Speaking for Sarah

In yesterday's New York Times, Alex Witchel has a piece about being at some kind of fancy fundraising dinner, where people sit at round tables like you do at a wedding. She describes the familiar social ritual of introducing oneself to one's table partners, etc. The main thrust of the piece is her incredulity about the fact that the man sitting next to her (who, in bloglike fashion, she pseudonymizes as Hollywood Big Shot) spent the whole time on his Blackberry. But what caught my attention was this throwaway passage:

I sat down and talked with the man to my left, who was downright delightful. All was well until the entrees were served, the accepted moment to switch conversational partners [my emphasis], no matter how much fun you're having.

I have to say, I was struck dumb by this information (or would have been had I been speaking at the moment). Does everyone else know this rule about switching partners? And if so, how and where does one learn this stuff?

I have been luxuriating in not having two jobs right now, since teaching is over for the summer. I love teaching, but it's nice to have some extra time and less stress.

What have I been doing? Having dinner with friends, going to barbecues (well, one, and we ate indoors because of the rain, but it was still a lovely, relaxing evening with some old friends and some newish ones and some entirely new people). Brunch on the spur of the moment (lots of eating, I guess!) with other friends and then lingering together on the bench outside where we ate, just chatting, no place to go, nowhere to be.

Lots of yoga for mental and spiritual and physical health. I have been noticing lately, in class, with whichever of my wonderful yoga teachers it is, how amazing it is when the teacher gently touches you and guides your back or your waist or your shoulders to bend ever so slightly more or differently. The touch is so soft that sometimes I almost don't feel it, but then something happens, my muscles are stretching in new ways, my body is relaxing into itself.

Thanks to all of you who commented on my last post and reassured me that my wildly scattered way of conducting my life (i.e., packing for a trip) is not so unusual after all! I am home safe and tired and I did have some fun in addition to working.

1) Procrastinate as long as possible. For example, take a nap after work, and then when you wake up, decide that going to that yoga class at the gym at 8:30 p.m. is more urgent than packing for your 10 o'clock flight the next morning. Besides, it will relax you.

2) When you get home, enjoy a sandwich while watching Sex and The City reruns on TBS. During commercials, get up and desultorily straighten up the apartment IN PREPARATION for packing. You've already let go of the idea, inspired by jo(e)'s recent post, of actually cleaning the apartment before you go away. Getting on the plane is the focus now.

3) At 11 o'clock, make the huge commitment of switching off the TV and putting on a CD. Springsteen, Tunnel of Love, which you have lately been listening to obsessively. Open a beer. Open the suitcase. Sneakers in first, of course, in case there is a chance to work out at the hotel. Then, wander dreamily from one pile of clean clothes (you have done a lot of laundry this week in preparation for this moment) to another, picking out pieces that strike your fancy and putting them into the suitcase. 12 outfits for four days is not too many. You are, after all, going to a city where it will be hot outside but freezing inside the hotel where the conference events will be held. Better to be prepared.

4) At midnight, write a list of items that cannot possibly be packed until the morning: toiletries, jewelry, the bag that goes with you on the plane with CD player, reading material, etc. Experience thankfulness that your flight is at 10 and not at 8. (You try never to schedule flights before 10.)

5) Write a blog post about how taxing it is to prepare for a trip.



Edited to correct the link to jo(e) above, which I had typed incorrectly. It should come up correctly any time now.

Sometimes I really do get a lot accomplished in a day. Today, for example, I did the following:

1) Went to work.

2) At lunchtime, went from Manhattan to Brooklyn and back again (okay, only one stop on the subway from where I work to downtown Brooklyn, but still) to see the eye doctor, who said everything looked fine with my contact lenses.

3) At 4:00, I met, at work, for "one-on-one counseling" with a representative from the retirement fund that our company uses. The gist was that I should be more "aggressive" and less risk-averse in how I allocate my investments. This is what they always tell me, but this time they were very convincing. They had me fill out a questionnaire about my feelings about risk-tolerance. There were two representatives, a youngish, very pleasant, personable, self-assured woman who did most of the talking and an older man (her supervisor?) who said he would just be a "fly on the wall." A couple of times she turned to him with a question or he interjected something. In particular, he said that the questionnaire really was supposed to indicate how I felt about risk, that it had to do with emotions. I thought, yes, I have emotions about this, but I really wish I understood it all better.

It turned out, even with my emotions, that I could tolerate more risk than my current portfolio reflects. So I may act on the advice to be more aggressive.

4) Got home, took clothes to the cleaners, and went to my cardio-yoga class., which was both strenuous and relaxing. Now I am, in that pre-travel ritual (I leave on Thursday for a few days away at a conference), washing some other clothing by hand. I am also so tired that I am slightly dizzy. Time to rinse my clothes and fall into bed.

Now that I have seen The Da Vinci Code, I finally have the context for the Fibonacci sequence we've all been using madly to generate "Fib" poems. Although I think I had the idea that it would be a much bigger part of the story--it kind of came and went.

The movie, as others have written, is not very good. Tedious and long. But I had a good time anyway--I went with my brother, who wanted to go to the movies, and who selected this one when I read out the names in the newspaper. (My brother, as I've written here before, had a stroke two years ago and has very little speech and cannot walk. I was pleased for him that he managed to let us know he wanted to go to the movies and picked one.) It was a fun excursion for us, negotiating the short bus ride to the local multiplex with his wheelchair and then getting set up in the movie theater with popcorn and soda. I was grateful, as I always am, that the buses are wheelchair-accessible, and the theater also.

We exchanged a few chuckles at some of the cornier lines. At the moment when a connection is revealed between seemingly unrelated bad guys (I'm trying not to give away anything here), my brother said one of his few words or semi-words, which is, "Ooooooo....," accompanied by an appropriate expression of mock-surprise. At the end he looked over at me and made a gesture conveying something like, "Whew!" I asked, jokingly, "Got that?"

I think he did, mostly.

On the way back to the bus, we agreed that the movie was too long, but that the old guy (whom I mistakenly identified as Derek Jacobi rather than Ian McKellen) was good and that there was some interesting history.

Submitted my grades tonight at last, with an hour and a half to go before the midnight deadline. What would life be without a little drama?

I think I'm happy and relieved but I can't tell because I'm so tired. Probably I'll be happy tomorrow.

In other news, I played volleyball wearing my brand-new contact lenses--first ones ever--over the weekend. It was immensely freeing to be able to see everyone--and the ball--without wearing glasses. Of course, I had to endure comments like "must be those contacts" every time I missed a hit.