we run the night

I'm back in NYC, and while I'm excited for my conference (and, after that, some major writing productivity), it was v. sad to say goodbye to the New Haven contingent. We had more fun today before it was time to auf wiedersehen my way to the train station; equally importantly, I slept over eight hours last night (which also helped me to have fun - I have become old and decrepit and can't survive on multiple nights of less than 6hrs of sleep). Zach, Maggie and I met up with Claudia, Ritu and Bill somewhere in New Haven or its general vicinity for brunch at Bella's, where we were promised a long wait and commensurately delicious food. This was true on both counts; the saddest point was when, around minute forty-five of our wait, we were told our table was ready...only to discover, to our dawning horror, that we had been mistaken for a group of five and that we had to wait another twenty minutes. Sad. But the food was *awesome*, and I ate almost every bite of my bayou omelette (shrimp, andouille sausage, cheese, etc.). And Ritu and I bonded over our shared love of sour cream, which we both asked for and which we were both mocked for by the rest of the party (Ritu moreso, since she ate it with her fork by itself when she was too full to finish her burrito).

Post brunch, we wandered around for fifteen minutes or so, and then Claude and I dropped Ritu and Bill off at the train station so that they could return to NYC at a more reasonable hour. I spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out at Zach and Maggie's; Maggie and Claude had to finish reading the book club book (Maggie successfully, Claudia less so), and so I kept Zach company while he prepped the book club food and I flipped through the New York Review of Books in a completely desultory style. I'm hopeful that he and Maggie (and Claudia, obvi, although she's a bit further away from finishing her program) will end up on the west coast again, even if I am dreaming of running away on a steamer ship and sailing the world**.

Anyway, Zach made fresh spring rolls, which involved a hideous amount of chopping of vegetables, and then I took the credit by upstaging him in the rolling of said spring rolls (mostly because I didn't make the 'burrito fallacy', as he called it, of overstuffing them). Book club was fun, albeit more serious and less drunken than the San Francisco book club - we read CLOUD ATLAS (as you've probably read here a bajillion times) and I really, really enjoyed it. Zach also played the movie trailer, which made me even more super psyched. And then I said my farewells, Claude took me to the train station, I made it to New York, and I checked into my hotel with only minimal drama and only one dude hitting on me in the elevator. And now, I really must sleep; my conference is tomorrow, and I somehow have to be awake/professional/coherent/able to comprehend the speech patterns of people who have never met Adit, all of which will be difficult. Goodnight!

**speaking of running away and sailing the world, happy birthday and many grand felicitations to Walter (aka Harold, aka the Talbotross)!