Observation of my dad:

"Every time I hear 'Opus Dei', I think of that one cartoon with the penguin, Opus."

Two morning events at the library: Feeding, hands.

After I have a heck of a time getting to work because the bikeshare rack I usually use was empty and then the next one I went to was malfunctioning, I finally get in to work, and as I'm walking around to the front door, I bump into a bibliographer I know, sitting outside with her 2 young kids.

Her husband was coming around with the car, and she had the kids with her since they had just come from an optometrist's appointment for her daughter, the older of the 2.

So, me and the bibliographer talk a bit, and meanwhile she's letting the kids get bits of fruit out of a big plastic container of cut up fruit salad, and the kids keep eating and keeping themselves occupied.

Then, all of a sudden, she's like, "[The son's first name] wants to give you some watermelon," and I look down and there's the little son holding up the lid with a bit of watermelon on it.

So, I take the watermelon and eat it, and then like a minute later, she's like, "Now [the son's first name] wants to give you some kiwi!", and there he is, holding up a piece of kiwi to me between his fingers, his arm all outstretched up towards me.

So, that time, I took it and ate it, and was like, "Mmmm, mmmm", and smiled a lot very theatrically and rubbed my tummy like I was super stoked and happy at how delicious the fruit was.

After that, he hurried up and kept giving me fruit as fast as he could, he was so amused.

Later, during my library shift, some books I was shelving were leatherbound and absolutely falling apart, and they stained my hands black.

Social work interview of a friend.

My one friend the library supervisor had an interview the other week, for a job in her degree area as a social worker at a new branch of a local health clinic.

As soon as I saw her after the interview, I asked her how it went, and she said it was the weirdest interview she's ever had, where there were no questions, just her talking by herself for 20 minutes.

"They asked me to act like a social worker with a client, with me playing both roles!", she was like.  "I mean, what the heck, I wasn't a f*cking Theater major!".

She said she probably didn't get the job, but it doesn't matter too much, since she didn't jibe with the people anyways.

Crack at my expense.

The other week I went to a gig of my one (white) friend from Mississippi, though I got there just after it ended and so I ended up hanging out afterwards with him and a few other friends of his who I know.

One of them I've met a few times before, and he goes to an open mike night in a bar near where he lives, in the southwest part of the city, and while we were talking, he invited us out to join him there some night this summer.

(It seemed like he'd invited our mutual friend there before, but he hadn't managed to make it out yet.)

"Nice," I was like.  "Do any hot closeted Polish guys go there, all hot and manly and Polish, and needing a sexual outlet?"

"You know," the guy was like, "It can be hard to tell sometimes."

At that point, my one (white) friend from Mississippi entered the conversation, dryly.

"Don't you mean 'inlet'?", he was like.

I got a wart.

For a while I've had this small swollen bump on the inner side of my lefthand pinkie finger, and I assumed it was some weird blister that would get re-swollen because of all the bending of the joint that it's on, but I had also wondered if it was a wart, and so I decided to wait and ask the doctor about it next time that I was in at the doctor's for something.

As it turns out, it's a wart, and he recommended that I should buy and brush on some anti-wart solution and keep it covered with duct tape, which would start to tear off bits of skin after a while, and the whole wart would disappear in around a month.

I've been doing that, and it's been interesting how white and dehydrated the wart's becoming because of the anti-wart solution.

I'm kind of excited to follow this, I've never had a wart before.

Addendum.

A friend's husband is a convert to Islam, and the few times we've been out together, he *always* gives alms to people who are panhandling.

(Conscientious almsgiving is something that I really, really respect about Islam, and his doing it makes me admire him a lot, too.)

I've been thinking of taking that practice up, and I almost gave to that one guy on the subway car the other week on my way to the doctor's appointment, but now I'm glad I didn't.

Since he started saying obviously mentally ill stuff to himself, who knows if he would have directed something towards me if I gave to him and singled myself out in the crowd, especially since he started muttering something about white people, if I'm not mistaken.

More subway panhandlers in the city?

Over the past month or so, I've been struck by the number of (usually African-American) (usually male) panhandlers who get on a busy subway car and make a long, rapid-fire speech about their circumstances and how they need money.

Usually, like one person gives them money, and then they swear or something or say people aren't sympathetic and get off the car, likely to go get on another one and go begging again.

The other week this happened again on a weekday late afternoon when I was on my way to a doctor's appointment, and afterwards the (young) (African-American) (otherwise apparently in good health) guy said clearly mentally ill stuff to himself.

After he got off the car, I asked the (older middle-aged) (black) woman next to me, "Is it just me, or is there more and more of this lately?".

"It's not just you," she was like.

I then asked her if she thought it was a worsening economy or a trend catching on or some new drug, and she said she had no idea, and then went back to looking out the window and minding her own business.