yesterday, for what felt like the first time in years, i felt optimistic.
Monthly Archive for October, 2006
Page 2 of 2
1. you know that seinfeld episode where george decides that whenever he makes a good joke he should leave the room immediately, so as to preserve his reputation as a funny person? the other day i approached my coworker’s desk with some revisions i’d just made to one of our websites.
“i finished these up,” i said, handing her my revisions.
“thanks,” she said. “i’ll route them in a minute.”
“okay. check this out,” i said, pointing to my lower right eyelid, which has been twitching off and on for the past few weeks. “the twitch is back.”
“oh, i see it!” she said.
“yeah. it’s like an elton john song, except about stress.”
every coworker within earshot laughed. “thank you!” i said, and ran back to my desk. no point saying anything else after that.
2. this weekend is my ten-year high school reunion. against our better judgement, jessica and i have decided to attend. the way we see it, we’ll either a) talk to people we liked then and probably like now, b) talk to people we didn’t know/like then but like now, or c) stick together and mock everyone.
a few of my coworkers have suggested that jessica and i claim we invented post-it notes. but i don’t think i need a crutch. i’m going to dress like the best version of me, talk about the me version of me to anyone who asks, and try to have a good time regardless of what high school was like (not that great).
that said, i’ve had a terrible time finding shoes. i almost never wear shoes that could be considered dressy; they’re expensive and i can’t walk properly in them. yesterday at the shoe store, three employees came up to ask me if i needed help finding anything. i said no thanks, i’m fine, but what i wanted to say was, “yeah, i’m looking for some dressy shoes that are comfortable, attractive, cheap, easy to walk in, and make me look about seven feet tall.” i may as well have asked them to sprinkle magic dust on my feet.
i ended up buying a pair of semi-comfortable, extremely attractive, relatively expensive, difficult-to-walk-in shoes that make me look about seven feet tall. the financial aspect alone took me twenty minutes of deliberation. i am, at heart, someone who thinks that five-dollar vintage shoes are better than all the expensive shoes in the world.
it seems rather fitting that i should attend my high-school reunion with a giant zit on my face. apparently, my face agrees.
3. cooler weather makes almost any place feel like home to me. almost.
today i was at half price books looking through the fiction section while i waited for the book buyers to decide how many new books my old books were worth (two (i bought six)). i was kneeling on the floor in the D section to see if helen dewitt had written another book i didn’t know about (she hadn’t), and thinking about this quote from the last samurai, this part in particular:
Sometimes a book can be called from the dust and the dark to produce a book which can be bought in shops, and perhaps it is interesting, but the people who buy it and read it because it is interesting are not serious people, if they were serious they would not care about the interest they would be writing thousands of words to consign to the dust and the dark.
and i was looking around at all the books on the shelves and thinking about how many books there are in this one bookstore and jesus, these are just the misprints and the ones people don’t want anymore. the number of books that are written is much larger than the amount of time people have to read said books, and that’s not even factoring in whether or not those books are any good.
so then i thought, if i write a book (and i sort of have an idea about one i might write), how will all the potential readers of books find it among all these other ones, and if they find it, will they even want to read it?
as i stood up from the floor of the fiction section, about to give up on my nonexistent writing career, a bookstore employee walked past me and said, “hey, you look great!”
“thanks,” i said, glancing down at the t-shirt i was wearing with a skirt i’d made out of a pair of jessica’s old pants.
“who does your hair?” he said. “you?”
“yes.”
“it’s awesome,” he said, then disappeared down another aisle.
i suppose the conclusion i can draw here is that if my writing career doesn’t work out, i can always try to make it as a seamstress, or some sort of hair model.
(p.s. here are some good songs.)
