6:13 AM:

Wednesday, May 28th: Met Jen at Xando's, a coffeeshop in the Village that has the distinction of being the place we've gotten together most often. Now, the thing with me and time is that at least 19 times out of 20, I'm going to be late for whatever it is I'm going to. The 20th time, I'll overcompensate, and show up early. (It's one extreme or the other, though.) And so it came to pass that I arrived fifteen minutes early, while she sensibly assumed I'd be late, and showed up about fifteen minutes after the designated meeting time. Which gave me a chance to read the Village Voice from cover to cover, so not to worry.

While I'm catching up on encounters with Jen I never got around to writing about in this journal, I should say something about a phone conversation we had towards the end of the past semester. I was giving a short presentation in my Romanticisms class about a scholarly essay about British literary publications... with the hitch being that I was having trouble making sense of the essay, and still didn't have it straight by the morning of the day I was presenting it. Hoping for a sounding board, I called my sister, but either the line was busy or she wasn't home. Upon which I called Jen, who agreed to help, despite the fact that I'd sort of woken her up.

Now, see, I had forgotten that Jen had graduated summa cum laude. I had cause to remember it really quickly, though. I'd read her a paragraph of academic gobbledegook, and she'd come back with a sentence in plain English that summed it up. It was amazing, and also a bit humbling. The conversation lasted a full three hours, and by the end of it, I still didn't know what the hell the author was getting at, but at least I had enough of an idea to be able to ramble about it in class for the allotted amount of time. Which wouldn't have been the case without her help.

But getting back to the trip to New York... so we talked for awhile, and it eventually transpired that her early dinner date with her brother wasn't going to happen after all. On the one hand, this meant that we had a bit more time; on the other hand, I was running on a bowl of corn flakes and a cup of chai, and was getting kinda hungry.

The coffeeshop not having kosher food, we sallied forth to a nearby kosher place, using the restaurant database on my Palm. Or at least that was the theory. The catch was that I hadn't updated said database in about a year. So after walking for a bit, we discovered that Café 18 no longer exists.

But, okay, not to worry... we walked around town some more, eventually arriving at the Village Crown. The lunch menu posted on the door looked pretty good, and affordable, both very desirable qualities. Unfortunately, after sitting down and getting the menus, we discovered that, thanks to the whole Café 18 debacle, we'd arrived too late for the lunch menu. So we looked over the regular menu, looked over the prices, gulped, sighed regretfully, and slunk out.

The waiter then chased us down outside, saying that he'd try to see if the cook would give us lunch a bit late but, alas, it turned out that the cook was not so inclined.

By this time, Jen's feet were killing her, her new shoes not having been broken in yet, and I was approaching a ravenous state, so we took the subway up to Midtown, to the deli across the street from the pizza shop Miriam and I had met two days earlier. And I chowed down on an overstuffed pastrami and roast beef sandwich, and we split some cake, and it was good. Finally.

From there, to the south of Brooklyn, where I met another friend from the Old Neighborhood and his wife, and their daughter, who was born since the last time I was in town. It seems that said friend thought he'd shown his wife the photos I'd taken after I started shaving. Which led to what may have been the one totally uncensored reaction I got during the whole trip, as she emerged from the next room: "Hi, Shmu-- AAAAH!" But after that, and after the two finished arguing about whether he'd shown her the photos, it was cool.

Thursday, May 30th: Staggered out of bed. Went to the Queens College graduation, in hopes of seeing one particular graduating student, arriving just moments before the English Department graduates were individually called across the stage in the English Dept. ceremony following the main ceremony. Unfortunately, I'd failed to coordinate this with the student in question, so while I'd assumed I'd see her after the English ceremony, it turned out that she'd left after the main one. Oops.

Still, I spoke to a few more professors, had some pizza, and did some shopping, picking up two Jewish books, two Jewish CDs, a pot holder, a small stuffed Eeyore, three kitchen knives, and a pizza cutter. The knives were identical, except that they had red, blue, and green handles, and had "MEAT," "DAIRY," and "PAREVE" engraved on the respective blades. Cool and useful.

I'd planned to stop by my mother again, but ended up not having time to do so, given the demands of geography, so I went straight back to my brother's place, where I had supper with him and his wife. From there I stopped by my oldest sister for one more conversation, then rushed back, packed everything up, and went back to Manhattan for the trip home.

And that's (finally!) it, at least for the stuff that happened last month...