De pindakaas is op!

Business at the bakery is pretty good. Today, for example, we sold nearly everything in the shop, and we're only open from 8 to 3 on Sundays. They're cutting back on our hours, but I can't complain that I have more time to hit golf balls and study Russian and Japanese. The other day a guy came in with a windbreaker and ski poles... on a sweltering, 80-degree morning. A week before that, a woman came in looking to buy a bathing suit.

Sometimes when the shop is too quiet I start reciting the public-transit recordings I heard in Europe.

Prochaine station : République. Accès : Place de la Mairie, et centre historique

Next station: Leicester Square. ... This is Leicester Square. Mind the gap between the train and the platform. Mind the closing doors.

Nächste Station : Tiergarten. Ausstieg : Links

Rennes; ici, Rennes. Assurez-vous de n'avoir rien oublié dans le train. Attention à la marche en déscendant sur le quai. Veuillez emprunter le passage sous-terrain pour rejoindre la gare. La SNCF vous souhaite une agréable journée.

And then my co-workers look at me oddly and I laugh.

I went to see Arlo Guthrie the other night at Chautauqua, the 40th anniversary "Alice's Restaurant Massacree" tour. He was cool, as usual. Unfortunately, he didn't appear until an hour into the show, and the opening act ("The Mammals", a band that trades on the fact that their lead guitarist is Pete Seeger's grandson) was nothing so great.

I've also been spending an unhealthy amount of time looking for more weird foreign music (roughly a quarter of my common playlist is now in languages I don't understand), particularly the works of that great artistic genius, Ome Henk. Not even his best works (not that he could really top "Opblaaskrokodil"), but mostly just recordings of him jabbering at length and videos of him acting spazzy and dumping soup on a lamp and crazy random stuff like that, while I try to pick something intelligible out of his rapid-fire, husky-voiced Dutch (which is not yet one of my languages). Yeah... like I said... unhealthy.

It has occurred to me that speaking eight languages (I can only really use three of those at the moment) will do me no good whatsoever when I'm dead. Such a depressing thought.