One Of Us Is Wrong

Remember a few weeks ago I said I wasn't a wine snob? I meant it. But devoted partner thinks I might be a wine snob, just not when compared with real wine snobs. I think he meant my brother. Who is way snobbier than I. And that's ok because, while I don't know what the ethical considerations are of waxing rhapsodic over a meal you got for free, please know, The Boy, that dinner Monday was stupid good - made even better by the truly amazing wines you poured. So devoted partner maintains that next to my brother I am a wine plebe, but next to the rest of the world's mouth-breathers, I am my brother. I am still deciding how I feel about this. However, it might be a necessary preamble.

Etienne takes me to a wine shop in Dijon each time I visit. The store is called Aux Vieux Millesime and I usually just ask the proprietor to make me a case of stuff he likes. Generally the bottles average 17 euros and I'll pick up one or two that are costlier - so we're not talking DRC here (fark, that makes me a snob, doesn't it? Domaine de la Romanee Conti, among the most expensive wines there are). I go home, we drink the wine, we sigh knowing that the wines I bought in a small shop in Dijon are unlikely to be available at the corner wine shop here. But I endeavor to find ones we especially like (and by endeavor, I mean I look online). We recently drank a white burgundy that was quite tasty and I looked for it online. Lo and behold, a wine store in Connecticut carried it. I bought some more.

Fast forward. This store now sends me tons of email about new wines and last night, one of their "wine consultants" called me to upsell me some stuff. Here's where it starts to smell of crazy.

He's very earnest, and sounds very young. Younger than my brother young. Young as in this might only be the first or second year he's legally able to drink wine. He starts by talking to me about a Rioja that, strange to say, I already own - my parents brought it back from a trip to Spain. Then he starts talking about a Bordeaux that Robert Parker gave many points to. At this point I stop him to mention two things: I don't favor Bordeaux, and I could give a rat's ass what Robert Parker thought of a wine. Since Robert Parker and I have never imbibed together, I don't know if we like the same things. His opinion counts very little for me when I go to buy wines. So then my "wine consultant" starts asking me what I do like. I tell him that, due to the wallet-unfriendly influence of Etienne et Pere, we drink a lot of Burgundy. He proceeds to ask me what I think of California wines. It is at this point that I channel my brother and say, "we don't do new world."

He then asks about Italian wines (leading me to believe Burgundy might not be his strong suit). I say I don't know much about them, but that we have had a lot of luck enjoying reds from the south and from Sicily (I refrain from mentioning devoted partner's favoring of Montepulciano as this will get us into a discussion my budget is not prepared for). He starts talking to me about a famous Tuscan producer who bought a Calabrian vineyard. And then it happens, he talks about malolactic fermentation. Ooooh, fancy winemaking term. Except he says malol'ay'ctic. I get trying to impress a customer by demonstrating a facility with "oenic" terms, but malolactic has the word lactic in it. As in acid, and the creepily named Lactaid for those who are intolerant. This slip up in turn makes me feel less generous towards the young man who can only seem to call to mind a southern producer who is actually a northern producer, making me wonder if he's reading from a script. He can't think of one indigenous southern producer to recommend?

We finally swing back around to Burgindy and now we're going for the ducats. He starts talking about a great deal on a Burgundy from a producer I've never heard of - which is NOT SURPRISING because I know like six wine producers total. He finishes telling me which wine publications gave it which ratings and then stops talking. He hasn't mentioned a vintage, a region, a grape; he hasn't mentioned what COLOR the wine is.

Me: Ah, and, where is it from?
Him: Burgundy.
Me (pause): Yes, but where (silence on the other end), what region? (More silence.) Ok, what color is the wine?
Him: Red
Me: Ok, and what are the OTHER WORDS ON THE BOTTLE?
Him: Oh, saynt (Saint or St.) George (Georges) vail (Vieilles).

Ok we're going to stop now. I've made my point and sounded like a huge bitch making it. Here's where we get to the critical examination part. I dig that French is a tough language and I don't expect everyone to speak it - hell, if you ask my French friends, they'll remind you I confused the words for condom and preservatives at the dinner table while trying to sound like I could speak in complete French sentences. I also understand that just because you work in an industry that is heavily influenced by France it doesn't mean you're an expert. My guy, my wine consultant, might be able to pick out Russian River Valley Zinfandels at 20 paces, but the fact that he doesn't know how to read a bottle of wine from France ticks me off.

For several reasons.

1. Let's pretend you are an art collector and a dealer, a French-speaking dealer, is trying to get you to buy a wonderful piece by Vansloh Omay. Do you buy it? Do you even know what he's talking about? (Pretend you're a French stereotype. Winslow Homer.) Would you buy a piece of art from a guy who couldn't even be bothered to attempt the artist's name? Wouldn't you think this guy isn't the expert he's trying to be? But let's be generous and assume that the dealer knows tons about Manet and Monet and Matisse, and nothing about Vansloh Omay; wouldn't a professional, upon learning that your tastes and his expertise don't match, ask you to wait a minute while he prevailed upon a colleague, who is an expert in your states tastes, to help you? Isn't that what good salespeople do? "I'm sorry, I actually work in the shoe department, but if you wouldn't mind waiting just a moment, I will get you the buyer for the linen department who can answer your questions."

2. The only only only reason I know what malolactic fermentation is is that I've read some books about wine. Not scholarly works, mind you, silly travelogues about people with much cooler lives than mine who go off in search of good wines from beautiful places and get paid to write about them. But, you see, it is only coincidence that I know what it is. Wine is not my job. If wine is your job, take 15 minutes and learn how to pronounce the things you plan to say to customers and what they mean.

3. Because if I was a heavy, if I was some cigar chomping hedonist with a lower level completely devoted to my cave, and some scamp showed as little knowledge as this kid, I wouldn't shop at the store again! I would take my business somewhere I could feel confident. I don't trust Robert Parker to make my wine decisions for me, but I do trust wine professionals. Fully half of the wine I'm constantly searching for is as a result of being served something in a restaurant. I trust that at restaurants where I ask for a recommendation, the person of whom I am asking has TASTED the wine him or herself. So when the recommendation is offered to me it is because the wine has been enjoyed, quite possibly with something similar to what I'm eating. I didn't get the feeling this kid had tasted any of the wines he was suggesting.

Now I know I am making a mountain out of a molehill. I know this. I also know that in the two months I have lived in Connecticut, I have come across these types of lapses in knowledge and salesmanship. And this confounds me. I always assumed that Fairfield county was made up, in large numbers, of people who used to live in Manhattan. Those people were as snooty as I am and expected a certain level of competence from people. Does that expectation evaporate with greater levels of suburban air? Some of my neighbors (and I mean that in the broad sense) do have million dollar cellars, don't those consumers elevate the level of discourse? I don't like to think that I have moved to a place where people blindly follow wine reviews and the recommendations of purveyors who have never sipped what they suggest, because it implies a laxity of mind I am deeply uncomfortable with.

I have opted not to drive to the store and tell them this in person. But I am seriously considering telling my wine consultant the next time he calls. Not because I want to make him feel bad about himself, but because, as totally lame as this sounds, I want him to do better by himself. I'm not going to NOT buy wine from him because he's ill-informed, but there are going to people who will, and he should know why that is.

Doctor Patient Confidentialty and Other Things We Don't Need in the Future

Are you a patient? Do you have a doctor? Do you possibly have a serious medical condition that you think is the sort of thing kept between you and your doctor and, perhaps, anonymously used as a teaching guide for other doctors? Well, this should set your mind at ease.

Some of you have a doctor who sat next to me one afternoon this week on the train. Obviously he had needed to leave work prior to 4:00pm to go home for something really important, otherwise he would still have been at his office, but on this, I'm sure, rare occasion, he was on the train heading home to NEW ROCHELLE or its environs.

Before him, spread out like so much actionable material, were your case files. Names included. I was not wearing my vision goggles (read eyeglasses), so I couldn't make out your names, but it was a basic medical chart and the area at the top where names go was filled in with letters that I feel confident spelled out a name. If it makes you feel any better, the address, phone, and social security number slots were also filled in. To further assuage your fears, your good doctor cares so much about you that he tales audio notes on a voice recorder about your cases. ON THE TRAIN.

Patient one, you have been prescribed phenobarbital, I'm assuming because you have seizures. Patient two, you have been taking betaseron which, until I looked it up, I thought had perhaps been invented by the writers of the West Wing, but which, apparently, is a real drug used to treat relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis (itself, also a real thing, and not just something given to President Bartlet - I do love when smart TV does research) which I guess you have. Given these two separate pieces of information, I'm going to guess the good doctor is a NEUROLOGIST or NEUROSURGEON, though he didn't seem the surgeon type.

Now, I understand that sometimes a turkey sandwich and porn are preferable to the office and a hardworking doctor needs to rush home for both, but here's the part I am less sympathetic to: dear doctor, YOU SAW I WAS EAVESDROPPING! You saw me, you knew I was listening to what you were saying into your recorder. Rather than stop, which wouldn't have erased the wrongs you had already committed, but might have slightly ameliorated them, you continued, not wanting your job responsibilities to cut into your sandwich and porn time, albeit slightly less audibly. You continued discussing your patients' private information in the middle of a rush hour train. While seated next to someone actively attempting to overhear you.

So now let's discuss some things about you, in case your patients ever stumble across this and want to switch doctors:

• Works at Weill Cornell Medical College, or at least has their letterhead (I couldn't find anyone I was 100% sure was him on the website, so rather than libel or slander, I'll stick with what I do know)
  
• Lives in the vicinity of New Rochelle
  
• Is observantly Jewish enough to wear a yarmulke on the train
  
• Has quite big feet
  
• Kind of looks like Ted Danson

Much like the kids with the cellphone cameras targeted the perverts on subways, this is a wake-up call for idiots who consider public transportation a private facility. Your office is private, your home is private, hell, even the bathroom on the Metro North can be considered private. The three-across seats on the local to Stamford? NOT PRIVATE. I hope you have malpractice insurance and/or already own your home outright.

A Room of One's Own

Room of One's Own
Originally uploaded by reallyct

We joke about needing our separate spaces, devoted partner and I, but truth be told, this is the first time I've had a separate space. In our previous living configurations, devoted partner has had an office and I've had a carved-out niche in our bedroom. This is just the way it's been. Even in our previous apartment when there was an additional room I could have turned into an office, I chose, instead, to make it the library cum chocolate storage room cum additional appliance room, rather than move a desk in and worry about wall coverings. So this big empty room that faced me in our new house was both exciting and daunting.

The bookshelves were the first inhabitants. They are relics from the first post-collegiate apartment, workhorses that are neither attractive nor ugly. They just are. They serve a purpose and have housed the book collection as it has grown and, more recently, shrunk. Instead of a haphazard shoving of all manner of printed material, they now house the paperback books I would actually choose to read again, or those that may serve some ancillary purpose in the future. The built-ins in our living room have shouldered the responsibility of my hardcover books (and who knew I had so many!). My mantra in this new house has been: less clutter. Since devoted partner and I each have a double doored closet in our bedroom, we each added only one dresser - the symmetry pleases me - and my other dresser went into my office. Which wasn't much of an office, it was the holding room for things that hadn't found a home yet. I set up my computer on the dresser because I didn't have a desk, and tried to ignore the unpacked bits behind me as I checked my email each morning.

And, as related here, the search for a proper desk began.

But it wasn't just a search for a desk.

In my life I have never thought about furniture as being anything more than functional. I love the fantasy of a huge kitchen someday, but if you asked me what it would look like, on the micro level, I couldn't tell you. Decor eludes me. Sure, when I see someone else's well decorated home, I notice (and Antonio and Amy, you guys are popping up in my memory - especially the striped walls and repeated blue accents, respectively), but rarely can I transpose that idea to my own surroundings. If you asked me, I'd probably tell you I like stark and modern, but I don't think that's universally true. The one piece of furniture I know I'd like to own is a chaise, 18th century style - so not really modern. What I do know is that furniture and decor are not things I am hard-wired to consider spending a lot of money on. So the first requirement of the desk was: less than $200. That left me scouring craigslist. In the meantime, I found the two chairs in the picture. I loved them. I don't know what style they are, I only know that when I saw them I thought they belonged in any room I was going to decorate for myself. When I decided to buy them last week, after agonizing over the decision to spend the money on chairs of all things, they effectively informed the desk decision. I had chairs and the desk had to match.

Enter desk one, acquired Saturday from a nice couple in Briarcliff Manor for the acceptable price of $150. A lovely secretary, it proved to be almost perfect when set up in the room. The one problem was monitor positioning. Meanwhile, devoted partner was angling to have us use it in the front hall (probably so he can avoid trying to make me a demilune in his garage workshop...). But I needed a desk, so it was set up in my room in the corner I had decided would be the desk corner. Then, on Sunday, we found a better desk for the space at $75 and devoted partner got his way: we're going to, I think, strip the secretary and refinish it for the hallway. I was notified yesterday that the chairs had arrived and I spent the early evening moving in the desk and setting it up.

Notice the lack of clutter.

Now, you may also notice how tightly I framed the shot - that's because the rest of the room looks like the aftermath of a tornado through a trailer park - but I can, at least, sit at my desk with the soapstone heart paperweight devoted partner made me, and the picture of me and Charlotte and...

Think.

Sure, I read the book, what over-literate teenage girl hasn't? But, I didn't think, in this day and age, its sentiment was as important. Was I so oppressed on a day to day basis that I needed my own room to refresh my very sanity? No. I don't. But what a luxury it is to have a chair you like, a desk you like, and a view you like: mine is of our front entry - not a person or car in sight. Even if I'm merely playing solitaire or reading The Onion, having this space feels good. And now that this small corner is spoken for, I'm appraising the rest of the room in a different way, wondering what should go on the walls, and what the eventual guest sleeping quarters should look like.

I like having a space. I think I understand why it was always important to devoted partner. It's not that I get to be away from him or he from me, it's that each of us can have a place of repose. Mundanely drinking my coffee in the morning can be my personal mundanity; watching the youtube video for Your Missus is a Nutter can, but doesn't have to be, a shared activity; and when there's no one in the house but me, I can unashamedly surround myself with my things and listen to George Michael loudly. So I may update this photo from time to time, as new things are added, and as the space takes shape. I just didn't think I would like it as much as I do.

The First Nick

I feel sort of violated. I'm pretty sure it happened while I was parked in the mall lot or at the station, because those are the only places I park. One of you SOBs in the greater Port Chester area hit my car. You took a nice little chunk out of my left rear. I'm not going to lie, I'm pissed and saddened. It is true, it is one inch on a car whose surface are is far grander, but it's kinda deep, and now that I know it's there, I notice it all the time.

For all devoted partner's comfortings about how there are products available on the market that can fix this problem, a big part of me wants to just bring the car to a professional, look up, with weepy eyes, and beg the proprietor to make my car new again. How much could that really cost? Ok, in all fairness, it's worth about $50 to me. My initial foray into the world of painting metal things was not an unequivocal success. I still haven't finished spray painting the lawn furniture and, well, as you might be able to guess, the days of lawn furniture may well be over for 2009. (On that note, what am I supposed to do with the lawn furniture in the winter? The garage is already full of cars and sawdust from devoted partner's woodworking.) If I take the car to the shop and he says it's an hour worth of labor no matter what they do, well, I guess it's yet another trip to Home Depot for me (oh Home Depot, when did you become a stop on the weekly to-do list?).

I may have mentioned before that I'm leasing this car (which means this dent will have to be fixed eventually if I opt not to buy the car), but I do feel as though I own it - after all I could buy the car at the end of the lease if I wanted, so I feel that the car is MINE. As such, it is the most expensive thing I've ever owned, and this little cosmetic defect so soon into ownership feels bad. Bad like the first time I badly scuff the heel of a new pair of shoes (thankfully the apple green peep toes survived their maiden voyage without incident). I know cars get banged around, hell in 2001, the old Mercedes had an ass-shaped dent on the hood from, we believe, a former neighbor's ample behind, but do they really get so little time to be pristine. I even took it to the car wash last week because it was looking dusty and now, with this dent, I feel I needn't have bothered. After all, now the car is forever marred, and a little dust wouldn't have made things worse.

When I parked the car this morning and glanced back at the space so I could note the number I would need to punch into the parking meter, my eye found the dent immediately. This suggests that the sooner I have it fixed, the sooner I can walk my town's streets without malice and violence in my heart.

Applefest 2009

Lunch on the Tracks 5
Originally uploaded by reallyct

[by the way, if you like pictures more than words, click on this one to see my whole flickr set of Applefest]

I am a sucker for a county fair. Ask devoted partner what my eyes look like when we innocently drive down a road and discover that a ferris wheel has been set up and that someone, somewhere, is frying dough. I have no Ur-fair to trace this fascination, I just know that there's something about a fair that makes me feel euphoric. Most of the time, devoted partner will be a mensch about it and pull over so we can take a turn around the fair, maybe get cotton candy or lose a dollar at a game, but every once in a while, I need more than that. Every once in a while I need something like

APPLEFEST 2009.

For 21 years the town of Warwick, NY has hosted Applefest. Let me disabuse you of some things to begin with: while there are plenty of apple-y things around, this is not one of those festivals with booths of people who have turned apples into sculpture, have made dried apple skin sweaters, etc. There are apple for sale, and cider, and pies, but this is more an autumn festival. Which, in no way, makes it rock less.

If you like live music, there was plenty. Each distinct area of the fest had a makeshift bandstand and there were people performing all day long. Some of them sounded good.

Do you like food? Everyone from the remote region was offering his wares. Local restaurants took care of lunch unless, like devoted partner, you chose to support the local firehouse by purchasing one of the cheeseburgers the firemen were grilling up. There was traditional Irish pub fare, bbq, deep fried pierogies, cheesesteaks, burgers and dogs, nachos, well nearly anything you could think of. And that's just the lunch options. Don't forget that there was a farmer's market, an abundance of bake sales, stalls selling pastries, pies, jams, syrups, hot sauce (some of which made me cry), and you would be surprised how LITTLE I ate.

There were woodcrafters, metalcrafters, candlemakers, soapmakers, weavers, not to mention the enterprising local residents along the fair route who chose yesterday to have their garage sales. If they didn't have our number...

Yeah, so Saturday I bought a desk, finally. A painted over mahogany secretary that I set up and had begun using as my desk. Yeah, there was a small problem: putting my monitor on the top shelf caused me to crane my neck; putting it on the secretary level was too low. So when we saw a desk at someone's garage sale for $75, we snapped it up. Now I have two desks reminding me of the raining/pouring thing people occasionally talk about. We also found one of those kinda neat lamps that come attached to a wooden table. Well, devoted partner wasn't sure it was worth $85 in the morning, but in the afternoon, as I intentionally maneuvered him back that way (cause I knew he really liked the thing), it was down to $60 and I told him to just give the man three twenties and be done with it.

This was terrific. We got two pieces of furniture. All we had to do now was pull the car around and pack it up. Start laughing now.

You see, we had taken the shiny red Jetta to the fair with us, not the beat up but storage-friendly Subaru. So we had just purchase a desk with chair and a table with a lamp sticking out the top of it, and we had one tiny car with which to transport it. I am truly truly apologetic that I forgot to take a picture of the final product, be cause I was really proud of us. The seats in the back came down, bunjee cord was given us by a local samaritan. A girl's white desk was wedged as far into the truck as possible, sans drawers, and the trunk bunjeed around it - half of the desk was too tall, in any configuration, to go in the trunk. Then a lamp was disassembled, a base turned on its side and stowed in the backseat, and drawers and lampshades disbursed wherever there was room.

It took less than twenty minutes. We pounded fists and decided it only made sense to now go to Woodbury Commons.

Yes, the outlet stores of evil. It MUST BE NOTED that it was devoted partner who suggested the detour. I hate outlet malls. They are evil. Devoted partner, however, has had great success in the past getting winter coats there, and it's time for a new winter coat.

From the moment we entered the compound, we knew it was a mistake. The line to get out of the mall looked to be 1.5 hours long. So now we were trapped. We had to at least walk around until the traffic abated. We did not get a winter coat. However, between us, in the space of oh 75 minutes, we bought, together, 5 pairs of shoes, 4 pairs of socks, and a pair of Ray-Bans. Fortunately all of these items could be stowed in the few empty spaces left in the back of the car. Unfortunately, we hadn't anticipated buying anything when we left Applefest.

The Results Show

Yes, it is a cop-out to make today's post simply the results from Tuesday's post, but I'm in a slight funk - so much so that my inaugural Tim Horton's 'donut' was thrown out half eaten cause it just wasn't any different from a Dunkin' 'donut.' And who really throws out donuts? Maybe it's because I found a desk and the guy who is selling it hasn't responded; maybe it's because I found myself in a cigar bar sipping bourbon and salivating over the man's cigar at the next table; maybe it's because I can no longer even pretend it's still summer-ish. Whatever the reasons, I have decided to take it out on you. Especially since not one of you summoned the 2 minutes it would have taken to choose T/F on my list. For the record, devoted partner, in a valiant effort, scored an AMAZING 15/20. Well played, son, well played.

1. I loved barbie and paper dolls as a child, but only for the fashions. I never constructed elaborate stories for them. My favorites were the Carmen Miranda paper dolls (which I found on ebay and repurchased as an adult) and the Oscar de la Renta collection for Barbie. - Absolutely TRUE. The Carmen Miranda paper dolls are boss! I also had Princess Diana and, no lie, Nancy Reagan by the same publisher. Neither was as cool as Carmen
   
2. The reason I don't wear lots of jewelery is that I have an allergic reaction to anything that isn't a precious metal resting on my skin; ergo I wear my earrings which are gold and diamond and nothing else. - FALSE. And frankly lame. Sorry about that.
   
3. I ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch every day (with rare exceptions) from kindergarten through seventh grade. - TRUE. My parents practiced an ancient form of child abuse known as kosher. Kosher discriminates against prosciutto, scallops, and cheeseburgers and, in rare cases like my brother and me, produces evil children who cackle while they stuff pig's feet and veal thalamus gland into their heretical faces.
   
4. I had a pet goldfish that I won at a fair that lived with us for five years. - Patently FALSE. Though the tiny turtles I bought off some guy in Columbus circle held on for more than 6 months.
   
5. My first celebrity crush was Ricky Schroeder and I developed several unhealthy fantasies about his indoor train. - Yeah, FALSE. As befits a creepy misfit like myself, I'm pretty sure that my first celebrity crush was Sean Connery.
   
6. I pretend I finished Infinite Jest, but really, thought it was so bad from the start that I gave up after five pages - I judge it harshly as if I had read the whole thing. TRUE. See also Franzen, The Corrections. This hype, I fear, is not to be believed.
   
7. I have a subscription to Cosmopolitan Magazine and I hide it like pornography when it arrives at the house. -FALSE. If I don't know all the secret secrets to secretly turning my man on (hint, it involves a word that begins with fell and ends with atio) by now, there's probably no hope for me.
   
8. I don't have a compelling "where were you on September 11th" story because I was watching Beverly Hills, 90210 reruns on F/X. - TRUE. I made an excellent unemployed person.
   
9. I was accepted to the vocal program at Juiliard with scholarship and didn't go because I wanted to have sex with boys at college. - FALSE. Didn't apply because I was under the assumption that if one could get into a place like Amherst, one didn't apply to art school. Art school was for people who couldn't go to brain school.
   
10. My brother got DNA testing that verified that we, like others of Lebanese extraction, are of direct Phoenician descent. Sadly, no Ghengis Khan link yet. - FALSE, but I so wish it was true. "I'm half Cherokee, what are you?" "Phoenician, bitches. What do you say to that?"
    
11. I love Chef Olivier's Foie Gras torchon, the Steak Frites at Balthazar and the chocolate fondant recipe I ganked from Daniel, but the meal I'd eat every day for the rest of my life is two slices of Mimi's Pizza. - TRUE. So clearly true. It takes every ounce of willpower I can muster not to have a slice for breakfast on my way to work.
    
12. I have never seen E.T. - FALSE, I just didn't think it was the masterpiece of our youth. I don't know what I think was the masterpiece of our youth, but this was a little too saccharine for me (even as a tot).
    
13. When my parents asked me what I wanted to do for my 25th birthday, I said "Cookie Puss." - TRUE. I think I've been fairly up front about my eating disorder. Also, it's not like had I said, "Babbo," we would have done that instead.
    
14. When I found out Giuliani was running for president I re-registered as a Republican so I could vote for him in the primaries; I switched back to the democrats when there was no hope he'd be our next president. - FALSE, but could have easily been true. I've said it before and I'll say it again. He might be a fascist, but he's my kind of fascist.
    
15. I had a short article published in the National Review and never told anyone because I was so embarrassed. - FALSE, but also could have been true. For the record, a piece I wrote in a college magazine about needing some kind of structure vis a vis requirements for humanities majors (i.e. one shouldn't be able to graduate with a degree in history if one only took courses in the history of Holland), was referenced in a U.S. News and World Report article about standards in higher education, and then referenced by about 1001 nutjob crazy conservative rags as proof that gay poetry and the socioeconomics of Burundi were ruining our children.
    
16. I own stock in exactly one company and the original certificate was a gift. - TRUE. Drink Pepsi, people!
    
17. I haven't done hand laundry in about six months. There is still an unpacked box of dirty unmentionables. I don't know what you're talking about (TRUE).
    
18. I don't believe in alien visits, ghosts, spirits, god, fairies (whichever way you choose to spell it), but I do believe I am distant cousins with Shakira. - TRUE. Both have Lebanese Christian ancestors. We must be related. My hips, as well, have been known not to spread falsehood.
    
19. Because Jamie could do it, I spent several weeks teaching myself pi to 40 places. - FALSE. Beating Jamie for valedictory speaker in a landslide means I don't really ever have to compete with him again. He can have pi. (Also, he'll definitely have a book published before I will which I hope, will forever dull the pain of losing out to me in the speechifying department.)
    
20. My dad took me shopping for my first bra. - TRUE. Have you met my mother?
    

Idle Hands, Idle Minds

[note: I don't have a USB cable with me so the photo(s) that accompany this will have to wait]

I should come clean and admit something: I have RBS. Restless Brain Syndrome. It is true that Pfizer has yet to address my needs with pharmaceuticals, but I fervently believe it's only a matter of time. I like doing more than one thing at a time. Jamie used to joke that I didn't watch TV, I listened to it. My fear of idleness is such that, if I have 100 pages or less to go in the book I am reading, I pack a second book. You never know when the subway you are on will go out of service between stations for an hour and you'll finish your book and have nothing else to do. I don't understand people who commute without something to occupy them.

So when I get on the train in the mornings I am wary of those people who have neither book nor newspaper nor Kindle. I myself have been knitting on the train because I'm having that experience where I'm nearing the end of a good book and I don't want it to end so I'm prolonging the experience. The people who are just staring blankly ahead, but not sleeping with their eyes open? Those people unnerve me. What could they possibly be doing or thinking? Are the thinking? Or are they just zoning out, slackening their jaw muscles, and waiting for the next stop. It should be noted that people who examine their cellphones as if the phones have changed since last they were held are truly no better than the mouth-breathers.

I was seated in the dining car again this morning, feeling jolly and retro. A man, I believe he works for the MTA, who usually gets on at Port Chester, got on today at Rye. He put his bags down and went to the bathroom. The well put together but obviously not on her way to gainful employment woman seated diagonally from me suddenly looked up and at his bags. She asked the gentlemen seated next to the bags if they were his, and receiving a negative response, became flustered. I told her they belonged to the man in the bathroom. She said that she was concerned because one of his bags looked a certain way. A certain way was that it held his walkie-talkie and the antenna was sticking out. I told her that if it made her feel any better I was pretty sure he worked for the MTA and took this train every morning. She breathed a sigh of relief. I resisted the urge to tell her that, statistically speaking, there was little for the terrorists to gain by blowing up the train that would take her to her personal shopping day at Bendel's.

But it reminded me that people really are narcissistic enough to believe they are personally being targeted. For the record, at least she wasn't a racist. Though I'm not sure she saw him before he went to the bathroom, the potential terrorist in question was a 50-year old, clinically obese, white guy who looked like he worked on the railroad all the livelong day. In her defense, he did have a beard. I listen to the same news the rest of the populace does, more or less, and callous though I may be, I just don't worry that when the news says my train might blow up that actually means there's a greater chance my train will be blown up. There was ALWAYS a good chance my train was going to be blown up, the question of who does the blowing up seems far less important in my mind than the fact I would be dead. I also don't feel like maximum collateral effect would be achieved by blowing up an off-peak New Haven line. The terrorists know it's a half-empty train of rich man's effluvia.

I resisted the urge to tell the woman this mainly because I am trying to fool the people around me into thinking I am normal, and laying into this woman for being stupid would be a clear indication of my lack of normal. But for the doubters still out there, I have a pretty strong feeling that you will not be a victim of terrorist attack on any of the following: the JetBlue flight from JFK to Burlington; the 10:30am Katonah to Grand Central; the M86 crosstown bus - also the M79, M72, and M66; the Hampton Jitney. See where I'm going with this? So everyone can exhale again and resume texting the decorator about wall treatments.

We're all going to be OK.

Nopropos: I was mean to the String store earlier this week and I wanted to taketh with one hand and giveth with another. I went into the Manhattan branch on Tuesday to ask a favor the salespeople were under no obligation to grant. The salesgirl (granted she was under 40 and didn't smell of cat) graciously helped me out. So maybe the Greenwich branch just needs a little more employee training.