It's all in the mind or the Eye of the Beholder

Kate went with me to the hair dresser this week and decided to have her hair cut really short and kinda punk plus we decided that it would look great with red streaks. And it does s great but the week before she returned to school she kept worrying about her classmates reaction...whether they would think she looked like a member of a Kpop band. It's all in the eye of the beholder I kept saying. If you see a woman with a bag emblazoned with gold CC's do you think that her name could be candy cochran or do you immediately assume that it's a Chanel Bag? Depends on your age. And demographic. So none of the adults who saw Kate's hair thought she looked like a Kpop band member and apparently none of her classmates did either!

a la française

It's hard for me to really remember how much I hated French when I took it in school. I was always failing french which is also probably why I hated it. A whole lot of tutoring going on there...but when I was in Turkey one summer after I graduated I finally got that I could be a spy and that maybe my education had paid off. I was able to translate a conversation from Turkish to French to English and actually help somebody make the right bus. Isn't that what's all about? Helping people. This was not philosophy or anything highbrow but it was useful. That was a great feeling and so now I actually enjoy speaking French. I of course feel chic-er than everybody who doesn't speak french unless they are speaking Italian in which case I have instant Italian envy....This year with a reduced work load and 3 days of leisure, so called, I finally signed up for French lessons. But not at the granddaddy of all french teaching institutions in New York, the Alliance Francaise which I had understood was populated by young French matrons. No, I decided to take French at the Idlewild Travel Book store where mon prof teaches bain dessine which is comic books. Incredible fun.  We read Tintin en Tibet which i didn't really like -- it is a true period piece -- but the professor is great...young with a sense of humor and appreciation of the ridiculous...In fact I think I will take another course from him. To Kate's amusement I am always late doing my homework and end up sitting like a tailor on the bed with a dictionary in one hand and 3x5 cards in the other writing furious as I intone the words slowly and clearly.

Way chic

A Momentous Day

It's a momentous day for me BECAUSE I walked out of the house without earrings. Sans boucle dore which is french for earring. And why would anybody give a damn about that you say? Beats me but ever since I had my ears pierced at age 18 I have rarely, if ever, gone without earrings. Because thats the point of having your ears pierced. It means you can always wear them and be perfectly groomed and exhibit perfect manners by wearing your earrings. Of course I have also rarely experienced a 60 degree day on the first of February so there are firsts all around us.

And now I am cooking with gas. No, not like I forgot my earrings...I don't mean that literally but it's just that somehow I found my work mojo and things are moving along. I have a job interview tomorrow which is good, an appointment to talk about some regular consulting work and some conversations a new project that I am suddenly energized about. Courtesy of Arti Finn who is always up.

And last night I went to my 2nd french lesson at the Idlewild Book Store on 19th street where I am studying Bain Dessines or comic books. Te teacher is young, amusing and fabulous and the class is reading Tintin en Tibet. Don't you just love all the crazy sub cultures that exist in New York. My first homework was page 1 through 30 of Tintin which is pretty copy dense which I discovered only when I sat down on Monday night to do the reading for the next day. Kate was thrilled at this major demonstration of my procrastination and told me over and over again how bad I was. I'm sure that she was disappointed when I managed with the help of a dictionary to get through it. The idioms are many and I was curled up on the bed with a dictionary and 8x10 vocabulary cards. Zut