had an early dinner with von at spice today: the meal was good although the crab dumplings were not very different from regular siewmais, and one can hardly taste the crab (more prawn like, maybe.) gave him his "once more, with footnotes" and a russell hoban as part one of his birthday present and returned his orange woolly hat (but not the sweater, because ponder is wearing it. von: "ingrate!") and we bemoaned our unhappy futures. then we go to toscanini's for ice-cream where he explains to me that the male of the species will automatically eliminate you from his radar if you are not beautiful, which is why i can no more get a man than he can a job. this is followed by a recap of the last three unhappy relationships i have had to extricate myself from. after such a disheartening pronouncement and gruesome confrontation with empirical evidence i gave him the rest of my ice-cream and came home so that i could weep into my pillows. maybe i could climb up onto a high shelf and perch there for the rest of the joyless week, she repines.