(no subject)

[mamadeb]

We went to visit my brother today. I like traveling by train - it's a bit longer than if we'd rented a car, and not much savings, but I get to read, not drive. And there are people.

There was the chatty conductor on the trip out, who had a kind word or a joke or a wish for a good trip to everyone as he passed, and who explained why people had to walk forward to leave at certain stations.

There was the dark young woman in the tight white tank top who perhaps should have worn something else, or at least something underneath.

There was the baby girl and her father - she would not be still so he had to walk with her, holding her hands or top of her dress, and she'd stop and smile at everyone, and when he picked her up, she'd wave and everyone would wave back, and she clapped her hands and everyone clapped back and then she let daddy sit down and play with her that way for a few minutes, to his relief.

We were tired on the trip back, having had lunch and chatted with my brother, and then gone shopping for a digital camera (didn't get) and some books (did get) and then we went off to an interesting kosher restaurant for dinner. Interesting because it was two restaurants in one building - dairy and meat, with the two kept strictly separated with separate entrances and no way to walk from one to the other. We had meat.

And I finished my books on psycho/sociopaths (thank you, ginamariewade and I learned a few things about myself, and a lot about fictional characters. I'll be writing about those, I think.

But we were tired, so all I really noticed on the trip back was the young woman across the aisle in the pink pedal pushers who was reading Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. And then we took the subway home, immersed in our books, and watch QAF and we are home.

(Never let me read MFK Fisher. I'll write like her for days.)

ETA: My brother, I should mention, lives in New Jersey.

Comments

[zsero.livejournal.com]

BTW, at Café Rimon, in Jerusalem, the indoor dairy and meat sections are in separate rooms, with a communicating door, but in the outdoor section meat and dairy are kept separate only by using tables of different shapes. The square tables are for meat, and the round ones for dairy. They each have their own staff, so you don't get the mixups that would be inevitable if the same waiter were serving both kinds of tables.

On my latest trip, an email acquaintance and I met for lunch, briefly discussed whether to have meat or dairy, settled on dairy, and sat at a round table. A waitress brought us menus and water, but as we were examining the menus my phone rang, and another friend asked if I was free for lunch. I told him where we were and suggested he join us, but he said he wanted meat, so we apologised to the waitress, got up, and moved over to the next table, which was square. A different waiter came over and gave us meat menus.