September 2007 Archives

Funny thing happened the other day, when I was walking back home on Queens Blvd. after a fruitless search for the UPS Store. I was about to pass a dry cleaners. An elderly Asian man stood outside it. I became aware that he was trying to flag me down. "Excuse me! Excuse me!" he said. "I have lady here no speak English!" I looked at him as if to say, "Aaaaand?" He just repeated what he said. I still just sort of shook my head and started to walk away. "No," he said. "She no speak English. You translate? She, you know, Jewish!" I could see an elderly lady inside the dry cleaners, leaning on a cane. She had a scarf wrapped around her head and a plastic bag in her hands. This time I understood. I shook my head at the Asian man and said, "Oh no. I don't speak--" and left it that. He nodded and said, "Oh OK," and I went on my way. I have no idea if he expected me to know Russian, Hebrew, Yiddish, God knows what. I don't think he knew either. I just think it's funny that he flagged me down, when the street was full of people. You could say I feel honored he took me for Jewish or Russian or whatever -- at least he didn't think I was just some monolingual white girl. Which... you know... I kind of am. If the lady spoke Russian, I probably could have said a couple things to her. Like "God bless Mommy and Daddy" and "I'm a Russian girl" (lie) and "I learn Russian" (also a lie), which are just about the only phrases I remember from my one semester of Russian in college. Even then, I wouldn't be able to understand what she was saying back to me, and I would just start counting really loudly (but I only remember up to five). Incidentally, on the way home I suddenly remembered a song that we were taught in my Italian classes in college: Vengo anch'io! (No, tu no.) Vengo anch'io! (No, tu no.) Vengo anch'io! (No, tu no.) Ma perche? (Perche no!) Somewhat loosely translated: I want to come too! (No, you can't.) I want to come too! (No, you can't.) I want to come too! (No, you can't.) But why not? (Because you can't.) It was a weird song in Italian class. It was weirder still when I remembered it the other day. --------

A series of quips among three fellow librarians, pertaining to the addition of the term "guybrarian" to the national lexicon: Patrick: I feel like a crybrarian. Toni: We could all smoke up... then we'd be highbrarians. Me: Then when we get arrested we could make up a story for the cops and be lie-brarians. Toni: Then, if we're extradited to Colombia because it was their fine weed (stay with me on this one), we'd probably take a government or commercial flight... in which case we'd be flybrarians. Me: And the plane would crash, and we'd be die-brarians! I'm sure we'll have more of these later. I'll edit them in when the e-mails start coming. --------

The other day I was thinking about the egoism and illogic of my youth, and two incidents came to mind. One: in 9th grade, my friend Jessica told me, probably in response to something I had said about my writing (this was in the days when everyone thought I would be a famous writer by the time I was 19 ha ha), "Sara, you could write a story about a hole in the wall, and it would still be interesting." I was flattered. I told my mom about it later, and she obviously thought it was a very nice thing for Jessica to say. Then I said, "So I had an idea. I think I'm going to write a story about a hole in the wall!" I can't believe this was the conclusion I drew. My mother looked as if she knew I needed some deflating. Two: I remembered an argument I had with my parents at around age 14 or 15. I don't remember what was making me so upset, nor do I remember what I said that prompted my dad to respond with, "That's not true." I probably said something along the lines of, "I feel like everyone thinks I'm stupid," or something similar. So when my father said it wasn't true, I cried, "How can it be untrue if it's what I feel?" Lesson: teenagers are stupid. Mike and I went to the Phillies-Mets game on Saturday at Shea. We decided to drive there, since we're a stone's throw from Flushing. It took us 9 minutes! It was pretty amazing. The Phillies won. My whole family roots for the Mets, so it's kind of in my blood to do so as well. Now that I'm living with a Phils fan, I'm kind of torn. I found myself rooting for the Phillies rather than the Mets. I would say I felt like a traitor, but I don't exactly. I'm sure my family would call me one, however.... I'm not a huge sports fan, but the game was pretty intense. A couple fights broke out in our section, and we witnessed a number of people (Phillies fans as well as Mets) escorted out of the stadium. I don't think I've ever been at a game with that kind of action. Later, when I was talking to my parents, they said, "Did Mike wear his Phillis cap? We were worried you were going to get mugged." No, it was only the antagonistic fans who were getting pummeled. I hate Mondays! I wish life were perpetual Fridays. Wouldn't that be great? (But only if the Friday led up to the weekend... I don't want to always be stuck on Friday. Now that would be tantalizing.) --------

Oh dear God... Wouldn't it be crazy if Alien predicted the future evolution of eels? --------

I think an update is in order! I'm on my second week at the new job. Everything is going well -- just trying to overcome my own social awkwardness in meeting and interacting with new people, as well as learn a huge amount of stuff I've never dealt with before. I have confidence in my ability to be a sponge, so I'm just calmly waiting for it all to absorb. It's like something I once heard about falling: that the more relaxed your body is before impact, the less dead you are. I have no idea if that's really true, and I also don't mean to liken a new job to, well, dying from impact with pavement, especially since this one holds promise.... I thought the metaphor worked somewhat. It looks the job will be mostly dealing with problems and doing damage control, and that's something I just love to do. I may complain, but complicated problems are really what make me tick. Because I'm a freak. It's somewhat similar to what I did at my last job -- record maintenance, being a big ole data monkey. But my working life is now changed in a few important ways: 1) As I've mentioned before, this is a faculty job, so I'm starting school next semester and, over the next few years, have to worry about a whole bunch of things (peer observations, publishing, committee work, etc.) that I've never worried about before. But in the words of someone wise, "Nothing is fucked. Everything is fine." 2) My commute ranges anywhere from half an hour to an hour every day. My first week, I was coming into the office from 9 to 5, though my boss told me I had the option to come in 8 to 4 instead. After it took me an hour to get home one day, followed by another day where I circled the campus looking for a parking space for 45 minutes, I decided to take the 8 to 4 schedule. And it's SO much nicer! Now it takes me a half hour to get here and 45 minutes to get home (which is a lot better than some commutes, and I really don't mind driving, so no complaints here), and there are always plenty of parking spaces in the faculty lot. A few words about driving in this area, since I haven't written about this yet. I haven't had any truly bad problems driving around in Queens, and I'm really getting used to other drivers' behavior, so it's possible (as long as I'm not tired, in the car, and PISSED) to look on their traffic violations and crazy driving with a kind of detached amusement. I'm not sure of my exact words, but I said to Anna, "It's a kind of crazy I can get behind." You know, it doesn't exactly faze me that I'm being passed on the right at a red light or that I'm being honked at for waiting for a pedestrian to cross before accelerating into his or her path. Again, I'm used to it by now. Not that I have very wide experience driving in other areas anyway, but this is the only place I've yet encountered where there are actually "WAIT FOR GREEN LIGHT" signs at traffic lights. And those signs don't mean "Wait for green light if you're making a right turn." Oh no, they don't. It's also extremely tempting to descend to the level of the average New York driver. The horns. Oh god the horns. OK, I'm exaggerating -- the horns don't bother me too much. But it's infectious, and I've had to remind myself to remain the courteous driver and not lay on it when the guy in front of me doesn't gun it the instant the light turns green. I also have had to remind myself that it's OK to let merging cars merge and that sometimes it's not too much trouble to move to the next lane to make room for them. I just wish the courtesy were returned more often. 3) Now I'm living with Mike! Full-time! This is, in a word (and an inadequate one at that), awesome. It was somewhat rocky in the beginning -- not at all between us, just an emotional time for me since I was unemployed and scared and rapidly losing money. Now we're settling into a routine with both of us working. We wish it were the weekend all the time, of course, but it's kind of nice to at least have a normal schedule where I'm not sitting at home on my fat ass playing games while he sweats it out on the subway. Now that I'm used to having him around all the time, I wonder how the hell we went a year and a half in different states. Yeah, it's cheesy, but I've been realizing more and more that I'm settling into what promises to be the happiest part of my life, regardless of all the bullshit and frustrations that go with being 20-something and trying to carve out a way to live in the world. In other news, we finished Thundercats, Season 1 Vol. 1, but haven't shelled out the money to buy the next set. So we're taking a break. I'm introducing Mike to El-Hazard, since the two are vaguely similar (in my mind). Last weekend we watched The Warriors, a cult movie from 1979 about New York of the future, where the streets are ruled by gangs. The movie starts off with the assassination of a prominent gang leader and the false accusation of a Brooklyn gang called The Warriors. This sparks a huge man-hunt for The Warriors, who must make it home to Coney Island from the Bronx, where the assassination of the gang leader took place at some kind of gang summit meeting. It's a crazy movie -- some of the gangs are ridiculous, like the one I dubbed "The Mime Gang" -- but it's immensely entertaining. The movie begins with a short summary of the 300 at the Battle of Thermopylae (we watched 300 later in the weekend, incidentally) and likens them to The Warriors, but the rest of the movie seems more like The Odyssey than anything else, especially the scene where three of the warriors are drawn away from their route to Union Square by a group of girls who turn out to be another killer girl gang. I also found it really interesting that the journey from the Bronx to Coney Island is presented as an epic journey. Because, as small as New York is, it really would be an epic journey to get from one place to the other, especially with guys on rollerskates and gangmembers in baseball uniforms tracking you and cops patrolling the subways. The house I grew up in is up for sale again, and it looks like the owners after us really did a good job restoring it. The listing is here, if you care to see where I spent my childhood and adolescence, but bear in mind that when I lived there it needed painting, the floors needed refinishing, and there was generally a lot more CRAP around. Still, my house was and is beautiful. Even though I don't miss it, I'm still pretty proud of having grown up there. "Stately Greek Revival," indeed. That's all for now. I know I've been saying this for a while, but I'm going to try to post more often. I'm going to try.... I just reminded myself of the scene in Dawn of the Dead when my favorite SWAT guy is dying from a zombie bite and he says, "I'm going to try not to come back. I'm going to try... not to... come back...." But in my case, I'm going to try to... I'm going to try to... come back.... PETER! (A little geekage for the Romero-heads out there.) Five hands out! --------