But Call Me Betsy

Not the Disney ride, but one of the two independent coffee shops in Princeton. It's a cash only place where the baristas are always cheerful instead of surly, like every single coffee shop employee working in Philly. I have the next two weeks off from work, and so am out in the world at 3 p.m. on a Monday. I fully expected the place to be quiet send deserted, but instead, it's hopping with white people, almost exclusively, some old, some young, some in between. Perhaps they are also off work because of the holidays, or else there are a lot more people in town with leisure time than I ever knew. It's standing room only, so I am sitting at the counter part rather than a table, next to a woman who appears to be reading a book that requires her to underline sentences. How she can focus on words with the trio of girls next to her is hard to fathom. The girls are all brunettes, either skipping seventh period high school or possibly college students, though their topics of convers...

The other day, someone I don't know asked me to give her my email address over the phone. For whatever reason, she had trouble hearing what I was saying, even when I went really slowly. I did that thing where you say the letter, and then give an example. I always say, "'A' as in apple, 'B' as in boy..." She was very confused, and when she repeated what she thought my email was, she had written down something like,"applelisaappleboyrightintoexchange@gmail.com." We started again. "No, the letter 'A' as in apple..." She said, "Okay, apple..." This went on for some time until I just started saying yes, that's right, and accepting that I would never get an email from her, though someone with a thirty-five letter username would likely be receiving her message. I told my friend Adam this, and he said he had an idea for a skit, where you're in an office setting and start spelling out your email to a client,...

Everyone at work, at the coffee shop, at the library, at the synagogue seems to be talking about the Ugly Sweaties parties they're invited to. You've heard about them--those are the usually office-centric parties where you are required to wear the ugliest Christmas/holiday sweater you can find at Goodwill. Except now, it's such a popular phenomenon that you can buy these special horrible sweaties at Target and Urban Outfitters and Kohl's. What an embarrassment, though, if you bought what you thought was the funniest, most unique sweatie at Walmart, only to realize that Jean from accounting is wearing the same one! I've participated in these parties and I even suggested one at my last job, but I guess it's one of those snotty things--like, once everyone's doing it, it's no longer funny and cool. And then you start to see the variations of sweaties that allow men to talk about their favorite subject, the penis. And women too, can use it as an o...

Or to complain that they start playing it earlier and earlier each year, or to wonder if anyone under the age of 35 has any idea who Bing Crosby is or to say that I cannot watch Elf again. We have purchased a single wreath which Dan hung on the front door, but have not yet committed to a tree, as the whole endeavor will also require lights and new ornaments, since we can't face the same Target ones circa 2006. I am not invited to any Ugly Christmas Sweater parties, but we will have a staff party on Thursday and another one the following week. I have done no Christmas shopping, and have no brilliant ideas for what to buy my loved ones. Maybe we need to sit down and make our respective lists for one another. PJs? Yankee candles? Gift cards to Starbucks? I really need to find some time to think about this more--I used to be creative and make photo albums and gift certificates, but now, I feel like I'm just trying to figure out how not to wait until the last minute.

Princeton Library has this table of book club books and I occasionally browse through them. They're not current books, necessarily, just books that the people seem to be popular with book clubs at the moment. A month ago, I checked out A Tree Grows in Brooklyn because I never got to  it when I was younger. I read four pages, felt depressed by her scrounging for tin,  and put it aside. My guess is that the girl will find that the tree is her one steadfast friend through her years of poverty and painful girlhood lessons. But I could be wrong. Instead, I checked out a Graham Green book, The Heart of the Matter . I read half of it, and then realized that I wasn't sure if the story was set in Africa during WWI or Syria during WWII or possibly current day Dominican Republic. The main character's name is Scobie, and so that made him hard to take seriously. I couldn't decide if it was a novel of intrigue, socio-political critique, or an historical account of racial relation...

Did you see this movie? I missed it somehow, and so we rented it on Saturday. The beginning scene is two twenty-something women talking in this slightly stilted, artsy way (or maybe it just seemed artsy because the movie is filmed in black and white) about their futures together. They're best friends, not lovers, but they are extremely close. That first scene is needed to set up the rest of the film, which is somewhat about the friends going in different directions (one appears to be jumping on the career/marriage track and the other is still finding her way), but it's mostly about Frances, a 27 year old dancer's apprentice trying to make it in New York. It took me a while to warm up to the movie, and it took Dan about 30 minutes to dismiss it completely to go work on a logo in the kitchen, but I kept watching, and it never became what most movies about women turn into--this search for heterosexual love. In fact, there was pretty much no sex in the whole film, because, ...

Now that we've lived in Princeton for two months, I can say that the main thing I like about our new location is avoiding route 1 completely. Remember last year? Remember how I used to race home at sundown because I was so scared to drive on route 1 after dark? And when it rained? Or during the day? And pretty much any time I got behind the wheel? In our new location, I take 206 into work. Not only is it a shorter distance by about 10 to 15 minutes every day, it's one lane. One windy country road that goes past farms and mansions and the governor's house and then through quaint downtown Lawrenceville. There are a few traffic lights, but that's okay with me too, because it keeps people from racing too fast. I have a theory that you will find better drivers on country-type roads, because they are more interested in having a calm drive than in getting to their destination as quickly as possible. Those who want speed, efficiency, and near-death experiences are drawn to th...