I've been busily cleaning up the apartment in anticipation of having guests on Tuesday for a Firefly marathon I had mentioned a couple weeks ago. Polina and some of her friends are planning to come over and we'll see how many episodes we can watch. I'm hoping we can get through the entire season with a couple of Tuesday sessions so we can all watch Serenity together.
Last night I had dinner, poker and movie night at my family's house, and for the second week in a row, I finished last in cards. I guess my big win a few weeks ago is making me overconfident or something. I did teach everybody a new variation on draw poker, which I think I should call "NJ Transit" since we pass and receive cards like rail and bus tickets (we give new games New Jersey-themed names, i.e. Paterson is a seven-card stud game). For the movie we watched MirrorMask, a movie written by Neil Gaiman and directed by Dave McKean, in association with the Jim Henson Company. Also, Tara gave me a long-awaited new mix of songs called Music VII (Inquiry) in a beautifully designed package that I'm looking forward to hearing once the sun goes down.
Last Wednesday when I was on the train into the city, I had an interesting encounter. There was a baby girl sitting in the seat in front of me with her caretaker - she was less than a year old with beautiful golden hair and bright inquisitive eyes. She was pressing her head against the window looking out at the landscape rolling by, and she started looking at me from around and over the top of the seat.
She shyly reached out with her hand, and I responded by extending my index finger. She copied me, and we touched fingertips to each other. She found this very amusing, and we did it again and again, just barely touching the tips of our fingertips and smiling at each other. I thought it was wonderful saying hello in this way, through touch.
