Hard Boiled Eggs, An Unmatched Desk, and a Black Sweater

I've recently begun working at a new organization; new for me. I think I've been there five months now-- certainly not long enough to understand anyone there and why the organization does the things it does.

We recently attempted to hire a receptionist. There was a very nice, very qualified woman who came to interview twice. Usually I'd assume that's a good sign. They decided not to hire her because she supposedly wasn't well-dressed enough and therefore doesn't have the right marketing and branding and messaging (words we use A LOT around there). She was a rotund little lady, and not young, and I wonder how much of not "looking right for the part" can be attributed to ageism and an intolerance for body diversity. It makes me feel weird and itchy thinking about this. At any rate, I got a good look at her-- she was wearing black pants, a white cotton shirt or blouse and a black sort of long cardigan. On any given day at our office you will see someone wearing the exact same thing. You will also see, or rather SMELL, someone eating a hard boiled egg that makes the whole front office smell like farts, the exposed side of someone's hideous pigsty of a desk, and soon, the new receptionist desk, which was purchased secondhand for $150 and which is made of some kind of fake mahogany veneer. The other three desks in the area are not mahogany colored-- they are sort of a honey pine color. We also have threadbare fake Persian rugs throughout the office, all of which have bare spots in them. When I look at the whole, the whole experience of what our office looks like and what I imagine would be someone's first impression, I think it's completely bizarre that they didn't hire that woman because her "style" didn't have the right messaging and branding. In all my years of working at offices, I've never felt more like I was in a television show about an office and all the nonsensical decisions and things that happen in them.

Happy Halloween!

My hamster Nougat, with a mini pumpkin.

I have acquired a beautiful pair of vintage eyeglasses for less than $11! Unfortunately, they have someone else's very strong prescription lenses in them, so I got in instant headache the minute I tried them on and couldn't see how they looked on me. So I put them on with my eyes closed and DD took a photo of me so I could even see how they look. I'm having them made with my own prescription. These things are BIG, which should be good as far as peripheral vision goes, and someone is making a custom eyeglass chain with Swarovski crystals for me to attach to the glasses. I'm very excited!

A bathrobe and an itchy wig

For DD's company Halloween party, we were two of the four Golden Girls. Of course I was made Sophia, because I'm the shortest. I wore a bathrobe lent to me by my friend Killer. Killer's mom is in her late 70's and apparently gave her the robe thinking she'd enjoy wearing it. It's baby blue flannel and buttons up to the neck. I also wore a curly gray wig and a wig cap. I was overheated the entire night, and after a short while, the wig felt like someone was poking twigs into my scalp! It was a good quality wig, too... a "real" wig, not a costume wig. Looking at some of the women in sexy, skimpy costumes shivering while I was practically making my own sauna inside the robe made me think that next year I'm going for a happy medium costume as far as coverage and comfort go!

For about the fifth year in a row, we didn't win the costume contest, although we try in earnest each year. This year, we did make it past the first round and got to walk across the stage, though!

Faux Fur Rules!

When I was a child, my grandmother lives next door to a man who was a retired furrier. I'm not sure if that's the correct word--he designed and made garments from fur. For some reason, my dad had some rabbit pelts that had been given to him by the furrier, and he was always saying he was going to have a jacket made for me. This totally horrified me, considering I actually had a (live) pet rabbit and several hamsters... not to mention being a big fan of guinea pigs. While I appreciate fur, I'd rather appreciate it on the live animal.

I love faux fur, though. I've been looking to get a fake fur jacket for this winter season, and I recently got this gray faux chinchilla jacket with gray satin lining. I love this thing, and it's pretty soft, too!

Playing with Knives and Running with Scissors

There are three tools about which I am passionate-- pens, knives and scissors. You need good ones many times in a single day, especially if you cook, or even if you just cut a sandwich in half sometimes (that's the knife part, not the pen!)

I have a pair of really good knives. One is a slightly smaller version of the other. The make is Henckles. They were a gift from my mother, but I don't think good knives are necessarily so expensive that most people couldn't buy one for themselves. They came with a sharpener, and I sharpen them before each use. They're so much fun to use. I cut things into paper thin slices all the time just because I can, and they cut through tough stuff like pineapple rind like it's butter. But yesterday I did a work event where we were preparing food, and cutting lemons with knives my coworker brought to the event was like torture. I felt like I was cutting through my leg with a butter knife. Her knives kept winging off in all directions, turning my lemon slices into bits of lemon splooge. I hated this task so much that I came home and told my knives how much I love them and how I'll never take them for granted again. They told me that they want to have a baby, and I agreed that's a fantastic idea!

Food Issues.

I work with some people who have some major food issues. At a previous job, I worked with a woman who went into angry hysterics because we made microwave popcorn, which we couldn't understand, till later our boss alluded to "food issues". After I saw the woman putting five tiny tupperware containers each the size of a softball, and each filled with what appeared to be lettuce or spinach leaves, which she proceeded to eat for lunch every day during the workweek, it started to make sense. At my last job, I worked with a woman who was tall, thin, and who also had food issues. She would heat up a little tiny container of stinky casserole and eat outside most days. She liked to preach to others about how if we rode our bikes more, we could eat more ice cream. She also went crazy one night and stole someone's ice cream right out of the freezer, which was labeled with the owner's name, and ate it all. What a freak... maybe if she ate a normal-sized lunch, she wouldn't have whacked out and gorged herself on pilfered ice cream!

Now I work with more than one person with "food issues". And you know, I hate to gender stereotype, but they're always women. The other day when we had bagels with all the fixings, one of our Ladies with Food Issues stood there eating a slice of cucumber. And she's pregnant. If you can't eat a bagel when you're pregnant, then when? Today there was a macaroon in the office. Yes, a macaroon. Instead of someone eating a whole cookie, or even half a cookie, I watched the one macaroon get cut "in half" about seventeen times throughout the afternoon. By the end of the day, there was this paper wrapper with a tiny sliver of macaroon attached, with a butter knife sticking to it. It's kind of like when someone drinks almost all the milk and leaves the container in the refrigerator for someone else to deal with, only it's the Office Version, which inevitably involves thin women with Food Issues cutting pastries, cookies, cupcakes and the like into smaller and smaller pieces, and leaving the crumbs, mess, oil and knives for someone else to deal with. If I see one more BROKEN COOKIE, ripped bagel, gutted cinnamon roll, or dissected croissant, I think I am seriously going to SCREAM.

Where Else Can You Walk Around Half Naked?

Here I am at the Folsom Street Fair last Sunday. On the bottom I'm wearing black lace tights and turquoise underpants; hee hee. I didn't go all-out, because last year I was essentially topless and I felt too exposed, but at least I wasn't walking around in GAP khakis like so many of the tourists and lookie loos at Folsom this year. It seems like every year there are fewer participants and more cameras and more people who are just going to see the freak show, and it's sort of annoying, but to me, it still feels safe and I enjoy walking around half naked in heels in public, with cops around who are actually facilitating it all! I still love the Folsom Street Fair, and love San Francisco for having it every year!

The Most Fun Laptop Pillow Yet

I recently spent a day at West Coast Green, a green building trade show in San Jose California, "boothing" for the organization I work for. Aside: I love that "boothing" is a verb in trade show speak. You're not just "working at your booth" or "representing the organization" you work for. You're BOOTHING.

Anyhow, although there was no end to the parade of cool, sustainable products for building the Platinum LEED-certified, low-carbon footprint house of your dreams, complete with succulent-planted roof and radiant-heat flooring, I currently rent an apartment which was originally built by... the US military. Yeah.

That said, the item highest on my "most likely to buy" list was this awesome laptop pillow by Intelligent Forms:

Intelligent Forms' laptop pillow

The Intelligent Forms BOOTHERS settled me into a chair with the laptop pillow atop my knees and a cute little Macbook nestled into the pillow. The pillow is comfortable and flexible, and filled with buckwheat hulls, which make a pleasant sound and a nice weight. They had one made of brown fabric, which really looked like logs. Each round end bit of fabric was a different pattern, and the pillow held the laptop securely. What's more, because the contraption hugged the computer, I was able to move my legs around and shift my weight without fearing that the computer would slide off. I have to say I liked this thing so much more than the iLap, by Rain Designs, which is what I've used most recently.

Captcha Woes

I must be a bot, because more often than not, I honestly can't read these CAPTCHAs, that are designed to tell humans from machines. I get my vision examined frequently, I wear contact lenses, that THING that happens to people in their 40's where they can't read anymore and have to hold papers further from their eyes has not happened to me, my lenses are the right prescription, and supposedly with them inserted, I can see 20-20. CAPTCHAs have gotten more difficult...

Orchidfest 2008

I'm awfully late posting this. I went to Orchidfest 2008 last weekend, at the Hall of Flowers at the edge of Golden Gate Park. I actually enjoyed Orchidfest so much more than The Pacific Orchid Expo, which was held at Fort Mason in February. I know it's comparing apples and oranges, because the Pacific Orchid Expo was HUUUGE. It's like of like comparing New York City with San Francisco, which, for some reason, people in San Francisco do ALL THE TIME... you just can't compare, because New York City is just its own huge, stunning, incomparable thing that I can't even really wrap my mind around.

But I digress.

Orchidfest was great because it was intimate and had a friendly feel. The orchid sellers weren't mobbed, so they were super friendly, patient and very open to sharing their knowledge and lore. DD and I bought 6 raffle tickets for $5, but we didn't win the raffle... it seemed like our chances were good, because there weren't many people there yet, and there were going to be several plants given away. It looked like lot of the volunteers won. I watched one guy choose the plant I would have chosen had I won, and I congratulated him (while suppressing the desire to knock him down and take his plant) while he gloated. I think DD felt a little sorry for me at that point, because he kindly bought me everything I wanted!

Two very sweet men showed me that these "Twinkle" oncidiums (bottom) smell like chocolate. They had red, yellow and pink, and they said the red smells like milk chocolate and the yellow and pink smell like white chocolate and they smell heavenly when placed together. They only emit their fragrance during the warmer part of the day; the growers told me they start around 11 am and intensify as the afternoon wears on, and then they "turn off" as it becomes evening. I took a red and a yellow. The individual flowers are each so tiny; smaller than a person's pinkie nail.

The other plant I got was this very trippy orchid called a "coelogyne". It only blooms upside down like this (1st photo), so you have to get underneath the plant to see it full-on (2nd photo). It only makes one flower at a time, and then a new one forms and the old one falls off. The plant keeps doing this, and the stalk gets longer and longer and forms a zigzag pattern. It was definitely not the flashiest, most colorful orchid there, not by a long shot. But I loved its quiet weirdness, and so, I took it home.

What to Be for Halloween?

DD's work has a spectacular Halloween party every year. A lot of the people who work there are artists, and as a result, the costume contest is legendary! After attending this thing for a few years now, I've realized that the only way we can hope to win is by getting together a large group of people who form a sort of collective costume. For example, last year there was a very impressive group who went as the movie "Office Space". Someone was a red stapler... another year there was a group of transformers who transformed into IKEA furniture. I sort of didn't get it, but they won big time.
And each year there seem to be a few cohorts of the Fandango brown bag people, each more spectacular than the last.

One year DD and I went as John Lennon and Yoko Ono during the bed-in. I figured, might as well exploit the ethnic similarity and poke fun at it. My wig made my head itchy and hot, our MAKE PEACE and HAIR PEACE signs that I'd carefully lettered and painted were freaking heavy, and walking around attached to DD by sheets and comforters was annoying. The only gratifying part was that everyone middle aged took our picture. Last year we went as Netflix envelopes-- again, a lot of artwork and production, but the costumes were easy to move around in, and when we took them off we just had comfortable black clothes underneath. Again, a lot of people liked our costumes, which made it fun! We didn't win anything, though.

This year I wanted to be Three's Company with several of DD's coworkers. One of them is a tall blonde woman-- she was slated to be Crissy Snow. Being short, brunette, and having a very layered shaggy haircut, I was to be Janet Woods. We were all going to roller skate...I'm a good roller skater!... but then the company said one of the rules is no wheels. We didn't think the costume would be as good without skates. Another idea was carnival people... one woman has two babies and we thought they could be little animals, and all I really wanted was to be a bearded lady. No one liked that idea, though.

My next idea was to be Rubik's Cubes that really work. It's not like I am super handy, but I'm resourceful and crafty, and no stranger to the drill. A quick internet search revealed a step-by-step guide to how this man created his amazing Rubik's Cube costume. Check it out! He even put some clear contact paper over all his colorful squares for authentic texture... this guy's precision and attention to detail is wonderful! Anything I could do would be a poor imitation, so I'm still brainstorming my costume!

Lars and the (RealDoll) Real Girl

How I never saw this movie when it first came out is beyond me, considering my fascination with RealDoll. I finally saw this movie last night--it's about a guy (Lars) whose mother died apparently while giving birth to him and whose father was emotionally shut down after that, leaving Lars sort of shut down and introverted. One day at work (it's not clear what he does, but he has a "cubicle" job) Lars' coworker shows him the website of RealDoll, saying how much he'd love to have one. Lars doesn't seem particularly interested, but he ends up getting one and naming her Bianca. At first, his brother and sister in law are freaked out, but eventually the entire community comes to accept Bianca. It's zany and sweet! And even though Bianca is a RealDoll, there's nothing particularly sexual about the film at all, which makes it even more unpredicatble and interesting.

Lars and the Real Girl website

Nougat

It can take several days to tame a new hamster. Today is Day 2 of trying to handle the new hammie, named Nougat. He's way faster than the late Skeepants! This taming session ended with Nougat giving me a handful of warm hamster pee. Ugh! Still, I remain optimistic.

Low Commitment.

Having been pet-less for about half a year following the death of my solitary goldfish, DD and I recently pondered what sort of pet to get... if any. I visited the SPCA adoption center and found a wonderful cat that I really liked... but they were kicking people out because it was close to closing time and I was under too much pressure to decide. Plus, they had a $20 adoption special that weekend only, and after I finally decided it would have been $80 to adopt her. Plus, you know, she has claws and glands and a butt, I have a white sofa, which, by the way is not particularly comfortable, and oh, that fabric that's supposedly treated, probably with some kind of horrible chemical, to release stains easily? It doesn't release red wine. Not that I'd expect it to.

I still like cats, so I became enamored of these miniature Persians that people are breeding nowadays. They're beautiful, and so, so tiny! They're very expensive, too, like a few thousand dollars. Which is okay when you're talking about car repairs or needing a new computer but seems kind of a bit rich for my blood, considering I'm unfortunately the type of person who lets her bank account get down into the double digits plenty often. So I started thinking along the SPCA lines again, when my little sister, age 6, announced to me that she's deathly allergic to cats, although she likes them and has a few cat stuffed animals.
Although I don't see her very often, she does come over and I want her to be able to come over and hang out, and even spend the night, once she gets a little older and her parents release their death grip of overprotectiveness on her. (I mean, really. I'm thirty-five, not fifteen... I drive a safe four-door sedan, I have a dull 9-5:30 job at a nice non-profit. I don't quite get why we only get to have supervised visits... sometimes I think my father is in a time warp and to him, I'm still a 16 year old who ditched school, snuck around, wrecked a car and spilled red nail polish all over the carpet in my bedroom and hid it till I went to college by rearranging my room.)

The other week I walked into the post office by my work to be greeted by two of the sweetest little puppy heads you ever saw peeking out of a doggie carrier. I dropped to the floor, stunned by their adorable-ness. In some kind of crazed moment, I even asked their owner for breeder information. Apparently these are champion chihuahuas, and the proud new owner flew all the way to Michigan to get them and bring them back to California. After about half an hour of petting these little puppies while their owner taped up some packages she was sending out, I returned to work, happily announcing to my coworkers that I fell in love with chihuahuas and planned to get one.

After a few hours, rationality set in. For one thing, I've never had a dog and don't know the first thing about them, nor has DD ever owned a dog. For another, we rent, and we're technically not supposed to own a dog (though plenty of neighbors do, because the management used to allow dogs, and they changed the rule but had to grandfather in anyone who already had a dog). Finally, I realized I don't really want a dog. They have to go to the bathroom and you have to take them out before the sun rises and stand there and shiver while they do their business, and then you have to pick their business up while it's still fresh and steaming.

So, I'm the proud owner of an adorable hamster, which DD purchased for me yesterday! Hamsters are great. They require only about $100 for their whole set up-- nice cage, ASPCA-approved exercise Wodent Wheel, food, and bedding. You clean their cage once a week and play with them daily (but if you don't play with them daily, they don't care. In fact, they're so indifferent that I don't think it matters to them at all if you skip a day). They're fun to watch. They live about 2.5 years. My little guy is about 5 weeks old... so we should have plenty of time together. Photos to follow!

Valley of the ...

I'm back, with a new zeal for the keyboard, thanks to an iMac which arrived today at around noon... but my instantaneous passionate love for this thing will be explored in great detail another day!

Before the old machine started to sputter out, exhausted after four years and some hard drive damage, I was thinking about costume jewelry designer Tarina Tarantino's new line of flesh tone (fleshtone? flesh-tone?) colored necklaces, hair bows, bracelets and other baubles. It's interesting. I'm fascinated with foundation makeup and I have several types, myself, ranging from lightweight coverage to really heavy-- a thick cream formula that completely covers the texture of your real skin and sort of puts on a whole new "skin". So the idea of extending the constructed skin to the adornments that traditionally offer color or contrast or metallic shine, and making the adornments tone-on-tone interests me, design-wise. Politically, it makes me think about all that "doll" imagery, language and conditioning that women grow up with (and continued to be rather innundated with throughout our daily lives). Like, who wants to be a doll? Like a Stepford wife? What the heck is that even about? I also feel that women celebrities are looking more and more doll-like all the time, and I wonder why that is.

It also made me think about RealDoll.--I've talked about RealDoll before, and RealDoll for some reason is often a point of reference for me!-- I could see a beautiful RealDoll dressed in all this Tarina Tarantino Doll Skin finery and how cool and eerie and so odd-yet-so appropriate that would be.

Is there an essay or a paper or thesis or book about the history of flesh tone? Like who was the first paint manufacturer or writer who used that phrase for that color? Outside of the United States is flesh tone not pinky peachy gray? Do you like clear Bandaids? I do!

Easy Halloween Costume: Sarah Palin

DD and I have been brainstorming our Halloween costumes since November 1, 2007.
I now think we should go as the Republican ticket. All I need to do is to get one of these Ken Paves/Jessica Simpson hairpieces and say things like:


"I am pro-life and I believe that marriage should only be between and man and a woman."

Mimobots

At work my coworkers and I have a Tuesday staff meeting. One of the many, MANY things said during the meeting today was something about "thumb drives" disappearing. My boss likes to say "thumb drive" for what I call a flash drive and what other people call a memory stick. Seriously, this thing has so many names it's kind of ridiculous.
Anyhow, apparently in classes, people are passing around various flash drives (I am not sure why) and they need to get back to the the instructor or the TA, and they disappear, not because anyone wants to steal them, but because they're little and they look like everyone else's flash drive.

I think we should get a whole bunch of different Mimobots. Mimoco has turned a dull little device into a little bit of adorable happiness, called a Mimobot! There are lots of different Mimobots available in varying storage capacities-- 1 gig, 2 gig, etc. And they're priced pretty much like a plan flash drive. I love Mimobots!

God Bless Facebook

I came late to Facebook... I already had a myspace and a friendster and a tribe and whatever the hell other social networking things there are out there. My late hamster Skeepants even had a Hamsterster account. Honestly I didn't really see the point of any of them...or the value or benefits. Except for the hamster thing... I did enjoy all the photos of everyone's cute hammies! Along came Facebook, and I came late to Facebook, and again I didn't see the POINT, until the other day, when into my Inbox landed a message from my best friend from elementary school, whom I haven't seen since then, when she moved from California to Georgia with her family. How crazy is that? Apparently this is a common Facebook phenomenon. In this case, I'm extremely happy to reconnect with her, but it's certainly something to think about in regards to privacy and anonymity, so I went through and found several exes and ex friends (this is commonly known as Facebook stalking, I think) and made a "block list" so they can't turn around and find me!

Fresh Scent. New Pants.

As regular as the turning of the earth and the return of high tide, my period comes each month on the same weekend as this "Executive Certificate Program" at my work. During "Executive Program Weekend" a bunch of executives have classes at a law firm downtown, and I am the official caterer, coffee bitch and dishwashing scullery maid.
I also work six days a week during Executive Program Weekend, and this Friday was a thirteen hour day for me. Saturday was a lot better... my day started at 7:00 am and ended at 5:45 pm! Lots of fun stuff happens during Program Weekend, such as pre-ordered bagel platters going "missing" from a bagel shop which shall remain unnmamed, even though I not only ordered the bagel platter from a girl with the same name as me, but I also called to double check and confirm my order the day before the event, and my caterer showing up at 12:20 for a 12:30 lunch.

But perhaps the BEST thing that happened was that my period started, and it wasn't like some courteous little trickle... it was like a scene from a horror movie, or from the latest novel in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, Breaking Dawn, wherein a baby half vampire rips its mother apart when it's time to be born. I'll skip the gory details, but I had to walk down Market Street with a sweater tied around my waist and go and buy a new skirt to wear, and my pants had to be discarded. There is no saving them. That's how much of a bloody mess it all was.

Why did this happen? Well, yes, I knew my period was coming, and I did buy an anticipatory box of tampons a few days prior, however I accidentally bought "Fresh Scent" tampons, which I realized with horror at 6:00 am Friday morning. They smelled like Raid ant and roach killer. I cannot stick a Raid-scented tampon inside my body. I'm afraid I will get instant cervical cancer if I do. So I was relying on my last wimpy "regular absorbency" non-scented tampon to carry me through from the time I left my house at 6:35, went to the grocery store, shopped for last-minute food for the Executive breakfast (and more tampons) drove to the law firm, unloaded my carload of food, piled it onto a rolling delivery pallet, got my security badge, and finally took the freight elevator to the law office where I would hopefully get to the bathroom in time (at around 8:10 am) to insert a new tampon before bathing the entire city or just the crotch of my really nice pants in my menstrual blood. Yeah. Didn't happen. I ended up spending $98 on a skirt (couldn't get pants because I'm so short that all my pants have to be hemmed before I can wear them) and $18 on a new pair of panties. But hey, there is no time to shop for bargains when one has bloody pants and about 11 more hours of work. I just don't understand why some people's periods trickle out in a predictable, manageable way and mine is more like someone pouring out a glass of water for a day, and then it pretty much ends. I've been to the doctor and they say there is nothing wrong with me down there. Executive Program weekend is just not a good weekend for my gushing geyser period. It's really best to be close to home, or at least to the bathroom at work. One time I even dropped blood on the floor of Macy's downtown, and had to stand there squeezing my thighs together while my friend ran to the bathroom to get me a wad of toilet paper. Now that was really awful. That was probably the worst thing that ever happened with my weird explosive period.

And since a skirt is not really a replacement for a pair of work pants, I also bought a new pair of work pants this weekend, bringing the menstrual financial toll to about $220 this weekend!