Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Random Thoughts on a Wednesday Afternoon

I've really got nothing interesting to report this week, and I don't think you particularly want to read the details of how exhausted I am or of the weight of the world trying to crush my spirit or of how my once-considerable (and modest, too!) brain seems to be shrinking at an ever-increasing rate... I also feel that I need to post non-bunny things between Weekly Bunnies posts, lest they take over the blog to the extent that they have tried to take over my kitchen... Thus, here are some random thoughts that have been kicking around in my apparently-shrinking brain lately:
  1. There is a distinct possibility that my 80-year old neighbor is either dating Popeye, dating a man who believes he is Popeye, or is actually single but believes that she is dating Popeye (who only she can see). I realize the first option there is definitely the least probable, but given the evidence (a love note from Popeye on the dashboard of her car, a Popeye self-portrait with affectionate sign-off on the white board she keeps on the back door) it's probably too soon to say. She is quite the odd duck, so I wouldn't put anything past her. She occasionally bangs on my door while yelling my name in order to ask me things, and often I don't bother to answer because I cannot fathom why she is doing so. Once I ignored her knocking and largely forgot about the incident, until I opened the door to leave for work the next morning and found on my doorknob a grocery bag containing one orange, one apple, and one box of Thin Mints. I am still trying to figure that one out... She cracked me up most recently when asking me to bring in her mail this week while she's away. I didn't think this was a particularly complicated request, but she kept giving more and more details, including pointing to the plastic bag in which I'd brought my lunch to work and saying "Oh! And maybe you can save that bag and use it to put my mail in?" as if I might otherwise... Actually, I have no idea what her fear was if she didn't specify a bag in my possession that I could use for mail-gathering. Seriously, lady. I have a freaking PhD. I think I can handle this... Anyway, sweet, eccentric old ladies who may or may not be dating Popeye make better neighbors than loud college kids, so I can't really complain...
  2. I find myself perplexed these days by the etiquette of holding doors open for people. I am seldom isolated while approaching the main entrance at work, and the spacing between people tends to vary considerably. There are times when you should obviously hold the door open for the person behind you, times when you "clearly" don't need to hold the door open for them, and times when it doesn't seem (to me) like you need to hold the door open but then you realize you were wrong and there is awkwardness when the person you didn't hold the door for catches up to you at the elevator... I put "clearly" in quotes because about 70% of the time when I feel I am way too far behind a person for them to hold the door for me, they will actually stop in their tracks and stand there holding the door open until I walk through. (It is typically the men who do this.) This is where I start to feel like I'm maybe confused about the etiquette of this situation. My policy has always been that (assuming the door isn't going to lock behind me and the person behind me does not have their hands full) I only hold the door open if doing so does not require me to stop walking. I will slow down or maybe give the door an extra shove backward if a person is just a little too far behind me, but that's as far as I'm willing to go. Any thoughts on this? Does this make me a bad person? Is it actually only men who are supposed to feel socially obligated to hold doors open for people?
  3. Because this is theoretically a blog about food, I should probably mention a random food thing... I had one of my very favorite breakfasts on Sunday: eel. It's really one of my favorite foods in general, actually, but it makes an extra-awesome breakfast... (It's probably my second-favorite breakfast on the planet behind Eggs Benedict... and it's a very close second.) This is basically a convenience food. You buy frozen barbecued eel at your favorite Asian grocery (you can buy bone-in frozen raw eel sometimes, too, but that's a lot more work than I'm willing to put in on a leisurely Sunday morning), make a batch of sushi rice, make some spicy mayo (mayo, lots of Sriracha, and a few drops of sesame oil), microwave the eel, and plate it up. Near-instant awesome breakfast:
In more interesting news, I'm off to see TV on the Radio at the House of Blues tomorrow night. Should be fun, but I'm going on my own and it's on a work night so there's a slight activation energy that will have to be overcome in order to get me out of my apartment and into Boston... Should be fun times, though... and at least there's no baseball game to jack up parking prices this time...

4 comments:

Midge said...

I tend to hold the door open for people at work because there seems to be a lot of infirm people at the courthouse.

I've also noticed that there is a direct correlation between me wearing heals and men holding the door for me.

And I'd be lying if I said I didn't like it when people generally hold the door for me.

emmo said...

See, I always feel awkward when people stand there holding the door open for so long... Unless I clearly am going to have trouble with the door (hands full or what have you), I would mostly just prefer that they keep on walking... This is probably somewhat generational, I suppose...

Max Power said...

How can it be generational? You're the same age.

emmo said...

I was referring to the door-holder in the "generational" thing (although that is not at all clear reading it back), not the door-walker-througher... In my experience it's the older people who hold the door longer than is necessary for me, and it is generally the older ladies who seem miffed if a door is not held... I think people in Midge and my age group can be pleasantly surprised (or slightly uncomfortable) about a door being held, but our generation certainly doesn't seem to expect it the way some older people do...