A couple of pleasant encounters yesterday: I met Sharon Harvey, Latin-teaching New Hampshire farmgirl and possibly the least pretentious girl in the world, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a stroll and a chat about my empty life; and then Angela, who is far from the least pretentious girl in the world but is arguably one of the more interesting, for dinner and a chat about her extraordinary artistic schedule.

Sharon is always refreshingly direct; when I told her about my current job, she asked, "Doesn't that kill your brain?" We also agreed that Sharon is extremely competent in ways that will be useful when the apocalypse comes (farming, locksmithing, carpentry, groundskeeping, seamstress work, shelling lobsters), whereas my forms of competence, as limited as they may be, are entirely predicated on the continuation of our current civilization. When the apocalypse does come, I'll probably be eaten.

Angela also puts my competence to shame, but in the opposite direction: not only does she care deeply about art, but she makes it happen.