Archive | March, 2016

Strike a pose!

30 Mar

Image Source: http://professorqb.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/ProfessorQB-Headshot-with-highlights1.jpg

I received an email from my company’s marketing team, telling me I needed to provide a headshot for the website. Some people might enjoy the thrill of a photo shoot, but I don’t.

Among other things, I’m never sure where to put my hands. Part of me wants to constantly give two cheesy thumbs-up to the photographer, just so they have something to do. Or make jazz hands.

Anyway, I submitted myself to the horror of headshots this week, and I shared the proofs with Alan after, hoping he would help me make a selection. Here’s how our conversation went…

Me: Will you let me know which of these is your favorite?

Alan: Whichever one you choose, you should use it for your LinkedIn photo.

Me: Why? Do you not like my current photo?

Alan: It could just stand to be updated.

Me: That was diplomatic. What don’t you like about it?

Alan: Well, it looks a bit clown-y.

Me (once I finished laughing): Could you be more specific?

Alan: The filter on it makes your lips look really bright and your eyes look crazy.

Me: Oh. Yeah, well, the plan is to use this for LinkedIn, too.

Alan: Good.

Me: So which one do you like?

Alan: Not the one in the jacket.

Me: Why not?

Alan: The jacket doesn’t fit you.

Me: Yes it does.

Alan: Well, I can’t really see where the jacket ends.

Me: So what?

Alan: So I can’t really see where YOU end. For all I know, that could be a velvet mumu.

Me: So it makes me look fat?

Alan (warming to the idea): I’m just saying, it could be a velvet sack.

Me: Thanks for your help.

Sigh.

 

 

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Small town living: cruising?

26 Mar
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Kind of like this, but with crappier cars and less reason. 

The other day I was wishing a childhood friend a happy birthday on Facebook. “Happy Birthday, old man!” I wrote. “Hop in your car and go cruise the McDonald’s to feel young again!”

As soon as the words came out, I cracked up. They struck me as absurd – not only imagining my 42 year-old friend attempting this, but also because the entire concept of “cruising” seemed so ridiculous.

Unless you’re from a small town, you probably have (at best) only a vague notion of what cruising entails. I know this because – after cracking myself up with my Facebook post – I asked Alan if cruising was a thing in Northern Virginia when he was a kid.

He gave me a blank look. “What kind of cruising?”

Which basically was the confirmation I needed that cruising was not, in fact, a universal THING.

After I explained it, he asked if we also hung out at sock hops, then returned to the book he was reading. (I think he’s suppressing his jealousy.) 

If, like Alan, you grew up in a semi-urban area where cruising wasn’t a thing, I’ll offer a quick description: Cruising was the main Friday/Saturday night activity for high schoolers in our small town. It involved hopping in a friend’s car – usually with a few other people – and driving a repeated loop of town, waving at other kids doing the same thing, and occasionally stopping at McDonald’s to have an actual conversation with someone.

There’s really no way to describe it that makes it sound even remotely as fulfilling as it somehow was. And if it’s something you’ve never experienced, it probably sounds both weird AND boring.

I say that because as an adult who is now living carless in a large city, the idea even strikes ME as ludicrous. The environmentalist in me also cringes thinking about the gas that we wasted, going exactly no where.

And before you ask: No, we did NOT tip cows for sport. That’s tacky. We were too busy tp’ing each other’s houses for that.

 

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Well, that was refreshing!

23 Mar

At my yoga studio, they wrap up every practice by spritzing us with lavender mist while we are relaxed in savasana (also known as corpse-pose). It’s one of the small touches that makes the studio feel a bit like spa.

Being environmentally-minded, they also provide a natural apple cider vinegar solution to spray on our mats to clean them after class.

So I suppose it was only a matter of time before a substitute teacher got the spritzers mixed up. The other night, I was lying there peacefully in savasana, waiting for my smell-triggered mental image of Provence’s rolling fields of lavender – when suddenly it smelled more like I was in England surrounded  by newspapers of fish and chips doused in vinegar.

Before I could connect the dots, I heard the hushed whispers of the instructor, apologizing to the first two people she had sprayed. Compared to the gentle mist of the lavender pump, I’d have to imagine it felt like they were blasted in the face with a SuperSoaker.

Fortunately, that harsh wake-up call helped her catch her mistake so the rest of us were spared. And those first two people might not have been relaxed – but they sure smelled clean. Namaste? 

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Totally dropped that ball…

10 Mar

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Imagine you’re planning a trip to Europe with a colleague. You’ve put together to do lists and have reminded your colleague to authorize her bank card for overseas use and make sure her passport is still valid. “Check the date,” you tell her, “because you technically can’t travel on a passport that is set to expire in the next six months.”

You continue on your merry way, booking arrangements and finalizing your agenda. Then, four weeks before your trip, you wake up at 3am on a Saturday, staring at the ceiling, haunted by a question. “When does MY passport expire?” you ask yourself, a question you should’ve considered months ago with the trip was an initial glimmer in the back of your brain.

You calmly rise from bed and approach your safe, reassuring yourself. “I’d never let my passport expire. I’m sure it’s fine,” you repeat as you tap in the code. The door springs open and you retrieve your passport. You open it and see the date of expiration: January 2016.

 

NO. WAY.

What then unfolds is a scramble. You’re grateful for the internet because you quickly learn that you can rush a passport renewal for a small fee. You call the passport agency to see if you can get an appointment to do a same-week passport. You learn that unfortunately (fortunately?) you must be traveling within two weeks to warrant the kind of desperate service that results in an in-person interview and passport replacement.

Instead, you’re told you need to go the “expedited processing by mail” route. It makes you nervous to entrust your passport to the USPS and a post office box. You imagine all the scenarios in which you could be worse off than you currently are: your application could get lost en route to Philadelphia; it could fall into a crevice in the processing center and never get renewed; your new passport could get lost in the mail on its way back to your; it could get stolen from the lobby of your apartment building if the envelope doesn’t fit in your mailbox.

All the scenarios you imagine end with you not having a passport, unable to go on the trip you’ve been meticulously planning. You imagine telling your colleague that she’s flying solo. You imagine her eyes widening like saucers as she realizes she will be single-handedly leading ten days of training for 60 people.

You decide not to tell anyone about your predicament until you have your new passport safely in-hand.

You sit back and wait for your passport to arrive, so you start writing a blog post to bide your time…

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I suppose it could be worse…

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Apparently I speak Braille now.

8 Mar

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I can’t decide if acne is better experienced as a teen , when pretty much everyone is struggling with it – or as a forty-something, when you have very few shits left to give.

I’ve never really had bad skin – up until the last two weeks of my life. Because I assume it is temporary – likely the result of stepping off the steroids I’ve been on since September – I approach it mainly with curiosity, rather than frustration. It’s somewhat intriguing to wake up each day wondering, “Where might I have a new pimple today?”

I’m reminded of a friend I had in my early twenties, who was quite pretty. When we caught up a decade later, after her first pregnancy, I asked how it had been. “The pregnancy was fine, but my face was NOT. I had terrible acne,” she said, clearly still not over it. “I mean, I’m used to getting the best table or whatever when I go out to eat – and for three months I honestly knew what it was to feel ugly.”

At the time I laughed, thinking, “Finally! She knows what life is like for the rest of us!”

Now, though, I can muster a bit more sympathy. While I haven’t experienced the horror of receiving a downgraded table (probably because I never experienced the thrill of an upgrade!), I can relate to looking in the mirror and seeing – if not a stranger – then a somewhat bizarro version of myself.

It’s a good reminder: beauty is only skin deep, and looks can be deceiving. I’m healthier (knock wood!) with a bumpy face, than I was before with a smooth one. The fact that I’m stepping down from the steroids means things are working and I’ll soon (fingers crossed!) be on a single medication.

Who knew I’d be giving thanks for zits? Oh, Crohn’s, you silly bastard!

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