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Friday, November 28, 2003
The kindest cut
Either a) I REALLY needed that haircut or 2) I hit the jackpot with the new stylist, who hit a home run with my usually hard-to-work-with babyfine hair. Whichever it was -- and I'm leaning toward the second option myself -- I have had more compliments on my most recent haircut than on the last 2 year's worth of haircuts combined. Even men have noticed and commented on it. Strangers on the street have stopped me to say "Wow, Sandra, your hair looks great!" Ok, so I made that last bit up. But I am SO going back to Yolanda for my next cut. Kudos to my cuttist!
this piece woven by Sandra Hull @
2:45 PM
First Time Jitters
What the hey: flu shots were free at work so I got one this morning. I can't remember ever having one before but I didn't think there'd be any untoward ill effects. And there weren't, excuse some excessive drowsiness. To counter that, I downed a Red Bull for the first time ever. It's working somewhat. I'm not bouncing off the walls but I'm also no longer in danger of giving myself a concussion by having my sleeping head hit my desk at a high rate of speed. I was intrigued by the label on the Red Bull can that adivsed me to "Serve chilled." Well, duh! If I weren't so chilled out in the first place I wouldn't need the boost.
this piece woven by Sandra Hull @
3:49 PM
Every time it rains...
I was reaching for an opened box of pasta from a high shelf in my kitchen the other day and tipped it too far before I could get hold of it, spilling its contents all over me. I laughed when I realized it was penne from heaven.
this piece woven by Sandra Hull @
6:17 PM
Premature recollection
The decorations have been up since Halloween, I accept that. I don't like it, but I accept it. I want to decry the barrage of Christmas music that has taken over radio, but thankfully my station of choice hasn't started with the holiday tuneage yet. HOWEVER, twice this week I had appointments in venues that subject me to Easy Listening heck under normal circumstances -- one at the dentist, the other at the hair salon -- and both times I heard nothing but Noel during my waits. The only, I say only mitigating factor was that at the former I heard Bruce Springsteen's Santa Claus Is Coming To Town and at the latter John Lennon's Happy Christmas (War Is Over). The Springsteen song reminds me of when I first heard it on WMMS as a teen; I spent my allowance on a copy of the Lennon one on an apple-green 45 (young punks: look it up) the year it came out, only to break it not long after when I butterfingeredly dropped it.
this piece woven by Sandra Hull @
10:19 PM
Don't Make No Scents Nohow
Out of a catalog or perhaps the Sunday magazine tumbled a fold-out ad for various fragrances offered by Ralph Lauren. Normally such items go right into the trash because I'm mostly allergic to perfume, but one of the blurbs caught my eye. It is SO wrong I must share:
Say hello to the fresh, floral scent of RALPH
I don't care if you ate a dozen roses. When it comes back up, I promise you it will NOT have a fresh, floral scent.
this piece woven by Sandra Hull @
11:26 PM
Make-Up Exam
One of my improv class/castmates, Anna, is a graduate student of linguistics at Georgetown. Who says linguists aren't fun -- her department had a "variety show" this evening for which Anna enlisted a handful of us to do 20 minutes worth of games as the opening act. We killed, in spite of highbrow suggestions from our highbrow audience such as the title of the "Story" we told, "The Avaricious Aardvark." Anna told us breathlessly just before we went on that in the very front row of our audience of 35 or so was "one of the most famous linguists", Deborah Tannen, author of You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation and a few others. The good doctor laughed along with the rest of the crowd so I guess she understood us.
Oh, and if you ever find yourself performing improv comedy in front of a gaggle of linguists, just be sure to work the word "schwa" somewhere in your schtick and you're golden.
this piece woven by Sandra Hull @
11:08 PM
Arcane and able
For the past few months I've been crafting submissions for Ruminations, a Top Five list spinoff site. It's a challenging sort of writing for me, different from the Zing, Zang, Zoom! of coming up with list items that are often one-liners where you riff off a given theme. Ruminations are freeform, Jack Handy-esque observations. I have had a few successfully published, albeit under an assumed name. Why the nom-de-rum? Mainly because since I was unsure of my skill at first I wanted to be sure that if they were used it was because they were worthy, not because the guy that runs the site simply recognized my name from Top Five. At last count -- yes, of course I keep track -- I've had 13 items published in the weekdaily list in the last 2 months. One of those was under my own name; I'm starting to gain confidence now.
Here's that one:
I came up with a great rumination idea while in the dentist chair a while back and after running it by friend Marty yesterday for a wording check then by some Top Five list colleagues for a reality check, I submitted it. It's my favorite so far: erudite and scatological all at the same time. We'll see if it gets used. If not, it will be immortalized here:
this piece woven by Sandra Hull @
8:06 PM
The Night of the Living Unread
For a few months the folder list in my webmail client has been showing 1 unread message in my Inbox, totally oblivious to the fact that the actual folder contents showed no unread messages a-tall because I'm usually pretty good about reading and filing incoming traffic. The webmail client is mostly reliable yet sometimes quirky so I didn't worry too much about it until yesterday, when my brain needed a break from a compu-problem I was trying to solve at work. On a whim I marked every message in the Inbox unread, just to see how many unread messages the folder list would report. Answer: the correct number. Hunh. One flash of inspiration and two minutes later, I had moved all the messages to a test folder, and lo and behold there in the Inbox was one lonely -- and previously unseen by my eyes -- message from September. It contained no earth-shaking news, although it *was* time-sensitive in that it was submissions from one of my Pets List to an already-published list. Whoops. But I swear I NEVER saw the message when it arrived. Ghost in the e-machine.
this piece woven by Sandra Hull @
1:11 PM
Serendipitous Synchronicities
Sitting down earlier today to the pleasant chore of compiling my weekly Top5 Pets list, I fired up my "Animals" MP3 playlist as I sometimes do, to give the goof-off part of my brain something to do while the rest works on the task at hand. First up in the rotation: Tom Waits' "Pony" from his excellent Mule Variations CD. I had listened to the song dozens of times since first downloading the collection months ago from the now-a-shadow-of-its-former-self service called emusic.com, but I never knew the significance of nor even really noticed the line in the first verse that goes "I rode the highline with ol' Blind Darby." But my whole brain stopped what it was doing when it heard the line today because by chance I recently began re-reading another familiar and beloved work, William Least Heat Moon's excellent Blue Highways, and in that re-reading had digested a hitherto-unremarked detail from his journey, i.e. that the stretch of highway that crosses Montana is called the "Highline."
Just like you can't step in the same river twice, you also apparently never read the same book twice.
this piece woven by Sandra Hull @
6:02 PM
Twelve steps to a more sympathetic you
The scene: an elevator in a medical arts building. The players: me, a woman in a white smock -- presumably an employee of one of the medical artists, and a man in street clothes. The man and I enter the upbound elevator from the lobby, the woman is already on board. I go to the side of the car where I know the buttons are, the man goes to the other side. I find my floor button, 5, already pushed. The man asks me to press 2, thanks me after I do, then goes quiet with what I take for a pained expression on his face. You see a lot of that in medical arts buildings. For some reason, elevators in hospitals and medical arts buildings are ever so much slower than other elevators so it takes a seemingly long time to get to the second floor, where the man with the pained expression disembarks. I don't mind the delay in my trip to the fifth floor, but the woman seems annoyed. After the doors have closed behind the man she muses "Why not just take the stairs up the one flight to the second floor? It's good for you." "Yeah," I agree, "but when you're not feeling well, even one flight of stairs is too much." She concedes my point but I am chagrined that this person in the medical profession reacted first with something other than sympathy for the poor devil.
this piece woven by Sandra Hull @
12:40 PM
Things that make me smile
Thing the first: an old-school black VW Beetle with tags that read BUG NOIR.
Thing the second (warning: risqué): an Excel function I learned of while researching a problem that sadly does not need the services of CUMPRINC.
this piece woven by Sandra Hull @
8:33 PM
Uncomfortably Numb
Today was supposed to be the root canal grand finale. One last series of pinching pinpricks in my gums, a prolonged session in a semi-dream-state, listening to tunes on my discman, ignoring the noise happening in my mouth and that would be it. But I felt a little sensation as the rubber drape was put in place so I was served an extra helping of Novocain. Nope. That didn't get it. "We can't go on, then" said the endodontist, "You probably have an infection and the tissue will be resistant to numbing." Hooboy. Another round of antibiotics, then and a two-week delay for the closing ceremonies. Plus which my face was extra numb all afternoon. I'll put it this way: my fast food lunch choice that included a thick milkshake just about killed me. I can suck up the pain but I couldn't suck up the shake on just half a mouth.
this piece woven by Sandra Hull @
9:03 PM