July 2007 Archives

Is this cute or what? Not to mention risky--I wonder how many of these were stolen in transit?

I must be the most unphotogenic person on the planet. I honestly don't understand it; I don't understand how pictures of me can be so consistently bad. Combine my face with the photographic capabilities of badge offices everywhere and the result is a series of disasters--badge pictures that make the pictures on my driver's license and passport look like fine portraiture.

Thursday I got a new badge, one I'd been hoping to get for a couple of years and was happy to wait in line for. I combed my hair before going into the office and even put on a touch of lipstick. I smiled for the camera. When the badge guy (the badger?) handed me the badge I took it happily, optimistically, then suffered a jolt when I looked at the picture: the horror, the horror. My eyes were huge dark pits of despair, my lips and teeth detectable only with imagination, obscured in the shadow of what appears to be a massive nose.

I went out to my car, flipped the visor down, and stared at myself in the small mirror to reassure myself that my face hadn't been transformed into a grotesque mask of doom during the half hour I'd spent cooling my heels in the badge office.

Too hot to eat. Too hot to go out and find anything to eat, anyway. Too hot to hunt; too hot to gather. Currently 98 degrees at 6:30pm, according to my weatherbug. Too hot to play with the dog.

When I got out of work today my car said the outside temperature was 104. (Yes, my new car shows me the outside temperature. It talks to me. It shows me where I am and what direction I'm going in, constantly. It gets a little annoying, to tell the truth. The salesman said "Just touch this icon on the screen and the car will take you home. Ms. Hall, you'll never be lost again." I almost teared up.)

Ahem, where was I? Too damn hot. I left my cell phone in my car while I was at work today, because I can't take it into the building I work in. When I came out it was hot to the touch and dead, dead, dead. Fortunately I had only fried the battery, not the phone. A new battery cost me about $42. My cell phone makes a bluetooth connection with my car and I can push a button on the steering wheel and tell the car to "Phone home" and it will. Heh.