Every freakin' morning.	May 24, 2007

I have a new-ish coworker who, without fail, says to me every morning, “I love your <insert either skirt, shoes, or shirt>!” Where did you get it?” While I am well aware that I do have impeccable taste in clothing and she means only to compliment me, I can’t help but cringe when she does this. For two reasons: 1) I very clearly recall being told as a child that asking someone where they got their clothes is rude, and 2) 90% of the time, the answer to the question is, “a store that sells clothing in a range of sizes into which you would not fit.” Which I find kind of awkward.

I’ve gotten used to responding with, “Filene’s Basement,” which is often a lie, but I figure, how’s she gonna prove it? I welcome suggestions of other responses which may get this line of questioning to stop.

In a related tale, I was mean to a sales associate last night (at the very same aforementioned clothing store, one in which I used to in fact be a sales associate). I’d be curious to hear what ya’ll think--imagine you’ve purchased a shirt, got it home, and realized that the security sensor tag hadn’t been removed. So you travel back to the store a few days later, expecting to be met by an apologetic retailer. When you walk in, there is a very long line of women waiting to buy huge piles of stuff, and one lone associate behind the counter. So you sidle up to the corner of the counter and ask if she can just quickly remove the tag for you. She, in turn, tells you that you need to go to the back of the line, immediately characterizing you as the pushy and hot-headed customer (even going so far as to apologize to the other customers for your egregious behavior). More incensed by the assumptions she was making about my character than by the situation itself, I decided that actually becoming the pushy and hot-headed customer was the only way to get out of there before midnight. So I did, and I got out of there, but I find myself still irritated at the fact that I was brought to that. It is so not my style.

And in yet another retail tale, Steve and I bought two exciting things last night: 1) A Costco membership, which quickly led to the purchase of 2) a Nintendo Wii. I’ve been talking about getting one for months now, and they had only one in stock, sitting alone on the shelf, in a bundled-pack that included a spare controller and the new Legend of Zelda game (the very same two add-ons that we’d been planning on purchasing). It was like it was a sign.

Hello Windy City!	May 11, 2007

It's Friday afternoon, and I've spent my whole day at work wrapping things up in preparation for nearly a week of being out of the office. I am going to Chicago for the American Association of Museums conference, and I'd say I'm pretty excited. Not just because I like museums and am looking forward to the content of the sessions and sepakers I'll see there, but also because where I work, this conference is a huge freaking deal. We're premiering a new exhibit booth, plus a new publication and several borchures - all of which had to finished, approved, printed, packed, and shipped to the convention center where union-folk will put their grubby little mits all over them before I get to see them again. I'm excited for the stress of preparation to be over!

Have a great week, ya'll, and Happy Mother's Day!

I grew something!	May 3, 2007

The tiny little yard that I currently have is the very first yard I have ever had. The house I grew up in was deep in the woods, and we didn’t get enough sun to have a yard. And since I’ve moved out, I’ve bopped from apartment to apartment, where Chia pets have pretty much been my only way to test my green thumb.

But now that I actually have some dirt to call my own, I’ve decided that I’m going to be a gardener. I fully admit that I don’t know what I’m doing. But I do know that I want to grow stuff. A few weeks back, I went to Home Depot and bought a bunch of garden crap. Then I came home and added a bunch of fertilizer and garden soil to the biggest open stretch we’ve got, where I planted basil, cilantro, chives, and catnip. I also planted tomatoes and mint in pots.

Here it is, a few weeks later, and look! Stuff is actually sprouting!! There are tiny green shoots coming up in rows (pictured here is some cilantro), and it’s the most exciting thing I’ve ever seen. I know that I’ve planted too many seeds and will soon have to do some thinning. Heck, between now and harvest time, I’m sure I’ll have plenty of opportunities to mess things up, but for right now, I’m happy!

Reach out and kill someone	May 1, 2007

It’s not the least bit unusual to see advertisements for military equipment on the metro in DC. They’re usually for airplanes, and they’re usually pretty innocuous. Today, coming out of the Pentagon metro, I saw a series of ads for a “Stryker” line of land vehicles, each with a different power-word: Strong. Mobile. Tactical. and so on.

Then I got to the one that said: Lethal. And it caused me to stop in my tracks. Jesus, people! It has always struck me as odd that folks selling these bazillion-dollar tanks think that a metro ad is going to sway their pentagon customers toward their product. But to design an ad targeting those customers without taking into consideration that the rest of the city doesn’t want to see an ad for something “lethal” is not just odd, it’s disrespectful.

Ulgh. Most days I love living in Washington. But not every day.