Okay, there's the new photo displaying my tragic dye job. You can't actually tell how bad it is since the image is colorized to match the month's color scheme, but believe me, fuschia would look more natural than the mahogany brown it is right now. I was right, though. Everything did look a little better in the morning. It was a gorgeous day, to begin with, although perhaps you wouldn't think so if you happen to be a fan of heat and sunlight. Me, I was relieved to wake up to a softly grey overcast sky. I do not like to have bright light first thing in the morning. It gets on my nerves and makes me snappish. I prefer to sort of ooze my way into alertness, not that I ever actually do this on a weekday, being far more likely to shriek at the time, dash around in a chaotic, frenzied haste from closet to bathroom, and shoot out the door at the last possible moment like a pinball released by a lever.
It was a typically loathesome Friday at work. Everyone swore like sailors as we got further and further behind throughout the day. I personally fended off approximately 85,002 requests for Las Vegas packages, advised numerous business travelers that Manhattan is full next week (no hotel rooms for love or money until Friday), had a righteously cranky guy demand to know why it's so hard to figure out when the cheapest time to travel is (the rules are arbitrary and specious, that's why), disabused someone of the notion that he could bargain down an airfare with me, convinced six hotels to either waive the rules or change the rules for my clients, and sorted out an insanely complicated itinerary which ranged over four separate bookings, two months time, nine different stopovers, and involved virtually every method of wheeled transportation barring skateboards but including mopeds. I missed the six o'clock train because I was trying to coordinate all the flight arrivals and departures. I'd have made a better job of it if John Madden had come in and drawn me diagrams on the blackboard, I reckon.
To relax afterwards, I joined John in watching Stanford cream Washington State in women's volleyball. Poetry in motion, particularly Jennifer Detmer and Kari Walsh. I stood next to Jennifer before the game and revised my idea of her as a bit on the willowy side: that girl is solid muscle, all six foot three of her, and I am a dumpling. My shoes are cuter than hers, though.
Thanks to yesterday's bonus I felt flush enough to buy a new pair of hiking boots. Well, shoes. Well, a hybrid of the two. They're phenomenally ugly but very comfortable so I'll just avoid looking at my feet when I wear them. At least they're not as ugly as those laughable exaggerated bell-bottomed pants which have so much fabric, and a bell that starts at the waist, that no one can actually walk in them; they wade. My shoes are a suave vision of nubuck and mesh by comparison. I wore them around the house this evening, trying to visualize myself trekking across the wildnerness in them.
Who am I kidding? They'll be just the thing for those last minute sprints out the door every morning.
