A full day

-Pastry success: this morning's croissant did not (as far as I know) make contact with the floor. Next stage of becoming an early-morning person: figuring out some way to consume food and caffeine before teaching that doesn't involve shelling out $6. Coffee out seems non-negotiable, unless someone can recommend a thermos that could keep coffee hot and in-thermos on the bike-train-train-train route.

-No, young man in the building where I teach who asked, I'm not a freshman at the business college. For so many reasons, you've got the wrong person. (Yet the "are you Jewish?" Hasids have been leaving me alone.)

-Even if the textbook hasn't yet gotten to être, the students need être. Otherwise they get confronted with "nous sommes" and... explaining what this means not in relation to "je suis" just leads to problems.

-Had vegetarian (but coulda fooled me - visually, at least) duck basil stirfry (pad gra prow, mmm) at Galanga and Amy's Bread dessert (lemon layer cake) with an NYU friend, leading to possible culinary jealousy on the part of a certain NYU-grad spouse. Goals for the semester include not spending what I make teaching entirely on lunch, so maybe this won't be an everyday thing. But with a Dos Toros taco (sorry!) a mere $4, sushi from Sunrise Mart about the same, there is hope.

-Saw a woman "smoking" an electronic cigarette on the subway. No one else seemed to notice, suggesting that this could well have been a thing on public transportation in the city for a while now, and it takes a country girl like me to pick up on it.

-Somehow ended up schlepping home a pound each of Murray's mozzarella and Oren's coffee, because clearly the state of New Jersey sells neither this rare cheese variety nor this obscure caffeine-having bean.