From Staples to Chanel

Winter/Christmas/Festivus break is now over. I am going to be the most organized grad student/TA/human being ever, thanks to a trip yesterday to the most boring store in the world. I now own:

Three new binders.
One new folder.
One three-subject notebook with pockets and perforated/hole-punched pages.
Four new pens, which Jo and I will fight over, but which, unlike the pens from last semester, still contain ink.

Before the serious lesson planning/binder-filling begins, some final notes from vacation:

Snack, a tiny Greek café on Thompson Street in SoHo, is amazing if only in that it's one of the few spots in the area with a grad-student price range that I had not noticed until a couple days ago. Since I also went to high school in lower Manhattan, I have many years worth of experience looking for sub-$10 meals in all the wrong places. The restaurant has a $10 per person minimum at lunch, meaning that I will probably not go back any time soon, but the food was quite tasty. I had a girl-food lunch of arugula-roasted pepper-feta salad and Greek iced coffee (a bit like Tel Aviv iced coffee--sugary, overcaffeinated, and great), while Jo ordered a gender-appropriate lamb sandwich that looked to be a classier version of schwarma. The couple next to us were discussing how wonderful it would be to live on a certain street in Park Slope which happens to be where we live, and then mentioned something about a dissertation, so there, in a neighborhood filled with jet-setters, we felt right at home. Although at one point a super-wealthy-looking middle aged woman entered wearing a coat that was to my Old Navy bathrobe what Jo's sandwich was to schwarma. Apparently it helps to be a local if you want to eat at Snack, according to this rather disturbing reader review, but it didn't seem to hurt to be from an outer borough.

After the feast, we saw Last Year at Marienbad at Film Forum, where I confirmed that I am in no way an intellectual by noticing that the main character's dresses were by Coco Chanel, and, despite the iced coffee, taking mini-naps throughout, waking only to notice a new design. I'd rather have Chanel making my dresses than Robbe-Grillet writing my subway reading.