Lots of little things.
This morning I was listening to my iPod on shuffle while waiting for the bus. ("My iPod on Shuffle While Waiting for the Bus", or any subset of that, is not the title of a song. While I was waiting for the bus, I was listening to my iPod, which was set to shuffle. Of course, "My iPod, Which Was Set to Shuffle" sounds like a good title for a song too.) A really catchy instrumental song came on. I was cool and dramatic and exciting, and it took me awhile to recognize that it was the theme to the TV show Dallas. I'm glad I never watched that show, so that I'm able to imagine anything I want happening during the song, and not just those snooty rich people from the show. (I think there were snooty rich people on the show. Like I said, I never watched it.) It's a good song.
I got a cool parking ticket on Monday. I say it was cool because it was the best possible parking ticket to get. It was stamped with a time which was seven minutes AFTER the time stamped on my receipt for paying for parking! I appealed it, and just got a letter that my appeal was accepted, or course. Along with my appeal, I gave them the following link, which is a scan of the ticket and my receipt: http://www.math.cornell.edu/~goldberg/receipt.jpg.
Yesterday I went to one of those humongous book stores and bought a comic. With my receipt I received one of those offers to call and tell the company about the service in the store, with a reward of 15% of any item. I don't care too much about the coupon, because I get coupons from that place all the time with no catches, but the cashier is really nice and I wanted to put in a good word. Tonight I called the number, and started with the answering of questions. "On a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 meaning ~~~ and 4 meaning ~~~ and ... and 1 meaning ~~~, please rate ~~~~." They repeated the scale several times. I just didn't have the longevity to finish the call. I gave up after ten minutes. It was just too intense.
You know how they use that information, right? When you're asked to rate the service of an employee on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the best, they put your answer into one of two categories: "5" and "not 5". It's a binary scale masquerading as a much larger discrete scale!
I love the big bookstores. Not only are there so many books, and also so many comic books, and now so many CDs and DVDs, but the atmosphere is great. And it's such a social place. I see more people I know there, than almost anywhere else, except school. Although, to be fair, that's something of a biased observation, because I really don't go anywhere except school, bookstores, and my apartment.
I had an IM conversation with a girl I know recently. It started with her saying, "I have a random question." Boy, that always makes my heart skip a beat. The random question could be anything, which is, of course, what random means. But I start imagining things, and the things I imagine are pretty random too.
"What is a covering map?"
"What's the capital of Spain?"
"Would you donate your kidney to me?"
"Do you want to go out some time?"
"Are you gay?"
"Can you give me a ride to the airport?"
"What's the last day of classes?"
"What's your favorite color?"
"What's your favorite compact manifold?"
"Are your parents married?"
"What kind of shampoo do you use?"
"Are you wearing pants?"
"Am I wearing pants?"
And so on.
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