Bad Movies, Bad Gas, Hair and Brunch

No word about or from Joey. I had Brad call Tomo tonight and see if he could pump the receptionist for information. All she told him was that Joey is "no longer cutting hair." Crap. So I'm one step closer to writing to Joe Ducey at channel 4 to see what HE plans to do.

Dad called the other night. My heart stopped beating for a few seconds and then caught up really fast because he never calls any more. But he was just letting me know that his computer was sick again and was going out for repair. How inconvenient! We'll have to actually resort to writing or calling if we want to communicate. I don't even know how I would go about writing a letter the old fashioned way. Certainly I wouldn't use a pen and paper.


Sunday was one of the most miserable days in recent memory. I haven't felt well since returning from the road trip. My foot pain (plantar fasciitis) is back and just killing me. I had to take constant pain meds to get through the trip but I stopped when we got home. And I feel excessively tired too. I'm like a junkie when I travel. I wash Vicodin down with gallons of Dr. Pepper and the combination seems to keep me going.

Anyhow, Sunday I felt like crap but had to spiff up a bit to celebrate a birthday with friends.

I was so swolen that I couldn't wear the shirt I picked out and had to find another. And I made the mistake of wearing briefs that were one size too small. I just wasn't thinking. And of course brunch was a buffet and I was determined to get my money's worth. Ugh. I thought I would explode. And the nice shoes I wore felt like bricks. I spent the day walking like Robbie the Robot but with a giant swolen gut.

Then we went to see a movie. In retrospect we made the 2nd best choice available. Idlewild. The SFGate little man, I read later, was merely in his seat at attention. We could have gone to see Little Miss Sunshine for which the little man is out of his seat clapping. But who knew. We didn't anticipate going to a movie or I would have done some research. The rest of the 75 movies playing at the megagargantuaplex in Dublin were pure crap. Idlewild had redeeming elements and wasn't that bad, but was, overall, a thumbs down in my humble opinion.

I'm ashamed of myself. I don't go to as many movies as I should and the ones I DO go to are really, really bad. Prior to Sunday, we saw The Devil Wears Prada on July 23rd. Yup, my birthday. At least the theater was cool. It was 115 degrees outside so I guess the $10.50 for 2 hours of comfort was kinda sorta worth it in a way. (But it sure was stupid.)

And folks, prior to July 23rd 2006 the previous movie I went out to see was July 23rd 2005. Brace yourselves. The choice was Willie Wonka or War of the Worlds with that homely twit who, in my physician's words, sucks the life out of every movie he's in, Tom Cruise. I chose War of the Worlds. And what a piece of crap THAT was. I think it was released on DVD that same afternoon and long forgotten by the next day.

How many days hath August? I never learned that 19th century ditty. Oh good. I have a couple more days to get my car smogged. What a racket that is.

And as I ramble to a close, tonight I go to bed angry, once again, about the GM conspiracy to eliminate all electric trolleys in America and replace them with filthy, gas guzzling exhaust belching busses. Yes, that's old news but it was such a horrendous crime against nature and a filthy backroom political deal that I think GM should be forced somehow to bring trolleys back to every city they screwed with their bus deal.

No, I'm not hallucinating. I've heard about this before but tonight an episode of History Detectives on PBS brought the subject up again. http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/investigations/410_electric_car.html

There. Almost every day I think to myself that the world is really screwed up. We're doomed. And I don't know where to go for a good haircut. I'm tempted to just get out the Wahl clippers and cut it all off except that I doubt it would make me feel any better.

Fat, Old AND Bald?

Day 2.
No word from Joey. I'm starting to hear from people who think that "bald is in." They're saying "Go for it" even when I remind them how I looked the last time I got happy with the Wahl clippers.

This photo was taken 5 years ago at the Volcano House on the big island of Hawaii. The steam vents were clouding up my Armanis. The face is now a bit fatter and the moustache is mostly gray. I'm looking old.

Let's just try this all in a sentence:
Have you seen Jim lately? He's looking very fat, old and bald.

Sorry. That doesn't work for me. I haven't given up on finding Joey because I'd rather hear "Oh look! There's that fat, old Jim with the great haircut."

HELP ME!

"Joey doesn't work here any more."

"Joey doesn't work here any more." Those were the words that have sent my world wobbling on its axis.

I called Tomo in Alameda this afternoon with my fingers crossed, hoping to make an appointment for a haircut either tomorrow afternoon or Wednesday. I never know what to expect. I could hear "Joey's on vacation" or "His first available appointment is September 19th" or "What time would be good for you?" But today's bad news took me quite by surprise. The receptionist didn't offer any further information and I didn't ask although I should have. Maybe I'll call back tomorrow and see what I can find out.

Before I start to panic or mourn, I need more information. Fortunately I have his email address and, yes, I wrote. And as I did I started worrying about not getting an answer. What if he doesn't want to cut my hair any more and doesn't write back? Should I have been a bigger tipper? Over several years of regular and faithful patronage I only went there with slept-in hair ONE time.

I've only had three excellent relationships with stylists (is that the right word?)over the last 30 years. Joey has been cutting my hair for several years. Prior to that was a man who had a heart attack one day on the way to work and crashed his car into a concrete wall. They weren't sure which caused his death. And before that was Andi, the brightest of them all. She gave me a mullet before they were trendy. I had Tom Bailey's hair before The Thompson Twins were famous. But she left town to move on to Hollywood and I never saw her again.

Granted, I could save a lot of money by being less fussy about my hair. I seldom comb it anyway. Maybe I should invest in a Flowbee, if they're still available, and master it. Shaving the head is a last option. I came very near to trying that once and it wasn't pretty. I ended up scaring a whole shipload of people and one of my best friends who hadn't seen me in a while. Sorry, Leslie. Oh, and sorry about scaring you with the pierced nipples too. They're long gone now, in case you didn't know. (The jewelry, not the nipples.)

So I may have to go out looking for a new cosmetologist. (Is that the right word?) Since I know that channel 4's Joe Ducey also sees Joey, I may have to find out what he plans to do. Maybe we can split the cost of a Flowbee and do each other with it.

Night Bandits

Tonight I can't upload a photo because I didn't take a picture. I couldn't. I locked myself out of the house even though the little voice in my head was screaming "put your keys in your pocket!"

I was watching the BBC news reports about the foiled terror plot. It was just about midnight and the cats were sleeping on the back of the sofa like bookends. I heard a crash that seemed to come from outside. Cats are great at times like this because they tend to look directly at where the sound comes from. Well both of them were looking at the front door, wide-eyed and sort of frozen in time. I thought it was a broken window so I headed outside to the courtyard to see what it was.

On the way out I thought I'd adjusted the lock so I could get back in. That's when the voice in my head told me to get my keys in kind of a "don't say I didn't tell you" tone of, uh, imagined voice. But I didn't know yet that the door locked behind me.

I headed out into the courtyard we share with two other neighbors and the first thing that caught my eye, expecting to see burglars or a broken window, was the shadows of several small creatures coming down the stairway across the way. They were the cutest raccoons you ever saw and the littlest ones weren't much bigger than my cats.

They walked across the path and went about 5 feet up a tree, stopped and looked at me. They were only a few feet away and I could hear them breathing. So I started talking to them like they were my pets. "You're bad little boys aren't you! Yes you are! What did you break you naughty, naughty critters?" There were plants, soil, broken things and a basket all down the stairway and a basket that had probably bounced several times before landing near the mailboxes.

These raccoons stole my heart. They were adorable and probably quite tame. And they just stayed there in the bottom branches of the tree saying "take our picture!" But when I hurried to get my camera, that's when I realized I was locked out. My neighbor had heard the clatter and had now come outside to see what was the matter. I was ringing the doorbell repeatedly trying to wake Brad up, to no avail. Eventually he woke up and came downstairs to let me in, looking really scary, and didn't bother to ask what the "situation" was outside that got me locked out in the first place. He DID notice that there were 8 phone messages and said "who's been calling?" Uh, that would have to be me, using the neighbors cell phone trying to wake the dead.

Tomorrow he'll wonder who called his cell phone about ten times at midnight.

The Work of Relaxation

The camping trip, the camping trip. I mentioned to a few people that we were going on another one of our camping trips and now everybody wants to know how it went. Did I make it sound like it was going to be memorable?

I promised someone that my photos would make it seem like they had been there too. Whoa! Where did I get that kind of confidence? And it's so not true. I censor my own photos to such an extent that you get a different, but not entirely wrong, impression of the truth. It's a skill.

This is the point where I intended to upload a photo but due to some technical problem, it seems I'm unable. This happens frequently and it really bugs me. Could it be me?

So the thing that made this camping trip different was that we (we?) invited 4 other friends to join Sam, Steve, Brad and myself for the weekend. And it couldn't have turned out better. We had two adjacent campsites each with a picnic table and fire pit. One of the tables was situated in the center of a ring of redwoods. That's where we set up the gazebo and main cooking and dining area. The gazebo keeps stuff from falling on the food and, in sunnier campsites, keeps us shaded. On the other end at our campsite we used the fire pit for after dinner socializing and S'more making. This time we remembered to take a broom and so I went about sweeping all around the tables and even made a path between the redwoods going between the two sites. Of course our plastic pink flamingos were there to show the way!

The best part of the trip, for me, was the long stroll on Saturday afternoon on a trail that goes down to and along the stream. We'd camped there one other time a few years ago and I've been kicking myself ever since because I didn't take my video camera. So I was happy this time to find that it was as beautiful as I remembered and took quite a few still photos with my digital camera.

At the bottom of the trail when you first reach the stream, there's a wide bend where people were out playing and swimming with their kids. I watched for a while and then noticed a group of ducks in the shadows of the ferns who seemed to be trying to swim upstream but were a little wary of the humans in their path. A few minutes after I started walking along the path I heard a lot of flapping and splashing and turned to see the ducks going upstream like they'd lit a rocket. I managed to snap a couple of photos as they disappeared around the bend.

I also enjoyed watching a red dragonfly take off from its perch over the water, do a figure 8 recon flight over the stream and return to the same perch. I watched it do this same routine over and over again. It was too far away to get a good closeup shot but I tried. Later I found a small blue dragonfly on a rock in the middle of the water and snapped his photo too, discovering after getting home that there was a fly on the rock too.

I was gone so long that I missed lunch. But that wasn't an issue for me because we'd eaten a big breakfast, something I don't usually do. The thing about camping is you have to start dinner early or you end up eating, cleaning up and doing dishes in the dark. "Quiet Time" is usually 10PM and I'm a real bitch when it comes to conforming to that rule. When I want to go to bed, I want it quiet so I insist that if people are going to be up past 10PM that they be extremely quiet, just for common courtesy. I've been known to shout at people who make too much noise, even total strangers.

The hardest thing about camping, for me, is the work involved with packing up, unpacking, and setting up all in the same day and doing the same in reverse on the going home day. Maybe that's why I haven't written about the trip until now. I was still tired from the work of relaxation.