"5 by 5"

(Though I started writing this one back in January, I am applying today's date because I am finishing it up today. But the first few paragraphs-- read as if it were January. Because they were written at that time. It was this topic that started it all, even if a bunch of posts came before it.)

Happy New Year everyone! Well, after several months of not blogging (see below) I am back with us again. But for a specific reason.

The unbelievably smart, talented, and handsome Tom, author of the well-known blog Upword, has honored me by "tagging" me, as it were, to reveal five fun facts about me. The reason I called this post "5 by 5" is because this "tagging" business is essentially like a chain letter: I am supposed to come up with five things about myself, then tag five more people. I don't think I know five people with a blog, so I had better start meeting bloggers, I suppose. (Of course, Buffy fans will recall that "5 by 5" was an expression frequently used by fellow slayer Faith to indicate that everything is OK, e.g. "It's 5 by 5!")

Thanks to Tom this blog is restarting with my five fun facts. I need to try to write in it at least once a week, that will be my goal. Though I have several posts saved as drafts, I never published them because I reached an acceptable level of satisfaction once I had finished writing them-- I didn't feel the need to post them. I think I may publish them after all; in reading through the posts I made back in October, I had fun reading them. So why not post more?

At any rate, the five fun facts about me, in no particular order:

1. I played alto saxophone for ten years. I started in the fourth grade and took lessons for the majority of my time before college. I was always in the school band, and I think the best part of my time playing alto saxophone was performing, whether it be at a school assembly, on a bandstand in the summer (for which I first received money for playing!), or, as you'll see in #2, a foreign country! The performance I reflect most fondly upon was in 8th grade with the school band. We performed the Kool & The Gang song "Celebration" along with several instrumentally-talented faculty members. It was a great song, a great performance, and a great sound, especially given that the large majority of the band was fairly inexperienced. Pep band was also fun: in high school, I had a chance to be a guest of the pep band of a major university for a hockey game; in college, I played at several football and basketball games. Pep band felt best toward the end of my saxophone career because I never felt a particular pressure to get every note right. I felt that as long as the band produced a song that sounded something like the intended song, we were doing pretty well. I also recall a time where several women in the band refused to play the song "Wipeout" when the basketball team was ahead by one point with a few seconds left in the game. Probably a prudent decision. (My musical talents also included piano and singing a capella.)

2. I spent the night in a French hospital. At the ripe age of fourteen, I was able to take advantage of a terrific opportunity to go on a trip with a jazz band to a tiny town in France. This was essentially a band exchange program. It was a terrific trip which culminated in a concert for the entire town of about 800. Following the concert we were hanging around the dorms, packing, talking, etc. for our trip home the next day. Unfortunately, a big wind was blowing, and the door actually ended up slamming on my finger, tearing my fingernail out most of the way. I actually passed out in a small medical office, and was transported to a local hospital shortly thereafter, where the fingernail was removed and given to me in a plastic container, and my finger was essentially wrapped up in a big ball. Fortunately we were still able to make our flight (we called ahead to ask the plane to wait a bit, as we had timed it pretty close). Upon return, first stop: the emergency room, where the doctor took one look and told us that I'd need some quick surgery to repair the nail bed if I wanted to improve my chances of having it grow back. She did so, and sure enough, six months later (finally!) I had my right index fingernail back. Yay! (The joke about this story is that during the car ride to the airport, I was so groggy that I forgot to take my fingernail container with me. I believe it was left in the rental car. Imagine the surprise of the next renter of that vehicle....)

3. I have a light body of work as a baseball play-by-play announcer as well as color commentator. Radio broadcasting was always a field I wanted to check out and see if I could cut it; it always seemed fun. I took several classes at a small community college, including a course in radio announcing (which culminated in several DJ programs) as well as a course in sports broadcasting. That course, which I took in the spring, largely involved working with a partner to broadcast weekly local college baseball games. Though it was hard work to collect all the statistics and come up with a system to recall the players' names (as opposed to mentioning them only by number, clearly a no-no), it was quite enjoyable. I still have some of the mp3s, though I'm typically too shy to play them for anyone. My broadcasting partner's name was Erik, affectionately called (by someone other than myself) "The Big 'E'" in another broadcast, so the joke was that our team was called "Davey and The Big 'E'". Additionally, we had grown up in the same city; naturally we found ways to work that into the broadcast. Ultimately, however, I decided that radio broadcasting wasn't for me; I found that it was driven by sales much more than the content delivered over the airwaves.

4. I contributed to a management consulting book. Many moons ago, I was an intern with a management consulting group. I was the webmaster for the group's intranet site. However, I was fortunate enough to get the chance to get in on some of the consulting work. I contributed to some of the group's work with a law firm, complete with participation in a client visit. In addition, I was responsible for some of the group's research for an upcoming book. I pored over corporate financial statements, traversing various databases, and the like. In the end, I was gratified to find some of my graphs (summarizing my research) in the book! Of course, I was not mentioned by name in the acknowledgements for the book; by the time the book was published, I'd left the group. Oh well. I'll always know.

5. I had only two wisdom teeth. And I feel fortunate for that, as it made the surgery much easier. I was able to have it in the oral surgeon's office, as opposed to my friend, who with four had to have hers pulled in the hospital. I don't know how exactly it works, e.g. how you end up with two, or four (or, in the case of a friend of mine, who just told me he had five!). The best part of the surgery....is that I had it many years ago when I was a young pup. (Ha!) No, I actually don't remember it being particularly bad. They did give me sleepy gas, but I woke up most of the way through (and could tell they were poking around in my mouth) but quickly dozed back to sleep. I remember my mom took me, and actually, I think she was able to get out of jury duty because the surgery had been scheduled pretty far in advance and she was taking me for it. I don't think, even if I'd had my driver's license, which I didn't, that I'd have been able to drive home after that experience.

So there you have it! Enjoy!

In the mood for music....

Well, these blog entries are coming fast and furious. Mostly has to do with the fact that I'm trying to write a little more nowadays. Express myself. What have you.

Tonight's subject has to do with music and how my mood basically took a 180 with respect to a particular song. The song, (yep, it's a romantic one), is "It Might Be You", performed by Stephen Bishop. If you don't recall it by name, it was the theme from the 1982 comedy Tootsie starring Dustin Hoffman and Jessica Lange. Great film.

A bit of the back story: my iPod mini, after nearly two years of dedicated service, is no longer functioning. Very sad. Luckily I was eligible for a replacement, but in the mean time, I am without my iPod, which I have come to depend on during car trips, subway trips, at work, etc. I'm stuck with terrestrial radio in the car, but at work I decided to give internet radio another spin after nearly seven years.

I first discovered internet radio during a summer 2000 internship; at that time, whenever I picked a station, it would start from the beginning of the playlist. Fortunately the third song was a great tune, "On The Beat" by the BB&Q band, so I could listen to that song as many times as I wanted, as long as I suffered through the first two songs. Fast forward seven more years, and we seem to be a little more sophisticated. Some stations have the same playlist, but they appear to shuffle a bit; others appear to be the same sequence but the songs don't pop up at the same time, maybe I'll recognize a sequence one morning that I saw the previous afternoon. In addition, the internet radio site I tried is searchable by song, so I could search for a song and see which stations tend to play that song.

On my drive into work on Friday, I heard the tail end of "It Might Be You" on the radio. It definitely melted my heart. I was feeling a little romantic that day; perhaps it was the upcoming wedding (which I've already blogged about); perhaps it was the fact that I was hoping against hope from a call from a particular love interest (see below). In any case, I wanted to hear the whole thing. Dragged the old corpse up to the office and searched for stations that played the song, and found one, so I just started the player, which has a half hour buffer, and kept an eye out in case the song popped up on the station's playlist. It did, about 4pm, but unfortunately I had some glitch with the player and it wasn't playing, so I didn't get the whole song in the buffer, I only had about half of it. (Later I found out that the buffer size could be increased to 24 hours, so I could have just left the player running and checked periodically. Oh well). In any case, as I said, I was in the mood for the song, so I just kept playing that partial song over and over and enjoyed it.

Fast forward through the weekend: wedding, volleyball tournament, no call from the potential love interest. That last part I kinda saw coming. Eh.

Maybe the wedding satisfied my romantic appetite; the volleyball tournament certainly sapped my supply of adrenaline for a while. On today's drive into work I was not feeling the need for music. I listened to the local sports station on the drive, to the news station - anything but music. Same thing in work - either listened to nothing or talk for a while, until about 3pm, when I finally said, eh, I can take some music. And would you believe, I had the same station playing, and "It Might Be You" came up! And this time I caught the whole song, having expanded the buffer so I could hold onto it for a while.

But today, the song did almost nothing for me. The song that I rushed home Friday night to buy on iTunes (the original is not offered there as of today). The song about which I was feeling all romantic and sappy, maybe seventy-two hours prior. And I wondered what had happened -- why didn't I feel the same about that song? I think it really did have to do with the events of the weekend? Maybe I had a lot of "romantic potential energy" because of the upcoming wedding and hoping for that call from the potential love interest. Perhaps with the disappearance of that romantic potential (attending the wedding; realizing the potential love interest wasn't interested and moving on) took away some of the near-term significance of the song. Not to say I don't love the song; I did play it a bunch of times today. But it didn't feel the same as it did on Friday - it was not evoking the same strength of emotion. I'm sure it will again; it's a great song.

But for now: I'll stick with news, sports, and the occasional upbeat song, such as Deodato's "Happy Hour", which was a recent discovery via, you guessed it, internet radio.

Weddings

Hello All:

I must tell you I had the privilege to attend a wedding this afternoon. A dear friend, a spectacular woman I have been lucky enough to be close with for the past ten-plus years, got married today. She and her new hubby have been dating for seven-plus years (I couldn't believe it had been that long). The reason I mention it is because, during that time, up until the wedding today, I had seen him exactly once. I would have thought I'd hung out with the boyfriend/fiancee/husband of a dear friend more than once. To be fair, the relationship between myself and my friend was largely conducted via telephone email, so I didn't see her all that often either. And at the wedding I find out that she is now moving to the big city I just left. Makes another excuse to visit!

It was a fine ceremony at a beautiful old church, perhaps fifty attendees from all over the globe (in fact, the maid of honor traveled in from London!) The reception was to be "light refreshments" following a noon wedding, but the refreshments were anything but light -- I certainly didn't go hungry, including a piece of the cake. As an aside, as is the tradition, the bride and groom feed each other cake after cutting the first piece, and in this case, they did so with forks. I heard a lady whisper to her husband, "Oh, good, they used forks. We didn't use forks." So I conducted an internal poll and determined that I think the tradition is cuter and more fun conducted by hand rather than by fork.

But I digress. Weddings always make me a little emotional. And while it's a very formal ceremony (typically), the sheer happiness that emanates from the event is what gets me every time. The happiness is nearly tangible: the couple being married and their beaming smiles; the onlookers "cheering" from the "rooting section", present to witness the event. It's difficult to describe, in fact, but I find weddings to be a very powerful and uplifting experience for me.

And it's not even necessarily being there. A good friend (and former co-worker) had some of his wedding photos in his office (including a very cute one which included his young godson). I told him how much I enjoyed those photos because I could feel the happiness just coming from those pictures. (Am I a romantic? Yep!) It all fills me with hope that someday I too will experience the joy of having found the one I love and get the chance to share that joy with all those in the "rooting section". Because that's not the fake smile you put on when Aunt Suzette wants to take a picture of you. That's a beaming smile that doesn't fade; that's an internal excitement from having found that special someone; it's a lasting joy. And that's a feeling that doesn't turn on and off like a light switch.

As for finding that special someone: as Steve Martin's character said in L.A. Story, one of my favorite films: "There's someone out there for everyone, even if you need a pickaxe, a compass, and night goggles to find them." Here, here.

Cell phones on the subway

Wow! Another blog post. Look out.

Readers, I must tell you, I am in a foul mood tonight. Quite sleepy, twisted my foot playing volleyball, dragging the old corpse through the day, other foolishness. Eh, we all have days like this.

I boarded the subway, which today seemed to be at a snail's pace. I must say I was quite annoyed at several choice individuals who felt the need to conduct "very important" cell phone conversation in the subway. In fact, one such individual even managed to maintain reception underground, much to my dismay. Another, seated at the other end of the car, had one of those two-way radios that goes "beep-beep-beep" each time the user talks. I couldn't hear the conversation, all I could hear was "beep-beep-beep" approximately every 3 seconds.

I sometimes go back and forth on this issue, but generally I'm against cell phone usage in the subway. My argument against is that it is really annoying, I feel it is an imposition on those unfortunate enough to be trapped on the subway with someone who must gab with their sweetie about whatever is going on. Though I'm all for cell phones in general, can the conversation wait 15 minutes until you get off? Is it really that urgent? I was once on a car trip with 3 buddies to a wedding, and one of them had the good sense to conduct what must have been a half hour cell phone conversation, after which I produced a retort which has stayed in my repertoire to this day: "What does this look like, a phone booth?" I apply that retort to my subway ride tonight. The subway ride took 40 minutes, I'm sure these people could have waited. And, considerate gentleman I am: tonight I happened to receive a cell phone call toward the end of the ride. Did I answer it and start talking? No, sir. I pressed the "ignore" button and quickly texted (see post on text messages, haha) the caller indicating that I would soon get off the subway and call him as soon as I did.

I think there is a rather weak counterpoint to my argument, which is the fact that a cell phone conversation is nearly equivalent to riding the subway with a friend and chatting the entire time. For some reason the latter seems more tolerable.

I also happen to think that if it were me talking on the cell phone the entire subway ride, my annyoing contemporaries tonight would have found my phone call annoying. Just a hunch.

Text messaging

(Original draft was from November 2006, the Friday after Thanksgiving. This is one of the posts I drafted but never published. Decided to wrap it up and publish it now, 2/7/07.)

First of all let me wish all you excellent readers a happy turkey day. Hope it was good for you. I can't resist my sister's cooking, she is the best chef. Somehow I managed to put away two pieces of apple pie a la mode. You can always find room for good home cookin'.

In the interests of not wasting this work-holiday-Friday, I thought I'd make a deposit to the ol' blog which has been unfortunately neglected for the last month or so. Of course, that coincides with my first month of work, so it's understandable. Here we go.

The subject: text messaging. All the rage nowadays. And when I first started to meet people here who used text messages, I was quite impressed. Such an unobtrusive mode of conversation. Somebody texts me while I'm out to dinner, on the subway, at work -- no problem! Pardon me dinner guest, pardon me work, pardon me whatever, click click click, and there's communication. Or, suppose I have a crush on somebody but I'm too shy to call. Maybe they're busy, maybe they don't want to talk to me. It's easy to hide behind a text message! What's the worst they'll do, ignore it? And then I have an excuse - maybe they didn't get it, maybe they were busy. Same goes for friends even. An excuse to be polite and not bother a friend if that friend doesn't happen to want to speak to me just at this moment! Winner winner winner! I didn't even make it through that paragraph without getting all sarcastic and bitter. While there was an initial spark to text messaging, I'm done with it. I understand the draw: text messages are actually supposed to facilitate conversation. The real deal: they stifle conversation.

How, gentle readers, do they stifle conversation? Let's start with some logistical problems. Well, first of all, I don't know about you, but I'm limited to 160 characters in many cases. Being the excellent and verbose guy that I am, 160 characters is a tough limit, and indeed, I think it drives a lot of people to brevity. It's always a bummer when I put together a thoughtful message of exactly 158 characters and end up with a response of "ok", "yea", or "haha". There's also a problem similar to email -- it's very difficult to ascertain a respondent's tone from just text. And, also, user error (though not unique to text messaging): if I read the message incorrectly and misinterpret it. Not exactly instant feedback to figure that out. If I even do realize I've misinterpreted the message, I've probably responded in a manner I didn't intend and want my response back. Too late if I've already sent it!

But I'm much more interested in issues beyond logistics. Let's talk about being polite. It seems to have become acceptable (and, actually, your humble writer has been guilty of this a few times even) to check your vibrating or ringing cell phone while out to dinner with friends, out on a date, or the like, and write back a text message. While I have done this while out to dinner with friends, or even just checked it anticipating or hoping for a message, I still feel a pang of guilt. I was on the receiving end of this on a date a while back, and this is where I formed my hard line stance. In such situations I turn my cell phone off. Not vibrate, not alarm, OFF. My thought was that if I am out on a date, I am out with my date, not my friends, not anyone who might call me or send me a text message. Same goes with dinner with friends. On my own, sure, I can sit by the phone if I want, trying to will a text message. Come on, you know you do it too.

There's also the fact that it just breaks up the conversation. Just yesterday, in fact, I was texting someone back and forth .... and I'm sad when I'm in the middle of text messaging with someone and all of a sudden it stops. Sure, they may have become busy, received a phone call, etc. But in a real phone conversation, if one party gets busy, they say to the other, "yeah, I'm busy, I'll call you later!" and the conversation ends. There's not this mystery about why it's been a half hour between text messages. (Especially when I come up with some particularly clever response -- and I get nothing back. Boo!)

So there you have it. I still text message on the subway and sometimes to be cute, but generally try to shy away. You want to talk to me? Please give me a buzz. My sexy voice will no doubt repay you for your efforts to dial me up.

What a small city!

(This post originally drafted 11/07/2006. Wrapping it up and publishing it now, 2/5/07.)

Well, readers, I'm sick. But my doctor's appointment isn't until 11:15, so I thought I'd whip up this blog entry I've been thinking about for a while now.

So it turns out this small city to which I've moved .... it's pretty small!

In the interests of meeting new friends here in the small city, I decided to play indoor volleyball. A sport of which I am not completely ignorant....but rather rusty (out of practice for at least a year). But I figured, what the heck. It was great, everyone was nice, and I ended up talking with two guys at the end who were quite friendly. One of these gentlemen turned out to be a musician, in fact. Keep your eye on him, he might return to our story.

Started my job the following week. Though I've had plenty of forays into the small city, I'm still a little discombobulated. It's tough learning a new city, especially one which is rather counterintuitively laid out. So I thought, "Well, I'll buy some maps and put them up in my office." Learning by osmosis, what a good idea. I had a place in mind to buy the maps, and after work, embarked on my journey.

I was off to a bookstore that took me in the direction opposite my way home, but it wasn't that far, only two stops. Waiting patiently, my laptop case in hand, the train arrived. Full to the brim....rush hour! I took one look and thought to myself, "Nope! Not gonna fit." The wait continued until the next train arrived. And it was just as full, but this time I was able to wedge myself into the train (with a little effort). In fact, a guy tried to push his way in behind me, but there was no more space. I said to him, "I don't think so," and off he went. The doors closed and I was on my way to the bookstore.

Pressed against the subway doors (doors printed with instructions to the contrary, in fact), I scanned the subway car. Full of rush hour travelers, with briefcases, laptops, iPods, cell phones, and the like. Exactly what you might expect at six o'clock at night. As I looked to my right, though, I saw a guy whose face was a little familiar. He, like me, was listening to his iPod, but I couldn't place his face. I squinted, a little embarrassed, as I racked my brain trying to figure out the identity of this man. Luckily, he recognized me: it was the musician I had met playing volleyball! He extended his arms as if he were going to bump a pass (which was pretty much the extent of the free space available to him in the train), and instantly I got the picture.

I took off my headphones, and seeing me do so, he did the same. I asked him where he was going. And, while it would have been an even more terrific coincidence if he and I were going to the same place, no dice. He was going one stop past mine. As I put my headphones back on, I thought to myself, "Well, I guess I'll catch up with him at volleyball next week."

But I stopped myself. This was a ridiculous coincidence here. What were the odds? I had suspected that at some point during my journeys through the small city, at some point I'd see someone on the subway I'd recognize. But I thought it wouldn't occur until my odds were a bit higher; I figured I'd need to get to know more people first. So when my stop came, I didn't get off (though, fortunately, the train emptied). I told the guy, "you know, for a ridiculous coincidence like this, I can double back one stop". And we had a nice chat at the subway stop. And, as it turned out, he had also waited for a train because the first that had arrived for him was full. And, as he mentioned, prior to actually seeing me, he saw a guy that looked like me -- that he thought was me. I must have a pretty classic, common look then, hmmm.

Anyway, so I found that one a hoot. He's still a friend, I see him at volleyball of course. What are the odds?

Radio in the big city vs Radio in the small city

Let me tell you that, almost immediately since I have settled into the small city -- I have discovered that radio is just not as good.

In the big city, I could only find a few stations I really enjoyed. But the advantage was that those few stations generally stuck to a particular genre, e.g. elevator music, jazz, 70s-80s pop, R&B, oldies. So on one of my few stations, I would always find something I enjoyed. Generally radio was more concentrated back in the big city, in other words.

Here in the little city ... there are more stations which appeal to me in general, but their genres are so wide that it is much harder, at any given moment when I'm flipping through the stations, to find a song I like. That essentially makes my presets useless. Though at some points during the day I'm sure all of my presets are playing songs I like, it has become the exception rather than rule to be lucky enough to hit one. The best luck I've had is to simply scan through all the stations, because who knows, maybe some station I wouldn't otherwise consider is playing something I like. A lot of stations I encounter advertise themselves as "We Play Everything"....can't say I'm a big fan of everything, it's just too wide a scope.

The ultimate solution to this: an iPod FM transmitter. I typically have my iPod in the car anyway (since I always take it on the subway) so with the FM transmitter, I can listen to whatever I want. The sound quality isn't great, but it's good enough for me. Better than listening to songs I don't like.

(I wasn't initially a big fan of FM transmitters, and was actually considering dropping 900 bucks on a new car stereo complete with direct iPod integration, satellite radio, integration into my steering wheel controls...the whole package. Given that the driving segment of my daily commute will be relatively short, I'm glad I didn't make that purchase. Along with the cost, I wanted to see how my commute would be before I went for it. And the FM transmitter will suit me just fine.)

For you iPod geeks out there, I was actually quite impressed by the revision of the Griffin iTrip. My sister has one of the first ones, and it requires special tracks be on the iPod in order to use it (I believe they contain the signals to tell the iTrip which station was selected), as well as a rather tricky station selection procedure. Fast forward to September '06, when I bought mine, and I was happy to see that the iTrip (now called "iTrip Auto" I believe) has a digital readout and I simply scroll on the readout until I'm at the station I need. I can also charge the iPod through it using my car cell phone charger -- so even as I use it in the car, the iPod battery is fresh enough to last my subway trip. How about that! Nice job. (I've been seeing my battery drain possibly a little too quickly if I don't charge the iPod while using the iTrip, but I haven't investigated the matter, so I can't say that the iTrip is responsible. I don't see myself looking into this whole matter a lot -- it doesn't bother me all that much.)

Halloween

As we all know, a certain holiday is right around the corner .... Halloween. And I simply must weigh in.

I have never really understood the whole adult halloween costume craze. In college I had several friends who were quite into dressing up for halloween, and I could never really get into it. I just never saw the value in running around to thrift shops, yard sales, craft supply stores, etc. -- in search of elements of perfect costume. I never really got into the spirit of the thing.

That said, this year I am on the guest list for TWO halloween parties, both of which are coming up this weekend. And I am not going to complain. The social deities have blessed me with a chance to get out there, have a couple beers, and chill with friends.

I must say, however, that I *dreaded* the prospect of having to find a costume. With this time off, fortunately, I was able to get a jump on the situation. I knew I wanted a store-bought costume, I just did not see myself putting one together from scratch. And while I certainly was in for something cheesy, I figured I could build on some cheesy store-bought costume and maybe make it a little less silly-looking (some would argue, however, that the whole point of dressing up is to look silly).

So, without further delay, I will tell you the costume I've selected: I will be dressing up as a mustard bottle, like you see at a diner -- that big yellow bottle, goes with the red ketchup bottle, both are solid in color and have a conical spout. The costume itself is a foam bottle-looking suit with a conical hat with a hole at the top (the spout!)

But we're not done yet....I told you I was looking to build on a store-bought costume. I won't just be mustard ... I am planning on being a bottle of hot mustard, complete with flames on the bottle. (Being the hot guy that I am, ha ha, why not?) But not only that .... I will also have a (strategically-placed) sash that says, "Squeeze Me!", which was an integral part of a mustard bottle way back when squeezable mustard bottles first came out. I think it will all be worth a chuckle. Fortunately, I have an excellent sister who is a whiz with sewing and costumes, and simply thrives at projects like this. Thanks to her in advance! (For my third grade costume, she made, from scratch, a shark costume that to this day my mom raves about as one of the cutest things ever.)

I have also heard rumors of costumes such as .... a guy and girl going as Hugh Hefner and a Playboy Bunny; the lead singer of a rock group I've never heard of, a Star Wars character -- I think somebody like Han Solo, a transporter I think, I'm not sure. One girl I talked to is going to go as a "White Lie", where she'll wear a white dress and have some sign on her like, "Oh, I'll definitely call you" or something like that. I always found costumes like that clever, you have to think about it a bit.

I'm sure it will be a good time. I figure I just need to loosen up a bit. Part of my problem I think is that I'm hesistant to just let myself be embarrassed by dressing up silly (like being a mustard bottle) but I have to remember: it's all in good fun. I took improv comedy for the same reason -- as we learned in the class, sometimes you go out there and just embarrass yourself, but you're better for it.

Haircut / blond highlights

As I mentioned in my last post, I tend to get blond highlights in my hair nowadays, which has always involved a trip to a hair salon. This is a trend that started in the big city.... I was a devout barber shop visitor for my entire life until I was about 25. And it was always independent barbershops-- I always referred to SuperCuts or any such chain as the "Microsoft Barber Shop" and scorned it as putting the independent barber, e.g. the old man who has cut your hair your whole life, out of business.

Then I started the highlights as something fun to do for the summer. I had a wonderful stylist, who unfortunately moved away before I left the big city, but she did a great job. The highlights were visible but subtle, which was the look I was going for. I always have to trust my stylist, as I never know how I should get my hair cut. Even if I saw a guy on the street with a hair cut I liked, I doubt I could describe it to the stylist. Generally I've had good luck with this strategy, I mean, who knows better about "current guy hairstyles" than somebody who creates those hairstyles?

Normally I'd ask around work for suggestions on hairstylists -- which is how I found my excellent big city hairstylist, but I haven't started work yet, and it was time to get my hair cut. So I checked out a few local magazines and just went to the one rated best in 2006. And I must say, thumbs up. Definitely A+++ on the cut itself. The jury is out on the highlights. The stylist decided to use two different colors on my hair (giving different tones of highlights). And as I had hoped, the highlights are pretty subtle -- maybe a little bit too subtle. I give every haircut a week to see how it turns out -- and I've always found that my hair looks best (in the haircut cycle) about a week after it has been cut. I'll have to report back then. Generally a positive experience I would say.

More subway talk

Following up on an earlier post, I had yet more subway adventures, this time at rush hour!

As I said, my job does not start up until Monday, but it turns out my John Hancock was needed on a few more items of paperwork. And no problem, I never mind a trip into the city! So that finished, I decided to go get a haircut as well. And my haircuts involve some blond highlights now, so that tends to take a while, and I didn't get out of the city until about 5:30.

The first train I was on was packed to the gills. Squished in like sardines. Standing room only. The second train wasn't so bad, and I managed to get a seat, but those seats are close. I was up close and personal with two female rush-hour riders. No doubt they got a thrill out of sitting so close to a handsome young man like me....ha ha ha.