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quick walkthrough of our humble brownstone
Monday, August 19 2002
On her morning walk in the Vale of Cashmere, Sally the Dog expressed even more than her usual interest in Prospect Park's chipmunks. As she would pas them along the trail, they would shriek and run away, and she'd immediately turn to pursue them. I'd then see them awkwardly scaling a tree (they don't really like to climb), or, more often, I wouldn't see them at all because they'd dashed into a hollow log or down a tunnel in the ground. Sally would then try to dig the chipmunk out, excavating a hole wide and deep enough for her to half disappear into. Her subterranean chipmunk mining operations are always fruitless, and I eventually tire of waiting for her to give up the pursuit. But for some reason this morning I let her go at it for a good fifteen minutes. She kicked up great clouds of dust and used her jaws to rip out any roots that stood in her way. Periodically she'd stop her frantic activity to catch her breath, look, smell, and listen. She was apparently convinced that she was getting closer and closer, because her enthusiasm and tail wagging steadily grew as she dug. But eventually I told her it was time to go.
The real estate agents came early this afternoon and did a quick walkthrough of our humble brownstone co-op apartment. Their assessment was 409 thousand dollars. That was absolutely incredible. Gretchen had bought it for only 130 thousand four years ago!
Coinciding with the real estate agents and their fabulous news was the arrival of Jen, Gretchen's friend from San Jose. She's the one whose girlfriend is having a baby through the miracle of artificial insemination. (The couple even found a sperm donor who is of the same Jewish Russian stock as Jen so that the kid will approximate a mixture of their characteristics.) We all decided to have lunch down at 2nd Street Café, the place Gretchen always goes when taking out-of-town friends to a non-dinner meal in Park Slope.
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After a couple of semi-successful computer repair visits, I came home and watched the second half of Nine to Five. I was surprised by certain aspects of this film, particularly its semi-positive treatment of pot smoking (this would never happen in a mainstream movie today). I was also struck by how Dolly Parton managed to pull off her role as a down-home hillbilly feminist. Now that I've seen Nine to Five, I can recognize the scenes and situations where Office Space pays it homage.
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