With Mercury Stubbornly Retrograde, Dr. Pretentious Concocts A Cunning Plan Which Cannot Fail

[dr_pretentious]

For three years, I've had my eye on the reading series Ellen Datlow and Gavin Grant run. I've managed to get to a reading there all of once. This Wednesday I figured, well, I'd be at Sloane-Kettering to see G anyway, so I could just hop the 6 train, no problem. If you know me well enough to read this, you probably know my relationship with clock-time can be kind of tenuous, but that's not why I didn't get there. Doctors have this inconvenient habit of doing rounds. The HIPAA legislation that protects our privacy means that, once a pack of doctors starts doing rounds, nobody enters the ward and nobody gets out, so that nobody hears about cases they're not related to. For most of an hour, C and I were pinned down in the isolation room in the ICU as if by enemy fire. (Well, probably not very much like enemy fire, but it was fun to say.) By the time I got to the Bleecker Street station, the reading was pretty much over.

Next month, though, matociquala will be the featured reader. That's Wednesday, 7pm, August 16th, for anyone who's interested. I'll get there if I have to paddle across Raritan Bay in Meagan the Mariner's sea kayak. Hm. Probably Meagan the Mariner will be reclaiming her boats this weekend--isn't that just Mercury retrograde for you? And, as witness my infamous Silly Canoeing Accident on the Delware & Raritan Canal, I'm actually not very good at steering boats. So I suppose I'd better make other arrangements.

My current notion is that I'll clear my calendar of students for the day and take the train into Manhattan around noon. If no other diversions present themselves, I'll probably spend the afternoon hanging out in the reading room at Poets House, though if something interesting is showing at the Angellika, I might be tempted. (Other diversions are welcome to present themselves.) After missing the reading on Wednesday, I stumbled across a restaurant so delightful, I half expect it to disappear into Faerie before I find it again. My definition of delightful, in this case, involves goat cheese with fennel pollen. I'm inclined to go back.

The tutoring practice is booming. I have more students than I know what to do with. In September, when the kids who are off visiting their grandparents in Taipei and Bangalore and St. Petersberg all come back for the school year, I may actually have to start turning students away. I can afford take one weekday off, dammit.

Comments

[shakti-lemaris.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, tutoring...
Recently I've acquired as a sort of client, a PhD student in Knowledge Management whose second language is English. He's brilliant but he makes a lot of nitpicky errors in his writing. I copyedit his papers and he gives me money. This has been going on for several months now, and I still find it amazing.

[hypanebliss.livejournal.com]

So what is this fennel pollen that you are referring to? Having recently come to realize that I quite enjoy eating goat cheese I'm very curious. :)

This is Steve by the way. I've met you a few times, most recently when you came to visit with the lovely Sabri earlier this year. My journal is an odd hodge podge of my more chaotic and ghetto traits. Feel free to add me back but I'll certainly not have a conniption if you don't. I suspect you spend about 0.0001% of your available free time reading the internet. :)

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

I'm not a skilled enough cook to know how to deploy fennel pollen. All I can say is that it was a much subtler, much milder version of that same licorice flavor you get with fennel seed and fennel bulb, and that it and the lavender flowers pervaded the goat cheese beautifully.

I think you've mistaken me for jeneralist, who made the trip with Sabrina. Right circle, wrong doctor. My degree's in an entirely different field. The closest I can come to the kind of doctoring Jen does is to say, Make it two paragraphs and call me in the morning. I've never yet made it out to Minnesota--my loss, I know. I thought I'd get there for FG this year, but I have a family wedding that weekend. Don't worry about mistaking me for jeneralist; I've been guessing wrong which Minnesotan you are, too.

I'm spending far too much of my time on the internet, and it's bleeding the life out of me. Hazards of having a gregarious temperament and a calling to do a solitary kind of work. Rough combination sometimes. I do hope I make it west to meet you all, and not too long from now.

[citabria]

Fennel pollen ... I've only had that at Lupa, over panna cotta. Yum!

[rednikki.livejournal.com]

Is it OK if I point my friend raqs at this post? She's on Long Island, also a writer, and I think she'd like this reading thing. (I also think you guys would hit it off like gangbusters - she's an old schoolmate of tyellas.)

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Please always feel welcome to point folks over here. I've noticed raqs in your comment threads, and she does sound like good company.