2 of my 3 upstairs neighbors:

The Sat. of Halloween weekend, I got back to my apt. and went around back to go store my bike in the enclosed back porch, and some people were out smoking at the back picnic table.

And, they weren't my upstairs neighbors who I hadn't met yet, but they were good friends of theirs, and they invited me up to the Halloween get-together that was happening that night without my knowing about it.

The party turned out to be mostly college kids from the nearby engineering school and people they know, and among them was 2 of my 3 neighbors who were home:

1) A physics major who's taking a year off from school to make money and is working at the local New Age shop mixing potions and candles part-time, which he's cool with since it's fun and he freelances and he's not against it because even if it's not real, which he's not sure it isn't, it doesn't hurt anyone; and

2) This recent (white) (bearded) grad who's a computer programmer and has long stringy hair and painted fingernails and wears skirts and plays a lot of video games like "Skyrim" and was raised Pentecostal in the 'burbs but deconverted after reading a footnoted book with cultural parallels to the Bible from the wider Ancient Near East.

They were very considerate too, and said they had been wondering who I was and if they ever made too much noise, because if so, I should just let them know and they'd try to be quieter.

Different worlds in the same city, money-wise.

The other week I was on the subway and it was packed, and two (middle-aged) (Asian) women were standing right in front of me with their bags in my face while I was sitted down on the subway seat...

When it was getting close to my stop and I was going to go get up, one was like, "Oh, are you getting out?", and I was like, "Next stop," and then I chit-chatted a little bit like I often tend to do and I said I was surprised at how crowded the train was, for like 9pm on a weekday evening.

"Shopping," she was like.  "We were at Macy's, if you spent two hundred dollar, you received seventy-five dollars free."

At that, I thought to myself, that I didn't have two hundred dollars to spend on shopping, let alone for gifts.

Later that week, I read in the free newspaper that single young people making something like $75-$135K are the fastest growing group of people in the city.

Who are these people?, I again thought to myself.

Such different worlds, all in the same city.

A coworker's sublimated reaction to the presidential election.

Like me, my one library coworker who I've known for a while goes out and knocks on doors for Dems in competitive races during all major elections...

I had met her years ago as a student, and now I work with her, and she's this (later middle-aged) (white) woman with a Ph.D. in ancient languages who now works as a bibliographer, who grew up in rural Missouri and has like a high school- or college-aged son and has lived in the city for years now.

This past week, I was working and sitting and organizing some books up on the one floor near where her office is, and all of a sudden I hear a cheery "Hey, I haven't seen you since the election!", and I look up and it's her.

And, next thing I know, we talk for at *least* a half hour, maybe 40 minutes, all about politics.

At one point, she told me that the election results "touched her core" because it's people like where she came from who voted Trump in.

She said she tried not to think of the election for a while afterwards, but then like 10 days to two weeks out, she wasn't even thinking of it and she was just in her house and some classic rock came on the radio, and next thing she knew, she found herself giving two middle fingers at it and saying "FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU!".

"It just poured out of me," she was like, "It was all in there."

Then, after a slight pause, she was like, "All my memories of high school are poisoned."

The death of Zsa-Zsa Gabor.

As soon as I heard that Zsa-Zsa Gabor died, I texted my one art school colleague who wears women's clothes, since he truly enjoys and also likes to camp up celebrity culture.

He texted back like right away, saying someone else had texted him five minutes earlier, and he closed the text with -

THE GREAT MAGYAR HAS FALLEN.

- (all in caps).

. . .

What a (demure) (cornrow-haired) (biracial?) (female) freshperson wore to class the other day:

A black t-shirt with bright red, yellow, and green accents, with the phrase on the back,

RASTA REVOLUTION

. . .

An observation of my uncle, on me:

My (dead) (maternal) grandfather who I never met would have liked me, since he was into "causes" and was "always a friend of the working man."

I found that striking, both in terms of the take on my grandfather's personality and in terms of the phrasing, "friend of the working man."

"Friend of the working man."

That phrasing sounds very old-fashioned, and good-hearted salt-of-the-earth.

Dogwalking finds of my mother from this fall.

This fall while walking my brother's dog out and about in the woods and on walking paths near my parents' house, my mother has found:

1) A turkey caller.

2) A wrench.

3) A ten-dollar bill.

. . .

I asked her about the turkey caller, and she said she assumes it fell out of someone's pocket.