Assorted Flavors

Well, all the little annoying things wrong with the Hickory Cluster house are fixed. Finally. The movers are coming Tuesday, and although we've had a network connection there since the 2nd, the phone won't be turned on[1] until Thursday. What dorks we are. We do have good cell service there, which is completely different than here where we have no signal at all.

Tino says my diary is too cryptic and that I need a glossary. I'll take that under advisement, and I'll try and explain things better. He claims it's totally insider, but I do get mail from random people who seem to like it.

I can't fill in the back story in every entry, but maybe I can do a little better at explaining things.

We saw Almost Famous tonight after I painted and Tino reassembled some plumbing and planed another door. It was excellent, IMHO. I came home with this unignorable jones to hear Tiny Dancer. It took me exactly two minutes to find and download it from Napster. Elton John used to be so good. What the fuck happenned? Was it Disney that did him in? Before that?

I also snagged Every Picture Tells a Story[2], which I own and have mp3'd up but can't get to at the moment due to some illness of catbert[3]. Both of these songs can completely take me out of the current moment and consume me. Right then and there. That transcendant quality is probably my favorite thing about music in general.

Speaking of trancendant, I heard a new song by Radiohead on the way home. It sucked. I'll likely buy the album anyway, so I hope the rest of it is better. OK Computer is so fabulous, so much better than what came before it, that I'm afraid they peaked. In fact, Pamie wrote a cool article for the Austin American Statesman about Kid A. It is not a review, and it's not exactly about Radiohead either.

Today was waxing day. I had my services performed by the best esthetician I've found in Fairfax and Loudon counties, and I've looked hard. I keep trying to find someone in the greater Reston-Herndonia metroplex to perform this service for me, but this woman has no equal out here. I have to go into Tyson's Corner, but it is worth it. She's fast. She doesn't leave stray hairs. She doesn't leave wax on me. She doesn't have to be told that I do want my knees done[4] or that I want the teensy bit if hair on my big toes and tops of my feet removed. I like her so much that I decided to have her wax my armpits too.

I have a love-hate relationship with that hair. Sometimes I really like having it -- it makes me feel rebellious and bad-ass for some reason[5]. Other times, I just want it gone. Part of the reason I leave it alone most of the time is that shaving it is a wretched experience for me. No matter what I do, it's still a little stubbly. I get ingrown hairs, and when it's freshly shaved and smooth there it seems to make my sweat glands go nuts, which is a real deterrant let me tell you. Anyway, I thought it would really hurt because that skin is so incredibly sensitive. It hurt a little, but it's was really quick, and now they are "smooth like baby's bottom" as she said.

I've had some awful experiences with unprofessional wax jobs. I even wrote up the one I had at Dillard's in St. Louis because it was so spectacularly bad. I honestly think she'd never done it before. I couldn't come up with any other explanation for what transpired in that horrible little room.