(no subject)

Pleasant dinner last night with the Landlady. As a bonus, the Landlord showed up, having driven down from the North Country, 15 minutes into it. As J. had randomly chosen to cook another chicken part, we were even able to offer him food.

Much wine was consumed, and we were shown "before and after" photos of the house, especially what the interiors of the rooms of our apartment used to look like. Massive differences abound. I'm glad we have a new stove, for instance, having seen a picture of the old iron coal-burner that was there until just two years ago. It was at least a century old and jury-rigged to hold together with wires and a concrete patch. It was also the only mechanism for heat and hot water throughout the entire house, and the hot water part didn't work. But the Landlady's eccentric artist uncle who lived there didn't seem to mind, I guess.

Our living room used to be his primary studio. Where our couch is now were several tables holding scores of paint tubes and brushes and, for some reason, a mighty horde of dried autumn leaves carefully arranged on paper. Apparently Artist Man was way into leaves. There aren't so many in his extant art works, but he squirreled them away in old books, shoved them in drawers, and, of course, just left them lying around.

The barn/garage/oversized-tool-shed thing in the back yard was, until some time before we moved in, leaning ominously, the outline of its walls more paralellogram than rectangle. You wouldn't know it now...

In other news, we'll see if the boss/advisor remembers our rescheduled appointment today. I'm still not looking forward to it, though.

I forgot...

I was going to post a dream I had last night. It involved my commuting to school on some bizarre version of the T with two people who were suddenly fellow students in the classics department: Lori, a girl I knew in elementary school, and Hilde, my Norwegian penpal (whom I owe a letter in real life, but I digress). It was snowing. We all got off the trolley and they started to cross the street to the building the department (and my office) is in. I was going to meet them later, taking another train so as to avoid walking through the snow. Soon it dawned on me that the closest stop was, however, the one I was waiting at, and I ran to catch up with them.

We entered the Theology building, which was suddenly an arcade, as in roofed-over passageway open to the outside at both ends. Somewhere about where I'd figure the real-life Coke machines are there was instead a September 11th memorial in the process of being dedicated. We had all forgotten it was the something-month "anniversary." Solemnly, we went our separate ways.

My way led to high school home room, and I sat down next to my friend Tim. Presently the bell rang, and the teacher called forth one of the other students, incidentally in real life a woman who had been in the very first class I ever taught as a grad student and with whom I had shared bonds of mutual dislike.

"Christine," said the teacher, gesturing at the student, "won't give up her medieval monastic sculpture for the war effort. Do you think she deserves to be a US citizen?"

"No!" several people shouted.

"Let's put it to a vote," said the teacher. "Christine, tell us your part of the story."

Christine showed us the sculpture, which was a medieval statuette of some saint or other about two feet high, and proceeded to tell witty stories about it. I sat there, slowly realizing that when she was done, the teacher was going to act as prosecutor and deliver a brief speech, and then we were going to vote on whether or not Christine should be stripped of her citizenship, and it was going to be binding. I didn't like Christine, but I thought that was monstrously unfair.

I also became aware of an urgent need to go to the men's room, but I knew that if I did while the trial was in progress I would also be branded a traitor.

But before Christine's presentation was done, I woke up to answer the real-life call of nature that had intruded upon my dream. And that was that.

There was no food involved, Paisley, though I did have a separate dream in which J. and I were looking to purchase some life-sized chocolate flying foxes at a country gift shop's post-Halloween sale. And it is just possible that all of this was brought on by too much wine and taleggio.