In Which Knitcrit Contemplates Giving Up and Finds Herself Wondering What, Exactly, That Would Look Like

What is wrong with knitcrit? Surely she can't be unhappy about this spectacular sweater, which is all finished but for the blocking and weaving in:























It's the Elizabeth Zimmermann bottom-up sweater from _Knitting Without Tears_ with a yoke design borrowed (and modified a bit) from a ski sweater in _The Opinionated Knitter_. The whole thing was done in Princess, a merino-angora-synthetic blend with great stitch definition. I realized somewhere in the middle of the yoke that I had inadvertently chosen the colors of the Indian flag - so patriotic! - but I think/hope that what the colors will say to the average viewer will be more along the lines of "early spring" - because nothing says spring like a fairisle ski sweater, right? It's for db, and it's big enough so it should last her well into next winter.

And db might need it, because it's possible we'll be living in Montreal. Basically, I went on the job market this year because Todd's been underemployed for several years and we really can't continue being this poor in Manhattan. There are also some issues at my university - a top-down restructuring was pushed through by the a*shole chancellor; what it amounts to is a dumbing down of the general education curriculum in order to boost graduation rates. The restructuring's been savaged in the Chronicle and now some of the junior colleges are just plain old refusing to implement it, which bodes well for us at the senior colleges in the system, but still, overall things are not looking too good for public education in New York City. Ugh.























If only the photo would display properly. Hate blogger. Hate iphone.

So the past three weeks have been consumed with job talks - one at a fancy University in Montreal and the other at an an Ivy League school in Philadelphia. I had less than a week's notice for the Montreal talk and I don't think I did a great job; for the job in Philly I gave a slightly better talk but there are some issues with the school as a whole that make me worry. I don't know. I feel totally spent and somehow sure that neither one is going to translate into an actual offer. I'm trying to be happy and grateful for the opportunities, but really what I feel is tired and mad at myself for not doing a better job, and that combined with garden variety annoyances with Todd and our apartment have conspired to put me in a bad mood.

That and today I got db's first preschool rejection letter, and I know that there's nothing more going on here than a huge number of kids vying for a very limited number of spots, but I was haunted by the fear that this was somehow all My Fault and We Could Have Done Something More. And of course the evolving preschool situation also makes me feel like we can't stay in Manhattan - we can't even really afford any of these freaking preschools unless Todd suddenly manages to get a full-time job - but where would we go? The northern jersey suburbs where we can feel isolated and I can enjoy the hellish commute to Manhattan? Somewhere in Queens where we can feel similarly isolated and the commute would be even worse, not to mention the schools?

Is it ridiculous for someone like me to feel trapped and hopeless? Probably.

On the bright side, the British version of Being Human is pretty good and Todd's making a nice dinner even as I type this grumpy post.

Moving on, in, up

Cousin Liz had a girl a few weeks ago, and after I finished turning in grades for the Worst Semester Ever and Todd and I signed a lease for a new place that we found through the Worst Real Estate Agent Ever, I got to work. It's a six month size and wow, a tiny sweater in Malabrigo worsted superwash flies off the needles. Malabrigo's superwash is amazing - I kind of don't believe it's a superwash.















The pattern is a Ravelry freebee called Striped Smock Top. Clearly the designer focuses her creativity on pattern writing rather than naming. Donna at the yarn store rightfully talked me into buying the yellow yarn.
















It still needs a button. The orange and red were leftovers from two aviator caps that I knit for friends who just had twin girls. We visited them last weekend and I don't know what was more exhausting - the simple thought of twins or keeping db calm for the last hour of the car ride back to the city. To be fair, db is remarkably easy for an almost two-year-old: she flips through mountains of books, "reading" them out loud; imagination play with toys and stuffed animals can go on for a very long time. Even saint-like hopefully genius children have their limits, though, and db's carseat maximum is about two hours. Not bad for a city kid who is so unaccustomed to cars that she now thinks that they exist solely to go to the beach, since all five car trips we've taken since arriving back in the states have been to the ocean or homes with pools or by rivers.

And I say "hopefully genius" because without a scholarship or a high score on the so-called "gifted and talented" exam, her mom and dad really are going to have to move to New Jersey.

Speaking of maxing out carseat time, one of the beach trips was to visit a friend in Montauk. In theory this was a good idea; in practice the heavens opened the moment we arrived. We sort of managed to get to the beach in between storm fronts, but it was so cold db wore her rashguard over pants and a shirt and we had to keep her from getting hypothermia splashing around in the surf. And then on the drive home we hit rush hour traffic going into NYC and the fried clams I ate immediately prior to departure began to disagree with me violently and the only thing that seemed to keep db calm was a recording of sweet old songs that Woody Guthrie composed for his children. I think we listened to the album at least 15 times in a row. Every time I thought I couldn't take it anymore I would ask myself if another round of "I want my milk and I want it now" was better than the cries of an understandably sick of the car toddler and of course we all know the answer to that question.

On the brighter side, I am kind of excited about our new apartment. It has a dishwasher and a third bedroom that we'll be using as a home office. If I think about it, the fact that these two features make me happy suggests that I have finally developed a terminal case of adulthood.

But on the brightest of the bright sides, my editor wrote to me today saying my book is in. My. book. is. in. It's on Amazon! Look at it. Tenure incarnate. Eight years later, my book:























And for the record, that lady on the cover is not dead. She just looks dead. Read the book to find out more.

Mittens and blues

Classes start on Thursday. I am dreading them though not for any particularly good reason other than perhaps all the time I have spent on planet lactation has made me feel like an alien about to land on the hostile planet of academia. I really, really, really don't want to store my breastmilk in the department refrigerator. That's what the icepack box in my breast pump bag is for, right?

I made these cute little baby mittens out of some worsted scraps in an effort to chase the blues away. My mood was not all that improved, but they are very cute and also very warm, thanks the fair isle motif. The pattern is a Ravelry freebie, searchable under "two colour mittens" by Abigail Welbourne.















I put one on db's hand and her eyes got very wide and then she began waving her hand around in the air, staring at it and giggling. She has clearly learned how to get on my good side.

bottoms, tops, and a disturbing bustier

We haven't been so much with the blogging this past month here at knitcrit mission control, though there has been a fair amount of knitting and also a fair amount of criticism, the latter mainly taking the form of yelling at the TV whilst helplessly watching the public option die a slow, painful death. The former, a much more pleasant subject, involved knitting a soaker to go with Topaz out of the leftover light green - baby girls don't sit like ladies (the bulky diaper gets in the way, I suppose), so one way to help them pull off the dress is to provide a coordinated underlayer. In this case, the soaker I knit to go with Topaz also looks very cute with db's monkey onesie.

This was a freebie on Ravelry, searchable under the name "Fancy Pants." I had no idea what a soaker was before about three weeks ago and it turns out there's quite a range of soaker patterns out there, so I can't say that I had any reason for choosing this one - I can't even remember how I found it, actually.

For the past few winters, Todd has worn an embarrassingly ugly black knit hat emblazoned with the ASCAP logo (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers). In some ways, this is the type of hat that one can indeed get away with wearing on the northern fringes of the Upper West Side, but I finally got sick enough of looking at it to make him probably the millionth Koolhaas to be worn on the streets of New York City. No matter - it looks great, of course - it's really a bulletproof pattern.

Db wonders why her dad gets the cool hat.























And finally, as I begin to contemplate my return to work at the end of January, I find myself looking at this this lovely image and wondering what exactly I find to be profoundly wrong with it. Besides everything.

Baby Pope of the Fuzzy Purple People, Pray for Us

We're just back from the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Montreal. Having db at the conference was a lot easier and more fun than I thought. People sure do love babies - I had the distinct impression that, if given a choice between attending a paper session or kissing db's tiny soft adorable baby feet, probably about 99% of the conference attendees would select the latter, without hesitation.

Somehow, we had made it to November without a handknit winter hat for db; I briefly considered buying one for Montreal, but quickly realized that were I to put something store bought on her head, I would regret it forever and secretly regard it as indicative of my failure as both a knitter and a mother. Plus of course I love knitting dorky hats for babies too helpless to resist having them put on their tiny bald heads. So I bought a ball of the fine 50% merino/50% angora Cloud Nine (Cascade Yarns) and by the time we pulled up to our friend's house in Montreal, I had produced a hat that kind of makes db look like the child-pope of the fuzzy purple people.























I couldn't stop laughing at for the whole first day it was on her head, and had Montreal not gotten unseasonably warm and therefore not good fuzzy hat weather, I probably would have continued laughing over the next few days, too.

Speaking of weather, the friend we stayed with is a climate scientist who so completely embodies the absentminded scientist archetype that he had seven, count'em, SEVEN expired jars of aspirin and ibuprofen in his medicine cabinet.















The collection ranges in vintage from 2002 (an excellent year for ibuprofen) to 2008 and had been moved from at least one apartment in New York City to two different apartments in Montreal.

The internet (so reliable...) says that the US military (again, so reliable...) has done tests on ibuprofen that indicate that the medicine retains full potency for at least a year after the expiration date and that older medication loses potency but does not turn into deadly poison (which was our concern). Todd went for the 2008 ibuprofen; he's still alive and well as of this writing.

I had a job interview at the conference, about which I am deeply, deeply ambivalent. My current job has a crap sabbatical policy and a high teaching load, but other than that, I am very happy at it. The potential new job is at one of the richest and most selective liberal arts colleges in the country, located in rural Vermont in between the Green Mountains and the Adirondack Mountains. The nearest real city is Montreal, actually - three hours by car. In terms of cost of living and school for db, the job would be a real improvement, and the teaching load is much lighter and the sabbatical policy much better. The school is so rich that it OWNS ITS OWN SKI SLOPE. Anyway, I think I interviewed very, very well and now I am afraid I am going to have to go give a job talk in January. It's too early to be having this crisis since they won't announce their short list until mid-December, but I can't help but wonder if I would adjust to the rural life and vastly improve my skiing skills or go absolutely out of my mind because the nearest good sushi would be a 3 hour drive away.

Keep yer illiterate hands offa me

Possibly it's just the third trimester rage talking, or maybe I just really miss grading papers, but this pamphlet copy - extracted from a larger collection of advertisements dumped in my lap on the first day of my $300-ish "natural childbirth" class - made me particularly happy that we own a paper shredder:

Motherhood is wonderful but we often underestimate the physical demands of being a mother. Dr. Knitcrit says: Awkward, redundant sentence structure. Also, we seem to underestimate the utility and necessity of commas. We are carrying the baby all of the time which puts a lot of pressure on your shoulders. Dr. Knitcrit says: We? You? Which is it? Pronouns must agree and strictly speaking, the second person should not be abused in this manner, even if it is used consistently. Maybe breastfeeding is causing tension in your shoulders. Dr. Knitcrit says: Maybe. But your writing isn't helping, either. Lack of sleep can cause emotional stress or anxiety. Dr. Knitcrit says: Well, so long as it can't cause both. Is it getting harder and harder to ignore the knots and pains in your body? Dr. Knitcrit says: Not as long as your prose provides the welcome distraction of righteous indignation. Well let us spoil you just a little with a massage designed for the needs of a mother. Dr. Knitcrit says: Again, do not fear the comma even though at this point it actually kind of fears you. Studies have shown 1 hour of massage can help replace 4 hours lost sleep or a more relaxed Mama is a more effective mother for her child. Dr. Knitcrit says: (1) footnote the source (2) Studies have also shown that this statement - and please note that it is a "statement," not a "sentence" - is completely incoherent. (3) Numbers should be written out.

$100 = 60 minutes
$145 = 90 minutes
Dr. Knitcrit says: Would you accept a copy of Elements of Style lieu of cash?

In this case, even I, Knitcrit, can't find a reason to be critical

Ladies and Gentlemen, my first book contract, from one of the best academic presses in the country, has arrived!























Delighted doesn't begin to describe it - and because I actually managed to negotiate in an uncharacteristically savvy fashion, I seem to be on my way to getting a counteroffer from another one of the best academic presses in the country, which means, I think, hope and possibly also pray, that I may be able to dink a few things in the contract a bit more in my favor. But even if I can't, this is the document that will basically get me tenure and which will also bring a project I dearly love and believe in to a wider audience.

Also, on an unrelated note, unbloggable gift knitting has led me to conclude that I hate duplicate stitch and will never use it agian.

And we was both jumpin' up and down yelling "Kill! Kill!"

The main reason I remain anonymous on this blog is because I like to have a corner of the world where neither students nor colleagues can find me. Even with this cloak of anonymity, because I am untenured and also not stupid, I don't generally indulge myself in posts of the "Venting about IDIOTS at work" genre. Sure, the chances of being found are very, very small, but why risk it?

But I have to say that recently I was at a meeting with a member of my department whose presence generally makes me believe that, given the right weapon and conditions, I am in fact capable of disemboweling another human being. Now, one of the best things about being an academic is that most of the time, one does not have to deal with the idiocy, attempts at social climbing, and generally aggressively careerist tendencies of one's colleagues. Perhaps an aggressive colleague might impact one's ability to get tenure, but in this context I am also fortunate to be at a school where the faculty is unionized, and this means that the tenure process is completely transparent. In other words, it is not possible to be struck down because someone on the anonymous tenure committee doesn't like the way you dress. So most of the time I am capable of ignoring the idiots; sometimes I am even able to laugh at them.

So, like I said, I was at a meeting for an academic program at our college that is near and dear to my heart. I have been mulling over how to constructively make changes in it in order to attract more students, but this is tricky because the people who have been running the program a while differ from me in their ideas and outlook and I don't want to capsize the boat from too much rocking. I can't risk being too specific here, but suffice to say that the faculty member whom I'd happily disembowel was at this meeting even though s/he is not part of the program for which the meeting was called. S/he has a long history of emailing everyone in the department whenever he or she accomplishes anything. In other words, things that normal people would just add to their CV this person makes into press releases. The latest thing in his or her life - as we all know from a recent email - was a fellowship to participate in a conference supported by an online idea sharing site called ted. This website is actually a fun place to browse - it's kind of like NPR lite. Edutainment with self-help icing and a dollop of management gurudom in the style of The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. In other words, it's not an academic resource.

So anyway, after attending this conference, my colleague, who runs two different self-help style seminars and is the kind of person who identifies as a "visionary" or "reformer," has decided that now s/he is going to take our college by storm. In an effort to spread the gospel of ted, s/he made us all watch a ted-based video of a popular writer on religion in America who is not only a dilettante but who is also someone whose ideas about religion (hint: core idea is that all religions are about "love") are, I truly believe, at best impotent and at worst ideas that contribute to rather than help end religious violence. HIVES. This popular writer gives me HIVES and there I was at a meeting listening to my messiah wanna-be colleague stomping into the meeting like some latter-day godzilla, representing the academic program that I have quietly been trying to change in a stunningly idiotic, impotent and actually dangerous way.

Did I mention that s/he now carries a new backpack with the ted logo on it?

So as I sat there quietly in the aftermath of the video, feeling the veins in my forehead pop out and telling myself that this was not the time and the place to take a stand, I felt the fetus begin one of its thunk-thunk-thunk-on-the-uterine-wall sessions. Normally the fetus is only active in the evening, so this sudden mid-day foray into uterine gymnastics was unusual. It could have been a response to the sudden rise in my blood pressure and adrenaline levels, but I prefer to think that that's MY child in there, ready to tear its way out of the womb to assist in the takedown of the messiah-complex colleague from hell. With apologies to Arlo Guthrie, I have chosen to believe that at that moment, the fetus and I were both jumping up and down yelling "Kill! Kill!" The two and a half months of morning sickness are now officially forgiven.
_____________________________________________

Thanks to everyone for the good wishes on my pregnancy, by the way. And I am still knitting pretty things but none of them are postable because they're all gifts for blog reading friends due in May. An update on the ongoing Lilyfield mitten tragedy is in the offing, though.

If he weren't my student, I would feel REALLY smug

Quizzes are a necessary evil - occasionally even the most dedicated student benefits from this most primitive of motivational tools. While I eschew the pop quiz, I do give most of my students a set number of quizzes over the course of the semester to - ahem - inspire them to make my class a priority.

So, grading a stack of quizzes this afternoon, I saw that an Obama-supporting student had used the 3 or 4 minutes he had to wait for his slower classmates to finish to decorate the back of his quiz with a big American flag anchored in Obama's name. Not to be outdone, his neighbor, a backwards-baseball-cap wearing type who, to his credit, had the courage to identify himself as a McCain supporter during our post-election class discussion of the candidates, decorated the back of his quiz with the following slogan:

[name of my college] LOVE'S MacKain

Yup.

Dr. F!

I've been busy, but not with knitting (and not with several conference papers, either, but I digress). Rather, together with some friends and my clever composer husband, I have made my first and perhaps last amateur video.

Here's a bit of back story: Basically, during the Hollywood writer's strike Joss Whedon created a 45-minute piece called "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog." It was distributed for free for about a week on a website and then it was moved to itunes, where you can go and download it for a nominal fee (I recommend you do so - it's pretty funny). Dr. Horrible is an aspiring villain seeking membership in the Evil League of Evil; the show is basically the story of his quest to get there; along the way, there' s a love story and lots of great musical numbers. Dr. Horrible's sing-along blog was also a not entirely veiled critique of the current power structure in Hollywood - so Dr. Horrible is clearly a symbol of Joss Whedon/writers and artists, and the "hero" (really the villain) Captain Hammer is clearly a symbol of studio executives, and corporate interests more generally.

The show did very well, and in preparation for an eventual release of DVD, Whedon and his people have created an internet-based contest where fans are invited to create a character who is seeking entry into the Evil League of Evil and a three minute maximum application video. The best ones will be included as DVD extras. I am of course a huge Whedon fan and the idea for this script came to me in a flash - I literally wrote it in an evening and wrote the song lyrics the next morning. Todd wrote the brilliant music for the song. Of course, with the number of entries, we have a snowball's chance in hell of winning - but I honestly wrote this because it came to me, I loved it, and I really wanted to see it done.

And now it is!

Is "f*ck off, you idiots" clear enough?

Earlier this academic year I applied for a small summer research grant from my illustrious institution. I got the news that I didn't get the grant several months ago, but I did not get around to actually reading my rejection letter until today. The first paragraph reassures me that many worthy proposals could not be funded, and it then presents the comments of the reviewers, which I reproduce verbatim:


The committee observed that because the text of your proposal was not sufficiently clear. The proposal did not communicate your ideas and plans effectively enough.


Perhaps the committee. Would have had an easier time, understanding my proposal if, it had contained many grammatical errors. I thank the committee for it's 'helpful feedback' and, I look forward to discussing there helpful comments with the, Office Of Sponsored Programs, as suggested in the closing paragraph of the rejection letter.

Despair and Home Improvement

Grumpiness abounds here at Knitcrit mission control; garden variety annoyances were recently transformed into a massive jungle of despair by the news that my academic arch rival got a major grant for which I also applied and which, needless to say, I did not get. The academic arch rival in question, I hasten to add, is probably unaware of her title; it was conferred upon her years ago when my spies heard her badmouthing me at a conference. Her genetic predisposition to seek and destroy competition combined with the fact that she has now effectively kicked my ass in grantwriting 101 has, I think, doomed me to being the lesser, other, and/or unconsulted academic opinion on our shared topic.

Whoever said that the best revenge is living well has, in recent years, become my personal hero (though I do have a true story about an ex-landlord, a washing machine, and some creative letter-writing that might contend for the title of best revenge, come to think of it. Another time). Unfortunately, working as a hedge fund manager is pretty much the only easy way to live well in Manhattan; for the rest of us, it's a high art.

My most recent triumph in this regard was switching our office and bedroom. Technically, we live in a two bedroom apartment. I say technically because in Manhattan, a room is, legally speaking, any space that has at least one window. Thus, the "room" that we used as a bedroom for nearly the first two years of our lease was a bedroom in the purest sense of the word - it was a room almost completely occupied by our bed, with the remaining floor space filled with two dressers. Going to bed meant opening the door to the room, taking two steps forward, and lying down. I couldn't open the bottom two drawers of my dresser because they were blocked by the bed. Making the bed involved standing in the middle of the bed. And so on.

This living situation was necessary because when we moved into the apartment neither of us had a job in the strictest sense of the word, and we therefore needed to use the larger second bedroom for our shared office. It's a wonder we managed to get married at all after sharing an office, actually.
















Knitcrit: Can I interrupt you for a minute?

Todd: What?

Knitcrit: Will you read this for typos? I have to send it out right away.

Todd: (grumbling) Yeah, yeah, sure (reads, approves, returns to desk, puts on headphones and begins listening to work-related music at high volume).

Knitcrit: Todd. Todd? TODD! (throws pencil/paper clip/crumpled piece of paper at him to get his attention because it's just too hard to get up and walk the three feet to his desk because that would entail the effort of trying to roll the desk chair over the necessary traction-producing Red Ringum).

Todd: (pulling off headphones) What?

Knitcrit: Will you turn the music down? I can't concentrate. Sorry.

Todd: (in a tone suggesting otherwise) It's okay.

Knitcrit: (in a tone suggesting lack of actual gratitude) Thanks.

Ah. The office. It was overflowing with books and bitterness.













































Note Red Ringum looming in the foreground.

When I got my actual job, I got an actual office, making it possible to move all of my books and files to work. Todd's actual job does not, alas, come with an actual office, and so the solution was to move his office to our old bedroom, repaint, and move the bedroom into the nice room with actual light and something resembling enough space for a bed, two dressers, two end tables, and a little desk for my laptop:






































My career may be ruined, but at least I can now make the bed while standing next to it rather than standing on it. What revenge.

The Semiotics of Getting Screwed

I'm not an Anthropologist, but I play one in my department. While historically I have been a regular presenter at professional conferences that are more in keeping with my interests and (I use the term loosely) expertise, this year a good friend of mine who is herself an Actual Anthropologist came up with a pretty interesting panel proposal for that great mother of all professional conferences for Anthropologists, the American Anthropological Association. One jillion emails later, we had a panel. I will spare the reader a lengthy description of the backass backwardness of the registration system for the AAA (it will perhaps be enough to note that they have a 24 hour registration HELPLINE) and move right to the point, namely, that for the privilege of submitting a proposal to the 2008 AAA conference, I was charged $361, and that is completely non-refundable in the likely event that the AAA rejects the panel. This more than double what I pay to attend other professional conferences.






In conclusion, I note that the logo of the AAA resembles nothing so much as a stylized anus. And it didn't take a PhD in Anthropology to engage in that bit of semiosis.

Hejemöny

How terribly embarrassing. Until now, my critique of Ikea carpets has been mired in a hopelessly antiquated phenomenological discourse of good and evil. Now I see that Red Ringum and his unholy minions are best critiqued from the perspective of post-colonial studies.

excerpted from The New York Times, Tuesday, March 11th, 2008, the Arts section:

For some time, it turns out, a handful of nationalist Danes have been barking about booty [including territory] that the Swedes nabbed 350 years ago in a war with Denmark...In other words, one part of Sweden claimed restitution from, well, the rest of Sweden. An Internet poll by a Swedish newspaper revealed that a majority of residents in the region apparently still harbor dreams of Danish citizenship and resent their their calm, polite, democracy-loving Swedish overlords. On Valentine's day, a Danish newspaper went so far as to run a front-page headline accusing Ikea, the furniture giant founded by a Swede, which Danes have long loved to hate, of "bullying Denmark" by giving comfy sofas and shiny tables Swedish and Norwegian place names while assigning Danish names to doormats and rugs. "I don't think this can be a coincidence," a Danish professor is quoted as saying in The Local, an English-language Swedish website (thelocal.se). He called it "cultural imperialism."

I do whatever my Rice Krispies tell me to

Thank goodness I have a blog. All of the big questions that have burned in me for so many years can at last be asked, not to mention illustrated with high quality digital images.

Why does breakfast cereal packaging seem to be calculated to stir up the religious fanaticism that clearly lurks within American hearts?

Breakfast of the ancient Israelites!























Breakfast of Thich Nhat Hanh








and of vegan Buddhists everywhere!























Potato chips, pasta sauces, frozen dinners, canned soup, cake mix - no other packaged food product even comes close. Why breakfast cereal? There must be a reason. Probably the same reason that the the bumper stickers/t-shirts/buttons that proclaim "I do whatever my Rice Krispies tell me to" are so uncannily funny.

Or maybe I spent a few too many years in graduate school studying Religion.

idliot.

There's a veg south Indian joint I frequent after work. Today wasn't a workday, but I was at Knitty City being initiated into the wonders of the integrated (aka attached) i-cord when I got a call from the department secretary. As it turns out, she was not calling to wish me a Happy Valentine's Day, but rather, to ask me why I wasn't at the department meeting. Oops. Bad untenured assistant professor. In the past, we have always gotten a email reminder, but for some reason this time the department head forgot to send one and I had written the meeting date in the wrong place in my datebook, and so I had to rush down to campus, feeling guilty the whole way.

After the meeting I went to this south Indian restaurant for a much-needed quick non-pizza lunch, and owing to the staff's peculiar insistence upon always seating customers right next to one another (even if the entire restaurant is empty), I ended up sitting practically on top of a couple on what was obviously a blind date that was not going particularly well. The boy, lily white as I am - though unschooled in the ways of south Indian restaurant fare - was gently guided through the menu by his lovely Indian lady date, and soon they had a table full of exotic food.

Lily White New York Banker Guy: What's that?

Indian Lady: (encouragingly) That's an idli. (She pauses to give LWNYBG a chance repeat the word. He does not avail himself of the opportunity. She moves on.) It's actually a breakfast food.

Lily White New York Banker Guy: huh - okay - which of these sauces is the best?

Indian Lady: Well, all the sauces are good. (takes bite of idli) mmm...they're the first thing I crave when I --

Lily White New York Banker Guy: (out of nowhere, the most he's talked the entire meal) When you're hung over?

Indian Lady: (carrying on valiantly) -- when I go back to India.