Me and Bobby McBeal

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I was all kinds of productive yesterday afternoon despite feeling unaccountably sleepy all day. I did laundry. Before that I rollerbladed for an hour after not using them in over a month. I got brave and instead of plying back and forth through my park, I ventured out for the second time. I practiced braking, the most critical skill and the one I thus far lack. I was going to go for a long cruise tonight but I have to put the site back up. "Have" to put the site up. That's not a good sign. Anyway, I'll slap it up quick as I can and work with what daylight I have left.

"All kinds of productive" should include more than doing laundry and exercising, shouldn't it? I folded the laundry. I pet Blake's head. I didn't help with dinner, which we ate after 8 (very late for us) over a recorded "That 70s Show." Fox is trying to suck me in for two hours on Mondays with that, the 7:30 filler, and "Ally McBeal." It won't work.

The living room carpet is an excellent substitute for dining or folding table. Channel-hopping, I spotted in one scene the final episode of M*A*S*H, which I am pretty sure I saw just the once, 16 years ago. Even RDC, who can name that episode in fewer lines than I can, was impressed that I was able to give Margaret's inadequate (writers? what writers? where?) last line to Col. Potter. Hawkeye's last toast to the unit is more obvious: "If I haven't loved all of you," leering at the nurses, "I've loved as many as you as I can."

How many times should I have to run the same errand? The Wednesday we got back from vacation, I brought the four rolls of film from the center console of the car to Robert Waxman, which I should remember to call Wolfe Camera. The following Monday, I picked them up. Monday night RDC asked where his California roll was. "Not, I presume, in the center console of the car with the rest?" I asked. No, and why would it be? He didn't have the car in Monterey. The film was in the same by-the-door basket we throw everything else. Tuesday noon I brought that roll in. Tuesday evening RDC got around to looking at the photographs, and then he asked where the picture of him with the Fremont Troll is. "At the beginning of a roll we haven't used up yet," I told him. "Oh," he replied, all dejected. Wednesday I might actually not have gone during lunch, but I did go to Office Depot to buy another two of the ugly photograph albums I favor (because I can cover them with Morris paper). In the evening HAO was over and looked at the photographs and RDC asked again where he and the Troll were (he was sick), so I figured what the hell, I want the Roslyn pix as much as he wants his damn Troll photograph, so HAO and I wasted the end of the roll in the park. Thursday I picked up the California prints but forgot the Troll & Roslyn roll. Friday I remembered it. Monday I figured out which ones I want reprints of and brought the negatives in, but the Troll & Roslyn roll wasn't ready and I didn't drop off the other negatives because I hoped the T&R roll would be worthy of reprints. Today I picked up the Troll & Roslyn and dropped off the damn negatives. The reprints won't be done for several days, giving me a respite.

RDC just kind of stood by the Troll, anyway. I wanted him to get under the fingers of its right hand (the VW Bug is in its left), to no avail. I love that shot of me next to Roslyn Café, anyway.

A fellow takes my bus whom I call (in my head) Mr. Eye Candy because he is so aesthetically pleasing. There's a new fellow at Dot Org who similarly adds to the office landscape. This morning, stopping on my bike at a light, I said "Good morning, Landscape," to the pedestrian on my left. My brain fed me Landscape's name because Eye Candy takes the bus and therefore couldn't be a pedestrian here, but my brain was wrong. He returned my greeting despite my calling him the wrong name (I assume it was wrong; Landscape is not a common name). "Oh excuse me," I replied, "I thought you were my coworker, but I recognize you from the bus, not my office."

"Yes, I do take the bus," said Candy, "but I just thought you were being friendly." I could tell he didn't recognize me from the bus, although he walks past my front-row seat every day. Maybe it's the helmet. Ha!

Anyway, this is just more proof that I find one specific look attractive and also that I can't distinguish among members of my own species too well.

Going through the Troll & Roslyn last roll, in the last few waste-film-to-finish-the-roll shots HAO and I took in the park, I just noticed something odd. In photographs I look like either of my parents or sometimes my grandmother, in addition to always being my sister's sister. Those are the only relatives I have ever seen in me. That evening in the park, HAO having inadvertently unleashed the famous laugh, she seized the camera and danced ahead of me declaring she had to get the laugh. So there the laugh is. And my expression is wholly my grandfather.

I wonder, if I was more familiar with my other grandmother as a younger woman, if I would see myself in her. I have one photograph of Bump-Bump as a young man in the service and he looks just like my uncle and rather like my father but I have never seen my sister or myself in him.

That Lands' End model is a lot different than when I tried her four months ago. They ditched some useful elements, like height, and are still being coy about weight. I'm Ms. Proportion: my hips are the same number of inches as my bust (more than a yard) and one of the figure options is broad shoulders with hips as broad. That describes me and I chose it, along with a relatively well-defined waist, but yoikes! I hope no one with the figure they assigned me actually would wear stretch pants, as they recommended.

 

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Last modified 31 August 1999

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