Conversation at my local newstand this AM:

Newstand guy: Isn't it a holiday for you guys today?

Me: Yes.

Newstand guy: So how come you're going to work?

I was headed for services at around the same time of day I normally leave for work, so he must have thought nice clothes + 8 AM = work. I had to explain that we try to dress nice for services.

Sign at the cafeteria of my client in New Jersey, "We have liverwurst today."

Sugiyama report on Plotz's blog.

The blog is public.

Thanks! I had no idea.

Enrolled in the "budget plan" for our winter gas bill. "Budget" payment is $163 a month.

If it were possible to narrow it down to one entity who is responsible for these heating gas prices, I would focus all my considerable hatred on that one entity. As it stands, I will just hate the obvious scapegoat

And try to come up with half that amount every month. Fcuk.

I was walking to the subway today and someone I didn't recognize came up and said hello and asked how I had been. I wasn't sure if I did know her and then realized that it was Judith Light from Who's the Boss (who is acting in a play at a theater in the west village). It turns out I don't know her but found it easier to go along with her and pretend I was whoever she thought I was and go on my way than take the time to explain the misunderstanding.

Went down to Mass MoCA for the afternoon, and found ourselves out and about in North Adams looking for lunch at @ 4 in the afternoon. Nothing open except for a marginal-looking place called Steeples in the Holiday Inn in town – clean and bright enough, with cloth napkins stuffed into wine glasses, but four guys sloshing down beer and watching the Pats game at the bar. One other occupied table in the place & we were seated directly next to it. The handsome and distinguished-looking gentleman at the table looked very familiar...I wracked my brain for a few minutes before I put it together: it was Peter Martins, and the lovely woman with him was his wife, Darci Kistler.

What did you think of Mass MoCA? We were there at the end of August and I didn't like it at all.

I know you didn't ask me but I love MassMoCA. Of course, it all depends on what the exhibits are at any given time. We were there when the giant organ (musical, for you dirty minds ) was in place, and this summer for the cars and the human/animal exhibit. Like DIA, it's a space for exhibits that just won't fit in more "traditional" buildings.

Disclosure: one of Paul's cousins is a doctor and real estate developer in North Adams who was instrumental in saving the factory buildings and getting them converted into the museum. I'm not sure how much it has actually helped the local economy, but at least it keeps the bulildings from becoming derelict and brings people into town.

I loved it. It's a brilliant use of an otherwise derelict space, and like Suzanne says, allows for the exhibition of a lot of non-traditional work. And the pentimento of the facility's previous incarnations is fascinating.

The Becoming Animal exhibit was thrilling – some of it delightful, some of it deeply disturbing, some just plain awful. My favorite piece in the whole museum was the giant frog machine.

And the car loaded with fireworks (different exhibit) was hilarious.

I'm just sorry I haven't been down sooner. I was there very early on, when David Byrne's multimedia installation was in place, but that was 10 years ago (I think). I'm only an hour away, and I really should take better advantage, especially since the Williams College museum and the Clark Institute can be part of the same excursion.

I love the Clark, and we've been meaning to go to the William Museum for some time.

I hated that exploding car exhibit thing with the colored lights! And I thought the Becoming Animal exhibit was just pure sensationalism.

Different strokes....

North Adams is like a big ghost town.

I found the big part of the car exhibit to be pretty silly, tedious even. And even the video of the exploding car superimposed in Times Square was kinda ho-hum (would've been great if it were real, but...). But when I walked around behind the screen and saw the actual car with all the exploded charges stuffed into it – well, it just really appealed to the automotive pyromaniac in me. And the tigers were a total head-scratcher.

I rarely am able to get to the Union Square farmers market on weekday afternoons, but yesterday it was dead, dead so I left the office early hoping to score some apples. I arrived at Union Square just as Fernando Ferrer and Howard Dean, campaigining for Ferrer for mayor, did. Why? The crowd was sparse to say the least.

I did eventually get some nice honey crisps and macouns.

As I was walking home from synagogue for the afternoon break, I noticed the following on their moving billboard:

Symphony Space welcomes B'nei Jeshrun. Yom Kippur services at 4:30 pm.

Because B'nei Jeshrun's building is too small to accomodate the number of people they have for the high holidays...

A man at Grand Central with a sign that says "Tell Me Off for $2."

Wow, talk about inflation. I used to just give him my 2 cents.

My friend called me while she was in the middle of getting a bikini wax.

This I could live without.

Neil Young playing (golf) at the Michelin Championship in Las Vegas.

He'll be in the afternoon pairings off the 10th tee at the Canyons today.

Found on the internet:

Not nearly as surreal as the signs on St. Paul & St. Andrew...

Here's something surreal: purely by chance, I ran into someone I knew from college. And he's now a bigwig in a company just like the one I work for. And it looks like they need editors.

Kismet, anyone?

I know I was there (working), but I can't recall a blessed thing. I mean, I know i was there, but don't remember being there.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/internat...pe/16visit.html

This will be really bizarre...and I'll get to witness it in person

Witnessed yesterday in a residential part of Las Vegas: a group of pre-adolescent kids having a fundraiser car wash...in the parking lot of Hooters.

How were they dressed?

Brrngg, brrnng.

Hello?

Hello, my name is Angelina, Mike Bloomberg asked me to call you. Can Mike count on your support on election day?

No, no he can't.

Thank you. Have a nice day.

Stouffer's new, upmarket "Corner Bistro" meals.

"Eating in is the new dining out."

(Only surreal for NYers.)

GF cleans keyboard with alcohol. Dead keyboard, heroic boyfriend says I'll get you a new one. She lives and dies by this computer during the week. I make 60 minute round trip, back with new keyboard. The only USB keyboard sold in the fucking world that doesn't have a port on it. No mouse, because the laptop only has one USB port. I'll get a Hub in the morning, hopefully in town. I love my Mac's even more today.

I was working (and holidaying) in Paris last week. One night, at about 11pm walking through Place Vendome I notice a few coaches with Japanese tourists pull up, the passengers jump of the coach and start to snap pics of the Ritz. (currently under a big fascia renovation).

As I walk past the front of the coaches, I see the sign in the window;

DIANA DEATH TOUR.

WTF??

Dear oh dear. I wonder how fast the coach goes through the tunnel. Note: I have been through that tunnel at an unearthly speed, and that was before Diana's accident.

Kroger ad in local newspaper: "Kraft Swiss Cheese, Aged Over Sixty Days!" Then the price data. Then "Kraft Cheese: Always So Fresh!"

New reasons to start getting home delivery of the New York Times (true):

"It's concise, it's evocative." Yes, even the Sunday edition, weighing thirty pounds ten ounces, is very concise. And it's evocative of...what? A newspaper, of course. It evokes "newspaper" every time.

"Everything in it is very well written." (Of course, I have not read the weekly restaurant review column, but everything else seems to be very well written indeed.)

"It makes me feel like I'm in the know." (An unearthly illusion I manage to maintain until it is shattered by brute reality around coffee time.)

I'm having a lot of strange subway sightings, the latest was a guy holding a live sparrow.

Reconnected with an old college friend I haven't spoken with in a year or so. Learned that we share a recently rediscovered passion for knitting. I told her I had just finished my first lace shawl; she said she was tackling her first too. It seems we chose the same shawl from the same book.