oh joy

gotta love my advisor. last thursday, he told both me and eric that he has a friend coming in from france today and he'll be unable to take this friend to dinner. instead he asked if eric and i would, and we agreed. then, he made the following arrangement and informed us of it via CCing us on the email to his friend:

Dear Bernard,
Looking forward to your visit and talk. If it is OK with you, my students Lara P------ and Eric R------ will take you out for dinner tomorrow. Lara will meet you earlier, to chat about math, at 5:30pm, at the Rutgers Univ. Inn lobby. Then at 6:15pm, Eric (who has a class until then), will come and you three will decide on a restaurant of your choice.
Best wishes
Doron

(last names dashed out purposely by me :-P)

not that i mind... it should be cool and it's free dinner (dr. z. will reimburse us)... and the guy should be interesting to talk to -- he has his own "math company" in france (see here: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/scmsa/), so just asking him about what he does should be interesting and keep us talking for a bit. i'm not quite sure why he (dr. z.) set things up this way, but eric and me discussing the location of the university inn, the places we'd thought of for dinner so far, and rush hour traffic just decided i'd chat for 20-25 minutes until eric gets out of class at 5:50 and then i'll drive dr. z's friend to the restaurant we pick and meet eric there.

we'll see how this goes.