Double Rainbow Amazement

It truly is Oz-like in San Rafael. It's so beautiful, even when it's raining. Where else can you look over your fence and be greeted with a double rainbow?! No wonder people in Marin are so smug...

Thanks, Apple

Shockingly (oh, how naive!), we've been out of a computer, off and on, for just about two months now. A one-year old Apple iMac whatever (early 2008 20" iMac), purchased September of 2008, crashed suddenly. Good thing we had purchased the extended warranty Apple Care whatever, allowing us to take the machine to the Apple Genius Bar (rather than being shit-out-of-luck, as we would have been had we not purchased the extended warranty Apple Care) and be told the hard drive was dead, likely due to a manufacturing error. They replaced the hard drive (took seven days) and then we got it back and it still didn't work. Back and forth to the Genius Bar we go... now it's the logic board... wait, no it's not... repeat three times. Finally a traveling Genius (Mac Medic) comes to our house... opens the machine, tells us that the in-store Genius ruined a cable (the cable looks like a Listerine breath strip) with a tweezer, and he's going to suggest we be sent a replacement machine.

Apparently the FOURTH REPAIR is the ticket: if your machine needs a fourth repair they will replace your machine.

The new machine was released November 1st, but we didn't get it till November 12th, because of course it came from China and then went to Alaska and finally came to California.

Whew! The moral of the story is... I'm not sure what the moral of the story is! Apple could take a lesson from Zappos!

Shadow Fun

One of my favorite shadows to make is the vulgar penis shadow. You do this by clasping your hands together, bending your knees a bit, and holding your combined hands between your legs so your shadow looks like you have a giant penis. We used to do this in middle school and for some reason I STILL think it's hilarious and usually can crack myself up by doing it over and over again.

Protea Bouquet

They were selling these interesting, sci-fi-looking bouquets at the Marin Farmers' Market today. The pinkish flower is called protea, and the yellow phallic-looking one... I'm not sure. It's one of the strangest plants I've ever seen!

Office Space

Due to a new crop of employees coming in all at once, our office has lost any etiquette we ever followed. For example, we have three bathrooms - a unisex, single stall bathroom upstairs, and a women's bathroom downstairs with two stalls, and a men's bathroom downstairs with one stall and one urinal. We have only four men in the office and about 15 women, so traditionally, the men have left the single stall upstairs for the women uptairs (and visitors) and have gone downstairs to the men's bathroom. Not so any longer.
Now the upstairs bathroom frequently has pee splattered on the floor and the seat is left up. We have a nice Method air freshener in the upstairs bathroom, which actually smells really good (it's the vanilla-apple scented one, but it smells like pineapple), and someone actually carried it over to the toilet and perched it right on the edge, as if they thought they were going to take a really smelly poop and it would help to move it closer. Finally, I found that someone had pried open the tampon dispenser.

At one point, long ago, we even used to go across the street to a private (public) bathroom that is very nice and clean and seldomly used if we had to do a #2. Just like animals in the wild, we'd rather others not know. Judging by the odor in the bathroom now, someone is "dropping a deuce"-- as my coworker H. puts it-- frequently... the "across the street" convention has died. The whole bathroom situation has me frequently looking longingly out at the trees outside my work when nature calls. I'd love to pee out there on one of them than encounter whatever is happening in our bathrooms.

People are leaving their dirty dishes in the sink instead of rinsing and putting them in the dishwasher, much to the chagrin of the receptionist, whom I supervise. What's more, people are leaving dirty dishes crusting at their desks with food still in/on them, causing a shortage of forks. People are putting empty peanut butter jars back into the cabinets. (See photo.)

The latest is that I have a very loud, shrill new co-worker. She only speaks at one volume, and it's extreme. The entire floor is treated to her conversations, whether she's speaking to you or not, but what's more, she overshares. Yesterday she ran around telling everyone that she and her husband have sold their condominium for the asking price. She was THRILLED, RELIEVED, HAPPY, AMAZED and "IN SHOOOOOCKKKK!!!" In the morning she ran around telling everyone she GOT AN OFFER ON THE CONDO! By afternoon she had SOLD THE CONDO!!! She told her peers, she told her boss, and she bypassed me, perhaps because she can tell I try to avoid contact with her, and charged right into the CEO's office to tell him.

Our office used to be tiny; manageable. When I started, there were a mere 9-10 full time employees and a few contractors that came to the office part time. At 20 we're still considered small for a lot of legal purposes, but things have gotten out of hand, and it's become a huge mess. As the CEO's assistant, and without an office manager, I'm the default office manager, something I am way too uptight to be. I mean, my face gets hot and I get angry when I see a spoon in the fork part of the utensil divider... imagine what the rest of this is doing to me.

Figs are almost ready!

A few of the figs on our fig tree suddenly fattened up, turned a brighter, more yellow shade of green, and got softer to the touch. I sacrificed one to see how they are tasting... the inside was pinkish violet and tasted pretty sweet, but had not gone fully ripe or fully sugared yet. It was definitely almost there. Now I am watching the four or five that are in a similar state to see when they will ripen. The rest of the figs (hundreds) are still fairly small and green. I think these are Kadota figs... but I'm not sure.

Lizards

There are lots of little tiny lizards where I live now. They're so small and fast that you can miss them easily.

California Modern

These are two of the houses in our neighborhood. I love these two. I've really never thought much about owning a house... I sort of assumed I want to, one day, or it's the "right thing to do", or the grown up thing to do, or the thing Suze Orman said is really financially important to do... I think I have Peter Pan syndrome. I don't want to grow up.

It wasn't until I moved to this neighborhood recently that I started to think I really want to own a house; one of these houses! They were built in the late 50's and early 60's, during the height of the California Modern period. They are designed to be low and softly colored, and not overshadow the landscape. Most of them have an atrium inside!

Tomatoes.

It's funny when fruits and vegetables grow these little appendages. Appendages is probably not the right word... we got these delicious dry-farmed Early Girl tomatoes at the farmers' marketing today.

Tillandsia, or "Airplant"

On a lunch break one day about a month ago, a co-worker and I stopped by the local garden store. There we saw these tiny little cactus-looking plants that were light as feathers, seemed pretty dry, and were not potted in soil, but instead attached to driftwood, wired to a gazebo, or just set into little pots with nothing holding them in.

My co-worker bought one for me and one for herself... they were tiny ones, less than three inches tall. We learned that they are called "air plants", "airplants", or Tillandsia, and they don't need soil. They will flower once in a while, and they just need a misting of water or a weekly drench to stay alive and thrive. Someone told me they grow all over Florida, but to me, they are pretty exotic.

I started reading about Tillandsia on the internet, and eventually I went back to the garden store and got a few more small specimens in the $2 - $5 range. At work, my friend Ashley admired the ones I had brought back to the office, so I gave her one. I then ordered a specimen online... it's a huge ball bigger than a big grapefruit, and it has a thin wire attached for hanging. My intention was to hang it, but after reading the instructions, I realized the most suitable place in the apartment was on an open shelf under a frosted skylight, so I placed it there. Not since carnivorous plants when I was a child and orchids for the last several years have I been so fascinated and enamored of a plant. Much like when you're infatuated with a new lover, I think about Tillandsia about fifty times an hour.

Iitala Kartio Glassware

I recently discovered iitala's Kartio glasses and pitcher. To say I discovered them is silly - they were designed in the late 1950's and have been around ever since. I've wanted these drinking glasses for a while, and they're not terribly expensive, but since I had plenty of generic, works-fine-but-not-inspiring clear drinking glasses from places like IKEA and Crate & Barrel, I never got them. Moving to a 557.5 square foot miniature house with the help of professional movers who charge by the hour seemed a good reason to give a dozen old drinking glasses away before the move and purchase six iitala glasses instead and have them shipped to my new place. Okay, I also got the set of 4 mixed color small glasses (good for juice, cocktails, a small serving of ice cream or yogurt) and a carafe/pitcher in "blueberry blue", a discontinued color. These glasses are a dream to hold, and the glass is so beautiful and so clear. It's amazing how different a drinking glass can be... apparently designer Kaj Franck was obsessed with this simple object - the drinking glass!

Wild Blackberries!

I grew up in a very dry climate; the desert. Now, here at my new home, I was shocked to see wild blackberries growing throughout the neighborhoods and along the side of the road. They are plentiful, and they are ripe! We got a handful this morning and we washed them well and had them with yogurt from the Farmers' Market...

18 Miles Away

After several years of living in the coldest, foggiest part of San Francisco, and escalating unhappiness with my neighborhood and my downstairs neighbor (downstairs neighbor number 4, she was), DD and I were ready to move. As most people do when they are looking for an apartment, we had a "wish list" of qualities we were looking for in a new apartment. There's always the Dream List and then as you start looking for apartments you have to give on certain items on the Dream List, because you're really not going to find a place with updated kitchen appliances, a washer-dryer or washer-dryer hook ups, a parking space, an energy-efficient heater (or hell, just a heater, period), decent neighbors, a view of something interesting or pretty, or just not dumpsters or chain link fence or better yet, a wall...carpeting or floors that don't have bodily fluids in them. A sink without a chip. Caulking without mildew. Toilet without stains. Stuff like that.

One thing on our Dream List was outdoor space. Just a little wee balcony or something like that... a few feet of cement outside the door, even. A little place to put a potted plant and two chairs, a place where, hopefully, the sun's rays might hit a few days out of the summer. We weren't too hopeful about this. It was just an item on the Dream List.

Well, we found it! Our new apartment is a dream come true. It has every item on the Dream List and then some. We have a yard! And a round stone patio right outside our door, under the shade of a beautiful bay tree. We have a fig tree full of baby figs! And pink lilies, purple agapanthus, deadly nightshade and a tiny orange tree. Bees and hummingbirds. All the power lines are under the ground in our new neighborhood! The sky is beautiful at night and there are no neighbors above us or below us. Our landlords are real people, nice people, not a "property management company". I would so much rather give these people my rent money... they take care of their property and beautifully remodeled our apartment a few years ago, with quartz floors, wood beams, new cabinets, double paned windows, and skylights. I've never lived in a more beautiful space! It is truly amazing...

Poppy King's Lipstick Queen Lipstick

This is the packaging for Lipstick Queen. It's very romantic, fun and colorful. I ordered them sight unseen, as I was too lazy to go to Barney's downtown (all of four miles away), and got the Sinner lipstick in "Pink" and the Saint sheer lipstick in "Pink", as well as "Medieval" lip tint. I love all three! The cases close nicely and feel kind of rubbery even though I think they're metal. So nice!

A Neighborhood Jewel

Oh my God.
This is GORGEOUS. I love living in this neighborhood. Living in an ex-military complex that is run by the federal gov't is JUST LIKE living at Disneyland, I'll bet. Soooo pretty. This curb is better than animal-shaped topiary.

Pocky Bookmarks

These are my Pocky bookmarks, which I made by cutting the image with special crafting scissors and punching a hole at the top of the bookmark for a ribbon.

Crack and Bleach

My neighbor was washing her blinds on the asphalt while exposing her ass crack.
But everyone's ass crack is almost always showing these days, so what does it matter?
Maybe I should be more concerned about the neon-pink dish soap (organic? I think not) and straight-up Safeway brand bleach she's pouring all over them... and letting run into the storm drains. We live less than a thousand feet from the Pacific Ocean, so close that there's a little illustration of a crab painted on the drains in this area.
I kind of hope she's pregnant and she decides to go down to the beach today...

Water Mosaic

Went for a walk and saw this cool thing in the neighborhood the other day. From a distance it looked like water pouring from the vessel, especially the way the light was glimmering off the "water". Upon closer inspection, we saw that it was tile...

Georgia Was Here

For 4th of July DD and I went to his company picnic, which was on a ranch in Marin County. There was a lake, grapevines, a herd of cattle, a friendly miniature donkey, chinchillas and, as if that weren't enough, this beautiful skull! When we left San Francisco that day, it was cold and foggy, and when we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge it magically became hot and sunny. Of course, this is not actually magic, but a phenomena of landscape and hills and wind and whatnot. All I know is that I live in the coldest part of SF (cold = affordable) and 10 minutes away it's hot. This led me to consider moving 18 miles from work, to San Rafael. (I currently live walking distance from work.) I grew up in the desert, and while I have no desire to live in a climate that extreme again, I do object to wearing my coat in July, as I do here. As DD pointed out the other day, we have six dresser drawers and one is devoted entirely to knits - knit caps, scarves, and mittens.

So, it remains to be seen what will happen, but we are now trying to move! The great thing is that prices have come down a lot all over San Francisco, even the desirable sunny parts, and DD and I are still employed, so we're checking it out.

The Great Latisse Experiment

Eyelash extensions don't come off. They just don't come off. You can't take them off. They stay attached to your natural eyelashes until your eyelashes fall out naturally, or UNNATURALLY, like when you're gently drying your face with a towel after your shower and a loop of terry cloth catches the unnaturally thick fake eyelash and RIPS IT OUT BY THE ROOT.

Yes, I am yet again relegated to fashion and beauty industry victim status, as three weeks later I have half long (really really long now that my own eyelashes have grown and pushed the fake lashes out even more), thick, eyelash extensions and half my own soft, short, wispy eyelashes, combined with more than a few gaps from a few of these towel incidents. The only way to hide this disaster is to wear a really solid layer of matte, dark brown eyeshadow every day and skip my usual bang trim, so that's what's currently happening... my eyelashes are a disaster but it doesn't matter because my bangs are covering them and I have spackled them with dark brown eyeshadow.

I also started using Latisse, which is the eyelash growth drug (prescription only) that Brooke Shields is hawking. It takes about 12 weeks to see noticeable results, and by then my lashes would likely have repaired themselves anyway, but Latisse works by lengthening the natural growth cycle of each eyelash, so this should speed up the process. I love that Latisse is prescribed for the condition "hypotrichosis" - "not enough or inadequate hair". Apparently sparse eyelashes are a medical condition. Will keep you posted.

Tried Lash Extensions...

I recently tried eyelash extensions for the first time. Eyelash extensions look like traditional false eyelashes but without the strip. Instead, it's individual hairs that are glued with some super-strength glue one-by-one to each of your own individual eyelashes (rather than being attached to the skin, like strip lashes). Because there is no strip, and that's the part that looks fake, they look more "real" than strip lashes. The application process is time-consuming (when I got it done it was only an hour and a half, but that's a long time to sit with your eyes closed while someone is gently touching your eyelashes over and over again and while you have a piece of tape taping your lower eyelashes down), can take up to three hours, and is pretty expensive. I went to a local place that had a lot of good reviews and the application was only $100, but from what I understand it more commonly costs $250 or $300.

When they showed me my new eyelashes I was pretty amazed! For one thing, they asked me if I wanted the lashes to look "natural" or "dramatic" and I chose "natural".
(I mean, how natural can fake eyelashes look, and what does "natural" mean to someone who is having such a thing done, right?) Well, the resulting eyelashes are long and curled and pretty much look like something a Vegas showgirl would wear. I wonder what "dramatic" would look like!

Vegas is why I got them done - I was going to Las Vegas for a few days and didn't want to deal with mascara or curling my eyelashes or applying false eyelashes. The eyelash extensions make the eyes look "done" without any makeup.

I got them done exactly a week ago. They're holding up pretty well. They stay attached with the super strong glue forever, or until your real eyelash falls out naturally.
So, you lose a few a day. People usually need to get a touch up after two or three weeks, depending how careful they are. I am being pretty careful and am not wearing mascara on them, so a week later they still look full. Here's what they look like from above. I don't have any makeup on.

New LUSH Vaniila Range

LUSH Cosmetics recently came out with a vanilla range. As seems to be the case with all new LUSH launches, this product was available in the UK long before it was available in North America. I wanted it so badly that I kept looking on the LUSH UK site and calculating pounds to dollars and trying to figure out, if British Royal Mail is so inexpensive, what's the drawback to using it?

They finally sent this stuff across the pond to the shops in North America. The Vanilla Delite lotion is lightweight and sinks in quickly, much like the discontinued Skin Sin did. It has a powdery, jasmine-y vanilla fragrance (not like a cupcake or anything you'd want to eat). The Vanilla Puff powder has a similar fragrance but much more faint. It feels less dry than their Coconut powder but less moisturizing and cocoa-buttery than Silky Underwear. The Vanillary solid perfume smelled good (more "edible" vanilla than the other items) but I didn't get it or the massage bar because I always seem to waste those products when I do buy them.

Downstairs Neighbor UPDATE

My new downstairs neighbor is so far so much better than any and all of the previous ones! For one thing, her TV is pretty small, and she doesn't play it very loudly. For another, I noticed as I was walking back from taking out the recycling and trash that she had some friends over... I could see into her apartment because it's dark out and she had the lights blazing inside. As I walked toward our apartments, she came to the window and closed the blinds rather frantically. A second later as I passed her front door, I heard her coughing... and not sick coughing, but that weed coughing, while other people were giggling. She's a weed smoker! All the noise she will make will be some mellow random giggling and chuckling, with the occasional coughs thrown in there.

Bobbi Brown Packaging Change

Bobbi Brown blushes and eyeshadows have recently gone from round to square. The square ones are also made so that you can pop them out of their cases and add them to a palette with three or four or six squares in it. You can now get the discontinued round eyeshadows and blushes on eBay for a really discounted price! I don't know if they were slated for destruction and someone saved them, or if they fell off a truck or what, but I've been stocking up on the rounds for $9, $10 or $12 each. They retailed for $20 or so.

Wicked, the Musical - next month!

Around mid-May, I finally get to see Wicked, the musical. I loved the novel by Gregory Maguire, and I missed Wicked in San Francisco the first time around because I kept seeing the ads in the BART station but I was too clueless to figure out that it was a new musical and that I wanted to see it. It's easy to ignore advertising in the bowels of the BART system, expecially when most of what they advertise is banking services. For a while, this company called ING Direct paid your BART fare, but you were completely bombarded by these hire-a-marketers as soon as you exited the gates in the station. So while the Wicked posters were up, I saw them, but I kept my head down and moved fast to avoid any sales interactions. Then someone lent me the novel and I loved it and quickly read several other books by Gregory Maguire, such as Confessions of An Ugly Stepsister and Mirror, Mirror, which was my favorite. tried to see Wicked in New York City when I was there but couldn't get tickets.
So it's back in San Francisco, and I finally get to see it! This green rose hairpin thing is the first part of my Wicked outfit!

Ring Ding

I recently got this amazing vintage amethyst, pink sapphire and rose gold ring from an eBay auction, for less money than a pair of premium denim jeans. I really wish my hands weren't starting to look so old...

Life in the Dorm

One would think I'd have left the dorms a long time ago (seeing as I've seen age thirty come and go)... when I was in college lying perfectly still on my extra long twin bed (extra-long because I'm 5'0" tall. Oh, wait, extra-long because they are the same government-issue beds they use in prisons!) to fantasize about when I'd get out of college, get a nice job, no longer a minimum wage job at JC Penney or at SuperCrown books, and have my own apartment) but it turns out that apartments, at least ones with adjoining walls, and ones that I can afford, are always just an extension of dorm life with the usual LOVELY neighbors... screaming and yelling... drunken crying... cops are called... cops lead sobbing angry girl away... just a typical Friday early morning at, say, 3:00 am.

DD and I have lived in this apartment for three and a half years. In that time, the apartment downstairs has emptied and filled four times, if you count the person who just moved in today. Tonight. Or at least, she started at 11:00 pm and, well, since the people helping her move appear to be her parents, who are rather portly and slow-moving in their middle aged-ness, it's still going on.

The first couple was pretty noisy. They enjoyed chasing each other through the apartment and giggling, which is cute, I suppose, except that they were each over 250 lbs and their footfalls on the cheap hardwood floors and their bodies bumping against the walls had me in a perpetual state of fear that an earthquake was starting. (I lived in Northridge, California during the huge Northridge Earthquake. In fact, I lived in the dorms, most of which were damaged so badly that we had to double and triple up the next semester.) I had to draw the line when they got out of their huge SUV and hit my car door, denting it, then had the nerve to try to rub the mark away, leaving an oily circle AND a dent. We had a talk which resulted in CarolAnn making her passenger and the culprit apologize to me and then they gave me a bottle of wine.

The second girl was better because at least she lived alone. Very alone, with a very big TV with amazing sound, amazing bass. It would rattle my floor and windows. She favored loud movies. Always with the gun sounds. It couldn't be Memento, the movie about Chopin, for example, or, like, Rivers and Tides, that documentary about Andy Goldsworty. She rarely went out, and when she did she returned with huge cases of food from Costco. She liked Marie Callender's potpies.

When she moved out, another girl moved in. She moved in with a roommate. The roommate had a giant teddy bear that lived in the living room. It was always kind of funny to come home and see the giant teddy bear just kicking it on the couch. I didn't care much about the roommate, because her bedroom was under the small bedroom I use as my walk in closet. The main girl drove me crazy with her cough. She apparently had some kind of respiratory ailment that required her to use a drug called DuoNeb. I know this because she had a DuoNeb box in the window of her car. Maybe it was like a Medical Alert bracelet. Like if she got in a car accident, the first responders would see that box and know she was on DuoNeb. She coughed like crazy. It sounded like gunshots. It made me so nervous and self conscious, realizing I could hear her coughing so clearly, that when I had a cold and got a cough, I slept on my couch in the living room.
Anyway, she was weird...we rode the bus together sometimes... sometimes I would force conversation, but most of the time she just ingored me, as if we weren't living in this very close situation where I could hear her coughing like gunshots.

So, she's now moved out (her parents helped) and the new girl, who is basically a clone of her, is moving in. What's with women in their 20's having out of shape daddy and uncles in their late 50's moving at the speed of molasses as their movers? My dad has never had to lift a piece of my furniture or drive a U Haul for me... why should he? I'm an adult. And Lord knows I've never moved into an apartment in the dead of night. Hell, I'm an ADMINISTRATIVE PROFESSIONAL. I'm more prepared than that.

A lukerwarm welcome to Downstairs Neighbor #4. Can't wait to hear your sound system coming through the walls.

Excellence In Action: Or, the Day My Boss Ignored Administrative Professionals' Day

Administrative Professionals' Day came and went with nary a whisper at my workplace. It was last Wednesday. It was just another day; same as always, with people asking me for this, that, a favor, rescheduling, time on so and so's calendar, whether the temperature of the cool water that comes out of the filter could be turned up because the cold water is too cold but they want it cooler than room temperature, oh, and the plant service I ordered for the office came to deliver and everyone who didn't get a plant right next to them wanted to know how they could get a plant (consider that I had to practically BEG the Mister President & CEO to sign off on this service because it costs a whopping $150 a month. But why can't we buy plants and take care of them ourselves? He asked. Because no one but me will, and I don't have a green thumb, I replied. But why? He asked. Because our office looks stark and unprofessional, I replied. Of course, he ordered a 7 foot ficus tree for his office, but who's noticing the irony or hypocrisy of that?).

There were no cards, flowers, lunches, half days off or monogrammed plaques saying, "God Bless our EA." No "Happy Administrative Professionals' Day". Nothing. Zip. Shit.
I bemoaned this fact to our receptionist. However, I had told her boss the week before that the day was coming, so the receptionist got taken out to lunch. The next day she came in with a tulip plant for me yelling about Happy Belated Administrative Professionals' Day. My work area is in a hallway right outside my boss' office; well, one of my bosses, as I now support no less than FOUR, count them - FOUR executives.
Mister President & CEO overheard, wandered out of his office and offered to take me to lunch. I thought it would look like I was holding a grudge if I said no, so, three hours later there I was eating a sandwich and drinking a can of ginger ale while he talked about work and treated me to "some insight into my (sic) character" . HIS character.

Wowzers!

The theme of Administrative Professionals' week this year was "Excellence in Action".

It Wouldn't Be Spring Without CRACK

A few days of warm weather in San Francisco brought out all the cracks.

SweetSpot Labs

SweetSpot Labs is a much more sophisticated "feminine hygiene" product company than any that have ever been launched before. For one thing, they provide non-judgemental, non-marketing-ish education about the vulva right on their website. For another, their angle is different from others' (Summer's Eve, etc.) in that SweetSpot states there's nothing wrong with the vagina or vulva, and that odor down there is as natural as bad breath, smelly armpits or general sweat. They sell a line of wipes, washes, sprays and the like.

It's fascinating that good, solid, non-mysogynist information and chick lit color schemes and cute Stila-esque drawings are now merging in marketing and product development. I'll be watching this one with interest!

Good Morning, Gmail Autopilot!

I woke early this morning to the sounds of spring birdsong (it was still dark and the birds sounded like they were on crack, actually) and checked my personal email. Gmail had a red tab or link about a new feature called Autopilot, which uses some type of artificial intelligence to reply to emails, mimicking your writing style. The description said it needs more than 100 emails to be accurate, and that you and another person can reply to each other a few times before the quality of the email degrades.
I was astounded, and started thinking about all the delightful implications for my work, where we use Gmail instead of Outlook or another email service. Like, maybe I'll just enable it and go get a manicure this morning... or a Bloody Mary. I began clicking around the internet looking for more information about this and then realized the date - it's April 1st. DAMMIT!

Fantastic Cat by Takako Minekawa

This is a very cute song. I've been listening to it first thing in the morning after I drag myself reluctantly out of bed, and it's helping!
I can't believe that just a year ago I had a job where I started work, across town, at 7:00 am, and I was so accustomed to it that it didn't seem like any big deal. Now my start time is 9:00 and I have the hardest time getting up at 7:00!

Andy Goldsworthy - The Spire

I'm fortunate to have Andy Goldsworthy's sculpture, "The Spire" near my home. I went on a recent tour/hike to The Spire. They said that in time, the small cypress trees nearby will grow taller than the sculpture and obscure it, but unlike most of Andy Goldsworthy's ephemeral art, The Spire has structural engineering components holding it together on the inside; it's just not visible on the outside.
It's pretty cool and amazing. When you get up close to it you realize how tall it is. It's such a graceful object that from a distance it's very unimposing, and some may say unimpressive (someone at my work complained that it was just a pile of sticks that anyone could have put together). When you get close enough to be staring straight up at it, dwarfed by it, you get the full understanding of how beautiful and special it is. Here I am in shadows near The Spire. The tour group is around the base of the sculpture.

Kinokuniya

I got a handful of Easter-candy colored notebooks at Kinokuniya bookstore in Japantown...I like them because the paper is very smooth. I use them for writing my journal entries.

Balmshell Lipgloss

Well, enough ranting about my dumb day job. The only good thing about it is it pays a salary, and, I suppose, that for now it still exists, seeing as more and more people are being laid off. I could possibly make an offshoot blog and put all my work woes there, but that would be boring indeed.

Back to the Regularly Scheduled Programming...

Here's a very cool product; Balmshell lipgloss. ($20) Apparently they sell this item at Sephora, so it's hardly a newly-discovered secret, but I bought it online and I didn't see it in my local Sephora store. The fun thing about it is that the applicator end is one of those slidey-liquid things like those pens from the 70's. For some reason, when I was a kid I had one with a pinup girl on it, and when you turned the pen upside down, her bathing suit fell off.

They offer several colors, but the one I got is called "You Give Me Fever" and is described as a sheer rosy pink. The illustration features a blonde woman with peach cheeks... when you turn the applicator, a pink heart fills with color and slides over and fills her cheeks with pink. (Click the photo for a larger version.) Pretty cute, although it gets points deducted for not featuring some women of color. (Stila Cosmetics is now featuring illustrations of women of color.) The product comes with a little threaded keychain end cap, so you can take the cute part of the lipgloss off after you finish the gloss and make a keychain out of it. It combines "lipstick" with "toy". In addition to all this design cleverness, the gloss itself is pretty, non-sticky, and smells pleasant! I was pleasantly surprised.

Supposedly, when the economy goes south, lipstick sales remain strong or even increase. They say that a new lipstick is still an affordable luxury that women will treat themselves to while cutting back on other frivolities. So maybe Balmshell has a chance. I plan to get a few more.

International Postage - It Takes a Genius

One of the many stimulating and creative things I had to do today was address and stamp 28 envelopes and stick a self addressed, stamped envelope inside each one. One of my coworkers, who is someone I actually have hung out with outside of work and consider a friend (although today's events make me wonder) was given the task of taking the same address list and just plugging the address of each person into a form letter. I gave her this task when she started pestering me about her letters this morning, by messaging me to ask if there was anything she could do to "help" with the letters. When people say stuff like that at my workplace, it means "Can you hurry up with that thing you are supposed to do for me today?" So I hurried up, as I was passive-aggressively requested to do by this woman, and addressed and stamped her envelopes. There was one letter going to Australia and one to Switzerland, and I put the appropriate postage on them. Later this person instant messages me to say she noticed I put the appropriate postage on the two international-bound letters. She followed this up with a "You're awesome!" and a line or two telling me if it had been her she wouldn't have realized this till she was already at the Post Office.

Um. Can you say patronizing? I replied that I have several years of administrative work behind me and that my arms are an accurate postal scale and my eyes can penetrate a toner cartridge from across the room and know how much ink is inside. Is it because I wear lipstick and I refuse to wear shoes shaped like baked potatoes that she thinks I have no brain whatsoever? Like I wouldn't put the correct postage on a letter, so I need to be praised when I do?

I hate people.

What Kind of Monster Hates Babies?!

Bossman has finally done it - he's convinced me that he is indeed a monster, not a human at all. Today was the day that one of the staff, who has been on extended maternity leave since November 1 (she gave birth right around Thanksgiving) was going to come to work to visit and bring the baby. She announced she was three months pregnant at a meeting a few days after I'd started working there. She's in her early 40's and has only been married for two years... apparently it was kind of looking as though the husband and kid thing just wasn't going to happen for her... and then it happened, after some rounds of eHarmony. She's an attractive lady, and very sweet. She was one of my four bosses and I didn't enjoy her work style or enjoy working with her, but she was nice enough, and it was fun to see her pregnancy progress. We threw her a little work shower, and it's been fun to see the baby in photos. Anyhow, today was the first time she was going to visit the office and show us the baby.

Bossman, BossLady, the third person I support, whom I'll call The Nutty Professor, and one of my co-workers were in a meeting in the Bossman's office, which adjoins the main room of the "house" we work in. I work right outside Bossman's office. About 15 minutes before the new mom was to arrive, Bossman came out of the meeting and told me not to interrupt them for her; they didn't want to see her. Mind you, she's on the staff. We haven't seen her since October 31. She gave birth. We haven't seen the baby.
She CALLED ME AND ASKED ME WHAT THEIR CALENDARS LOOKED LIKE so she could be sure to see everybody! I was stunned by what he was saying, and asking me to do. I mean, as an Executive Assistant I have to be some kind of gatekeeper blocking solicitors from my executives like they're friggin Madonna or President Obama. I understand that; I have no qualms about it. But telling my co-worker that these people can't be bothered to see her after all these months, and meet her baby?! Or worse, pretending that they're not in there (when you can clearly hear them talking inside his office). That's over the top. My soul is worth more than my paycheck, and I did not intend to burn in Hell for doing something that mean and nasty. I finally decided to just avoid it altogether. I greeted the new mom when she arrived and saw the baby, who was just waking up and was totally adorable, and after we chatted I just walked outside and went down to a cafe for a beverage.

I later learned from my co-worker who was in the meeting that there was an actual discussion among those in the meeting about whether they would deign to come out of their meeting and meet the baby. BossLady stated that she hates babies, Bossman agreed (he has two adult sons), and my co-worker apparently turned red in the face because she too doesn't like babies, but didn't want to agree with BossLady. Bossman then told her she was red in the face, at which point she admitted she dislikes babies. The Nutty Professor, who has a three year old, said, "You guys..." but that was about it.

Okay, what kind of people don't like babies?! I can see not wanting to have one... I don't want to have one. I can see not wanting to have to take care of one for, say, eight hours. But seriously, who can possibly object to a quick three minute interaction with a baby, while the parent is present and if the baby poops their diaper or starts crying the parent will take care of it? I mean, that is just like taking a happy pill, right? Kittens, puppies, rainbows, flowers and babies are inarguably cute, happy, joyful things, right?! Honestly, Bossman and BossLady (hates babies and has a black cat: you do the math...) have convinced me once and for all that they are demon spawn.