Important Hair Advice

This brouhaha about the remarks Obama made in San Francisco about disenfranchised citizens has turned me off Hillary Clinton permanently, meaning that I now support no candidate at all. As a Newsweek column by the Daily Kos guy points out, unless she has a massive victory in Pennsylvania, her only hope is to convince the superdelegates to ignore the will of the people, which is a contemptuous and cynical strategy. I would not want a president who had done that in order to win, though I suppose it would be a step or two up from what Bush did. Twice.

I also am tired of finding out that Clinton has lied about this or that. Veracity is fundamental, or should be. I don’t want a president who can’t be trusted to tell the simple truth, even though we probably haven’t had one for a hundred years, if ever.

The day the Olympic torch was supposed to pass through San Francisco, I went down to the starting point, at Third and King, and waited around, with many other people, for an hour, but of course they ended up changing the torch’s route, so in the end, the most exciting thing that happened that day was that an acquaintance of mine, down at the Embarcadero, saw Elton John strolling casually through the crowd, alone. She said hello to him and he was really nice and stopped and let her friend take a picture of the two of them together.

Did I tell you about my new neighbor? I have a new neighbor, in the next building, but her bathroom window is five or six feet from mine. She is very nice and her name is Sara and she likes music very, very much, from early in the morning until late at night and all points in between, except when she’s at work.

I made a point of meeting her right away—by screaming into her bathroom window—so that if we ever had any issue to discuss, we’d have a friendly basis for doing so. She’s been here maybe a month, and quite a few times her music has kept me up until 12:30 or so, so I finally spoke to her about it, again calling to her from my bathroom window, emphasizing that I was not mad, that I like her and I’m glad she’s my neighbor, but I feel kind of lousy when I don’t get enough sleep.

She was super-nice in return and said she would turn her music down at 10:30, and that I should let her know if problems continue. So far, I have noticed a big improvement. Life is good.

I’m pleased to report that it’s now OK that my coworker Emily is gone, and also OK if we don’t keep in touch, or if we do. I crossed over the magical line between “absence makes the heart grow fonder” and “out of sight, out of mind” last week, and was relieved.

Last Thursday evening I finally did my taxes and on Friday, Tom and I drove up to visit Ann and Mac and Sophie the dog at the Sea Ranch, getting extraordinarily lucky with the weather. It was positively boiling in Santa Rosa, where we stopped for lunch, and at Ann and Mac’s peaceful and lovely place right on the coast, it was sunny, warm and clear.

Tom took a couple of long walks and I took a couple of long naps. A nap is always a nice thing, but it seems to be even better with the ocean sparkling right outside. I also made a tremendous amount of headway in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which my book club will discuss in a couple of weeks. It’s well written, but I’m finding it a bit emotionally uninvolving. Like, I don’t care if the main character’s wife comes back to him or not. In fact, I guess I think she shouldn’t.

When we were driving home again on Sunday, I found myself on the verge of nausea on twisty Highway 1, but taking the wheel myself relieved it.

As mentioned, I am now occupying the cube at work that Emily vacated, and it turns out to be the worst cube I’ve ever sat in. It’s large and has a nice view, but it’s open to the back, so people can and do stand behind me while I’m working, which erodes privacy and is also distracting.

A month or so ago, we got a note about cubes and who is sitting where and who’s paying for what. The cube I was sitting in at the time was not actually being paid for by my boss, and so I swung into action, sending my poor boss a slew of emails on the subject. Meanwhile, my immediate neighbor, also sitting in a cube not paid for by her group, said nothing at all to her own boss and just kept on as usual. (We have two different bosses, both located in some other city.)

In the end, my boss decided that it would solve all problems if I simply moved to Emily’s cube. My ex-neighbor said nothing to anyone and therefore is still sitting right where she has been for the past year or two, and so would I be if I hadn’t tried to manage the situation, alas.

Not long ago I found something on the Internet about a shampoo ingredient that can be a culprit in itching and other skin conditions. I sent the info along to my parents and my father said he stopped using anything containing this ingredient long ago and my mother said this:

“I have several bottles of shampoo and I am not going to try anything new right now. Look at it this way: when all the hair is gone, you can save money and just use face soap, as your face will reach all the way to the back of your neck.”