back to school

there's always this naive excitement at this time of the year, almost a giddiness among school-going kids and their families. they're transitioning to a life that seemed a dull routine only three months prior. i guess in some crazy way i re-live this through all my teacher friends, their kids, and so on.

i've succumbed to it in some way i guess because i have also dropped the ball and enrolled in continuing ed class at nyu. statistics for management, they're calling it. plus since i'm considering going back to teaching in the fall, i'm being even more attentive to it all to make sure that it's the direction that i'd like to head...

ny mets vs atlanta braves

who would have thunk it? me at a baseball game. it was quite fascinating actually. i enjoyed re-learning some rules, and learning the rest for the first time (the bulk actually falls into this category :) the mets were crushed by the braves - they just couldn't seem to get it together despite the rowdy and optimistic crowd . . . also nacholess! they just didn't seem to have nachos to sell!

and i will continue to spend the next hour (it's 2:51am) trying to battle my insomia!

laryngitis continued et nyc exploits

i'm at home again on the verge of total and complete boredom. i made a duane reade run to buy some guaifenesin (supposed to help break up the phlegm). post-that i'm just waiting for the medicine's effects to cure me of this virus! although, there are no real cure for viruses - you have to just wait them out....

i do have few going-out-out updates that i've shared with most peeps by now. one being the randomness of a couple saturdays ago at the bulgarian bar in the lower east side. we began and ended the evening at this spot.

the first 'story' is not really a story but just the fact that some guy in a highly excited state bashed my friend's knee into a speaker. quite a way to jumpstart the evening.

the second story of the evening was set at uncle ming's when two men began chatting with me while my friend bought us drinks. as we exchanged pleasantries and some info about our hometowns, one dude mentioned he's from rhode island. since i went to college there, i thought i'd build on that. the dude asks me where i went to school, and after hearing that i went to brown, he asks, "isn't that the really liberal school where women don't shave their armpit hair?"

i know i should have been completely appalled and somewhat incensed by his ridiculous attempt at getting a rise out of me or making conversation or whatever you want to call it but i let it slide because of the high from being out-out on a saturday nite in enycee. (funny thing is i don't know many women at brown who don't shave their armpit hair.)

moving on to the third story of the evening in the bulgarian bar. seconds after my friend and i enter she's drawn away by another man who is also in a highly excited state and begins jumping up and down with her. i wander over to the staircase and lean on the railings watching the two tear up the dance floor. my eyes turn to this scruffy lookin dude who is spastically sketchin away while stealing glances at me. obviously freaked out by this, i walk across the dance floor towards the bar area and stop short to see if he's followed me, and i quickly find that he has indeed followed me to the other side of the bar. he asks me to dance, and i politely decline. minutes later my friend and i make a move and check out of the crazy bulgarian bar.

all of this makes me really raise an eyebrow or two at nyc nightlife. and maybe even not just that. i was at the laundromat the other day and the pick-up line used on me by another scruffy lookin dude was - have you read siddhartha by herman hesse? so maybe i'm actually raising eyebrows at the city in general?!?