her to come out, and yelled at her that her dog woke me up. She looked surprise to get that reaction.

Bar story, w/my and my Czech literature professor friend.

The other week to celebrate doing my last Hebrew assignment, I texted my one Czech literature professor friend to find out if she wanted to meet and have a drink to celebrate, and it turns out that she was already downtown having a drink to celebrate her last day of teaching class for the quarter, so I headed down there to meet her.

We were at this casual restaurant-bar right downtown that dates from the 1950s and where everyone goes to, and we talked a lot about Nabokov before 3 business guy bro-types sat down to her left.

The one right next to her kept staring over, and struck up a conversation with her.

Somehow, he kept talking sports, and he told us what teams he liked, and then, he asked her, "So what do you follow?".

I couldn't help it, and so when she started saying the Eagles, I bust in and was like, "Oh, postmodernism, non-narrative novels, and symbolist poetry," which made her laugh really hard.

The guy, on the other hand, just looked confused.

Somehow, I also brought up the Lou Perlman boyband sex scandal at some point, which killed the conversation for a while, especially when I re-told the part about how Nick Lache's mom said that "that blowjob almost tore our family apart."

Later, the guy to my friend's left was telling us about how he and his brother went to a Red Sox game in Boston, and they had their picture taken in the dugout, since his brother was a fireman and post-game asked a cop if they could go on the field and take a picture, "as a professional courtesy."

He re-told their conversation, and was like, "I said, 'Bro, let's go down there and ask,' and he was like, 'Dude, sure.'"

Did shots with a former student.

A few weekends ago I was at the student bar near campus, and in walks this one undergraduate who had been in my section, and is now in med school at the same university.

I run into her from time to time, and she's totally a leftie who fights for women's rights and contraception, and learned about the New Testament from a debunking angle, because evangelicals had told her all this stuff about the bible and she was sure a lot of it wasn't true, but she had nothing to compare it with.

I was talking with her and her friends, so I was like, "Hey, let's do shots!", and she rolled with it and we did them.

I ended up hanging out with them more, and I found out that she is *pissed* about the birth control stuff going on.

I also found out that she went to Catholic high school growing up even though her family didn't practice, which is where her interest in religious studies got started. She said she wishes she could study a ton more of that, which is a typical response I get from people who went to Catholic high school but aren't practicing.

Somehow, a local milk company got brought up in conversation, and she warned me that the owner was a die-hard GOPer.

"I tell everyone that," she was like, and said that she remembers at her hometown in the state, the local hippie co-op would carry the milk brand and everyone would talk about how good and natural it was, and it surprised and disgusted her to find out who owned the company and that no-one seemed to know.

A friend became a stand-up comic.

I was talking with my one friend from Iowa, and for years people have been telling her she should be a stand-up comic, and finally after her (teenage) daughter told her she's "a female Louis C.K.", she went and took a stand-up comedy class.

Her instructor had a visceral dislike of her, and yet said she's been one of his most talented students...

For a timed exercise they did, they had to come up an unexpected rewrite of a punchline to a kid's joke, for example, and for the joke "Q: What's the worst ship? - A: A hardship!", she said, "Q: What's the worst ship? - A: The one where the Somali pirates rape you and send a video to your mom."

She said the guy was an ass, but she appreciated his praise more because of it; she said it made it easier to believe he meant what he said.

The night she did stand-up for the 1st time, she was all awkward and soft-spoken and kind of hunched over the microphone and spoke in her low, even voice.

Even before she said anything, people started laughing, and she was like, "Please, don't laugh; that happened enough in high school."

Afterwards, people lavished praise on her and said they had never laughed so hard, and some complimented her on her persona.

"And I had to tell them that that was actually me," she was like.

At her second stand-up night, she took 2nd place out of a contest of 25 people, and the bartender at the place told her afterwards that she had "been robbed" out of 1st.

I told her that her intelligence and her authenticity would be her assets, and if she ever developed meaningful material - e.g. about being bullied in high school, how everyone has a bully in them, etc. - she could actually move people's lives.

She said she's not sure what she's in it for, but it makes her nervous, about the laughs and worth it, and that keeps her going.

"I'm not sure that's a good thing to chase after," I was like. "Laughs can dry up, and there's nothing you can do about it. You'd be better to chase after money or ass, it's an easier goal to achieve and know when you've got it."

That worried her.