While in Hoboken on a top secret mission last Friday, I decided to wander down one of the streets that seemed to be the hippest and most happenin’est — or at least the one that, if I didn’t stray from it, would easily, eventually, lead me back to the PATH station, where I could easily (see, it’s all about the ease) slip onto a Manhattan-bound train if, say, I was being pursued by Hoboken hoodlums.
I wasn’t feeling entirely peppy, despite having just gotten a haircut (OK, so I just blew my cover, and now you know what my top secret mission was) that I didn’t hate. I wasn’t hating it because this time, unlike the second, it wasn’t raining and thus my hair wasn’t reduced to a molten mass threatening to dry on its own into full-on Amy Irvingness, and also, unlike the first, it wasn’t styled by one of “the girls”, who for some reason thought it’d be very cute if I wound up looking like a hybrid of Carol Brady, Joan Jett, and Janet from “Three’s Company”. But still, I was experiencing the haircut equivalent of buyer’s remorse, and needed a bit of a boost.
I figured a li’l nutrish (that’s adorablespeak for “nutrition”) (feel free to start using this word around people you don’t mind losing as friends) was just what I needed to step up my pep, so I stopped into Satay, which I’d been meaning to go to ever since I first set foot in Hoboken two and a half years ago and proclaimed, “Oh! Hoboken is cute! And look! They have food here!” Who knew Hoboken could serve up such delights as this:

Bean Curd Skin Roll (foreground), Satay Tofu (background)
The satay wasn’t that satisfying, but the roll was a rollickin’ good time. I knew I’d be havin’ a hankerin’ for some more Malaysian later, so during a lull in my eating, I called the waiter over and placed an order (tofu nyonya) to take home for dinner. I made sure he knew it was for dinner, to be eaten at home home home home home, but when I looked into the bag as I was leaving the restaurant, I saw that he’d included a styrofoam plate and plastic fork. Apparently he thought, “Yeah right. Like you’re not going to run up one block, turn a corner, hide behind a Dumpster, and eat this with your fingers straight out of the container. But I’ll include a plate and fork just for show so she doesn’t know I’m on to her.” (Note: I made sure to stroll by him on my way to the ladies room, just so he could notice that I am, indeed, rather slender and not the kind of girl who would ever eat a full dinner-size entree mere moments after devouring two appetizer-size dishes at lunch. I did entertain the notion that he thought I was bulimic and using the ladies room as my own private vomitorium. I suppressed the urge to yell, “I just want to check if my new haircut is cute!” And also to vomit.)
Convinced that my hair was leaning more toward the cute end of the continuum than the hideous, I left the ladies room, the restaurant, and headed up Washington Street. I walked quite a few blocks, and then stopped in my tracks at the sight of this sign:

“What the hell is denial arts?” I thought. I giggle-cringed when I realized my error, and skipped merrily down Washington Street. I was minding my own business, making my way back toward the PATH station, when I saw this:

“I love it!” I thought. “The Broken Animal Hospital!” I paused to marvel at the whimsical adorability of Hoboken’s veterinarians and saddened myself by imagining a man sitting quietly on a nubby-fabric chair, holding a puppy snapped into two pieces. I shook my head from side to side, and only when I heard the “bloobiddy bloo blooooobiddy bloooo” sound clearing my head did I realize what the sign really said.
“What the tofuck was in that tofu?” I said.
Right before I reached the train station, I came across this foxy lady:

 
Foxy, eyes open/ears down … eyes closed/ears up (she’s versatile)
“They even have dogs in Hoboken!” I thought. At first I passed by and simply smiled at and said hello to the dog. When I was about 50 feet away, I turned around, walked back to her, and asked her dad, whom I suspect was homeless, if I could touch her. He encouraged me to do so, and I made a mental note not to break her, because Hoboken does not have a facility for broken animals, despite what I thought earlier. Her dad looked at me quite intently, and spurted, “You don’t smoke. I can tell by your skin.” I was flattered, and considered telling him I owe everything to healthy living, Pilates, good genes, and Cetaphil. (I did not.) That, probably, would have discouraged him from asking, as, yes, he did, if I smoke “weed”. I cheerfully denied smoking weed, to which he replied, “Denial is an art.”
(No, he didn’t.)
(I did, however, tell him his dog was, indeed, “foxy”, just like her name indicated, and then told him that I, too, am a foxy lady.)
(I really did.)