Pizza and a black cherry soda

L. and I took our box of pizza to St. Mark’s church and sat on a bench under a tree filled with pigeons (don’t look up!) and ate and talked about dancing tonight, a conversation that included both gossip and some frank talk about queer sexualities that appeared to scandalize our neighbor, bent over an issue of the New Yorker. I wondered why autumn is always so short. I’m parched said L. when we finished plowing through our slices, and that led to a trip to the cooler at a deli down the block to choose special fancy carbonated beverages that shouted It’s Saturday! Mine was black cherry, L.’s was cream, clinking together on the sidewalk out front in a toast.

 

Pizza and salad

Out of the woods, L. still redolent with campfire, we ordered fancy pizza (roasted garlic! kalamata olives!) and fancy salad (dried cranberries! gorgonzola!) and ate in a restaurant. There were so many people. It was so loud. I don’t want to go home yet, I said, welling up a little at the thought of retethering to my devices.

 

Pizza and beer

My one requirement for lifting and carrying more boxes up more stairs than you probably think I can was that L. spring for total realness post-helping-moving lunch. Because I am hopelessly awash in the trappings of the leisure class, the pizza was a margherita all to myself and the beer was Peroni and we ate at an outdoor cafe under cheerful sunbrellas and the menu was written in Italian. Because we were in gentrifying Gowanus to return the moving van, the view was an Enterprise car rental lot.

 

Two slices of pizza and a cup of coffee

I sat on K.’s couch eating re-heated pepperoni pizza and reading the newspaper on my Kindle. Pretty interesting about that pistachio recall, no? When I was done we packed up our things and headed to campus so I could have some more coffee before class, courtesy of K.’s gift card for the campus coffeeteria. I opted for the cafe au lait and when the woman behind the counter–one of K.’s former students–asked if I wanted whole or skim milk, I said whole, prompting K. to make a wholly un-feminist crack about the piggly-ness of whole milk. Ah, the joy of siblings.

 

Pizza, caesar salad, and a beer

Drunk on the pleasures of task completion, L. drove the freshly-inspected car into the parking lot at an Italian place just on the cusp of West Leb’s Miracle Mile. And while it was something of a case of language exceeding reality–though there is, I suppose, something miraculous about a Jiffy Lube across the street from a KFC–I did come close to overflowing with the sheer pleasure of it all: lunch specials that came with house or caesar salad, the eponymous Lui Lui lager, the late afternoon sun breaking into pieces as it came through the slatted windows and fell across the table from me. I was packed full with it all, so much that I declined the desserts the waitress brought over on a tray, Let me see if I can tempt you.

 

Pizza and salad

I brought my stack of quarterpage flyers down to the new spring student orientation with my guts rumbling, ignoring the fact that I wouldn’t have time to eat lunch until after my desk shift, hours into the future. But what greeted me on the tables up against the back wall of the auditorium? Pizza! Box upon box of pizza! The students made a long snakey line and I had to wait patiently and watch to see if there would be any left, and then there was. I ate two slices and had salad too, chatting about federated search with the others and making new friends with R. He works in student activities and was part of the team that just barely missed beating Villanova (due to chicanery) in the first round back in 1997. You’ve got to come to a game. As I embarked on slice number two, D. told me I’d have to go up to the front and draw the winner of our raffle. But every time I stand in front of a group I almost throw up! I whined. Then you better stop eating right now and get up there.

 

Slice of pizza and a cup of coffee

I took care of that feeling the old fashioned way: walked and walked and walked and walked and then ducked in for a slice of pizza and made a list on a napkin. Then I popped across the street and got a cup of coffee. It’s going to be a busy spring and I’ll need plenty of that. An ability to sleep through the night wouldn’t hurt either.

 

Chicken pizza, plus coffee and a cupcake

It’s one of those days, just shocking in its crisp perfection, so I loaded up my activity bag and turned up some music and headed out for lunch. I was the only one at the restaurant, so tucked into a chicken pizza and some reading with gentle workplace banter in my ears. I’m going to work this Friday and Saturday, and J. is taking my Sunday shift, okay? As the site of the only food in the place, two or three flies made themselves my persistent annoying company, so I felt complled to eat half the pizza fast and take the rest to go. Then I headed back down the block for coffee and a cupcake and the rest of the stuff I get to do today.

 

Pizza

You want one slice or two? asked S. as he heated up slices of the pizza we ordered to eat with the game on Friday for lunch with the game on Sunday–I swear, it’s like living in a frat house around here. Only different. I insisted that I only wanted just the one piece, the afternoon’s earlier brioche sitting heavy and buttery in my guts, but I envied S.’s second slice with such a depth of regret that I actually couldn’t look at her while she ate it. I knew it was wrong, but found myself inexplicably pulling for the Bengals, and even more surprisingly coming up out of my seat for the Texans. I find it emotionally challenging, these winless teams so late into the season.

 

Pizza and sheet cake

I have never seen that many children in one place at one time, except, I guess, when I was a child myself. It was I.’s fourth birthday, and I went along with M. and his parents (J. and M.) to celebrate at the wading pool in the park. I grabbed more than my share and sat down with M. in the shade along with a jumble of other adults and children. I. came over and joined us, sparking an elaborate discussion of everyone’s favorite moment in Cars. I. has pretty amazing storytelling skills, and I was held rapt by his tale (of what happened in Cars). His brother S., just one and a half, ate pizza as it ought to be eaten–squished up into a ball, rolled around in the dirt, and shoved into his mouth with a tiny fat fist. Post-pizza came a cake, which pulled all the kids to the picnic table like metal shavings to a magnet. My brother declared himself the father who could be jumped on, which actually drew some of the children away from their plates of quickly melting sheet cake frosting and onto a pretty adorable dogpile.