9 March 2000

I'm right at the end of a project at work, and it's been consuming so much of my mental energy that yesterday, driving home, I was trying to think about what I'd write about this morning and not having any luck. I mean, it's one thing to talk briefly about interesting projects, or to complain about people that drive you nuts, but I'm pretty sure even my most fanatic reader doesn't want to hear about how I spent nine hours today tracing through something like two thousand lines of code line by line, looking for the stupid pointer error that was making the whole thing blow up in unpredictable spots.

So that's all I'll say about it. But I was despairing of having a halfway decent journal entry: "Work hell. Tree budding. Flowers growing." Like that.

But then T made dinner for us.

I'd like to state in his defense that T isn't a very experienced cook, and that Matt and I were hovering around the kitchen while he worked distracting him rather a lot. And if it had been only one or two minor blunders, I probably would've just shrugged and moved on.

But the first mistake or so got him flustered, which contributed to more mistakes, which got him even more flustered, which...

Let me start at the beginning.

T had told me that he was planning on making beef stew, which I know from experience is best if allowed to simmer for several hours, but can be rushed for a reasonable meal in about an hour. T lives just about an hour away from us, so I was figuring he wouldn't get to our house until about seven, which meant dinner would be ready around, oh, 8:30-ish. A bit later than we're used to, but not horribly so.

T called around 6:45 to say he was on his way, and didn't get to our place until 7:30. (This is actually pretty amazing, considering the usual state of traffic on the main roads between us.)

Matt and I helped T bring in his bags of groceries and unpack them. T had assured me that he needed nothing more than a large pot and a spoon from my kitchen, so I got those out for him as well. Assuming he knew more or less what he was doing and would need only guidance around an unfamiliar kitchen, I sat down on a stool at the breakfast bar to watch.

It swiftly became obvious that T didn't know very much about onions. He'd brought two gorgeously huge onions - each one the size of both my fists put together - but one of them was sprouting, and he was struggling to get the skin off. I, being the onion freak that I am, started twitching and finally offered to chop the onions for him. He relinquished the cutting board and knife with something like relief, and I started chopping, stripping out the center which had gone mealy as the onion sprouted. The second onion was rotten, but since it had rotted from the inside, this wasn't T's fault - those are pretty hard to spot. I replace it with a couple from my own stash, and soon had a bowl full of stew-sized onion bits.

In the meantime, T had asked Matt if we could spare some butter. His recipe called for two tablespoons, and since he was halving it, he only needed one. Matt pulled out a partial stick of butter, left over from my spate of holiday baking, and put it on the counter. When next he looked around, T was melting the whole six tablespoons of the stick in a second pot. (T had mentioned the marks on sticks, so he knew they were there - I guess he just assumed that what Matt put in front of him, since it had already been cut, was the amount he'd asked for.) While Matt showed T the marking on the wrapper that corresponded to one tablespoon, I got the butter dish and scooped out the unmelted bit, leaving him with perhaps four tablespoons. But since the butter's purpose was for sauteeing the onions, the extra wasn't going to hurt anything.

T dumped the onion pieces into the pot with the butter, nearly completely filling the pot. (There were a lot of onion pieces.) Following his recipe, he then added the mushrooms, though since each mushroom slice was almost as long as my hand and half as wide, they could have stood a little chopping first, too. This caused the amount of food in the pot to heap over the edge of the pot rather significantly, and after some thought, T decided to transfer the meat - which was done browning anyway - to a strainer, and put the onions and mushrooms in the big pot. I applauded the decision and fetched out the strainer.

Safely once again underway, I sat back down on my stool. Matt asked T if he could help, and T consulted his cookbook and asked Matt to measure out a cup and a half of broth and add to it a cup and a half of flour. It's probably indicative of how drained I've been from work that this didn't set off any warning bells. After Matt had combined the two and complained about the flour being lumpy, I fished out a wisk to help him, and then curiously leaned over to glance at T's recipe, mostly because I was getting hungry and was hoping it would be done soon.

Just as Matt was pouring the broth/flour mix over the beef, I saw it: 3 Tablespoons flour I put my finger down on the book. "T..." He looked down. "Three cups of burgundy wine," he read.

"No, above that," I corrected.

He looked at the book. He looked at the pot of paste-covered meat. He looked at the book. Horror began to spread over his face.

This was the point at which I more or less rudely shoved him out of the way and took over. I did this for several reasons. I've been cooking since I was about eight, and while I don't usually enjoy it, when I put my mind to it I'm very good at it. T had made a series of mistakes that any beginner could make (and probably every beginner has) but it needed a more experienced cook to recover the meal. I started adding water to the thickening paste and told T and Matt to open the bottle of cooking wine.

They struggled with the corkscrew for several minutes before Matt decided to take the plastic wrapping off... and the plastic screw-cap popped off in his hand. We dumped everything into the large pot with the onions and mushrooms and added about half the bottle of wine. When I'd added enough water that it looked like the flour would stop baking itself to the bottom of the pan, I dragged everyone out of the kitchen and we chatted while the mess simmered.

Half an hour later, we were back in the kitchen. I gingerly tasted the broth. It tasted like beef-and-onion flavored paste. So I had Matt fish out the beef and as much of the vegetables as he could, and dumped them into a bowl. With most of the pasty broth gone, the beef and vegetables were actually pretty reasonable.

But this morning, the downstairs still smells vaguely like burnt flour.

Just so T won't think I'm picking on him exclusively, I've made some pretty spectacular blunders myself.

My very first experience with cooking was when I was five or six - my first grade class got together as a group and made cupcakes. There were three teams: one made the cupcakes, one made and spread the icing, and the third decorated the lot with sprinkles. I was on the team making the cupcakes, and since I was the best reader in the class, it was my job to read the directions off the box to the others.

I got my first hint that something had gone wrong when the cupcakes were still mostly liquid at the end of the baking time. They firmed up after another five or ten minutes, but by then I'd consulted the box and knew what had gone wrong: The directions called for three egg whites. I'd told them to put in three eggs.

Everyone agreed that the cupcakes looked lovely, that the icing was very tasty, and that the cupcakes themselves were disgusting. I can remember sitting in my chair, miserable, wiping the icing off my cupcake with my finger and eating it (like the rest of the class) and being sure that they were all staring at me - that they all hated me for messing up their cupcakes.

It was a valuable lesson in reading the directions.

Only a year or so ago, I decided to make a pair of peanut butter pies. This is one of my favorite recipes, and I'd made it several times before. Part of it involves whipped cream, and I think the pie is best if I buy real cream and whip it myself. On this occasion, I stood over the cream with the mixer for at least twenty minutes before I checked the box and realized I'd bought half-and-half instead of whipping cream.

It was a valuable lesson in checking ingredients.

8 March 2000

At K.T. and Kevin's moving party a couple of weeks ago, T told me that he'd like to get together with Matt and I at some point - perhaps he could come over and make dinner for us? I agreed that sounded nice, and started making plans for a small dinner party. T interrupted and said that he'd prefer trying out a new recipe on just the two of us to start. "I can always get pizza for three of us if it's awful," he said.

Last week, he called to set up a time, and after I checked with Matt, I e-mailed him back to verify that Tuesday - yesterday - was clear on our calendars.

Yesterday was moderately hellish at work. We're down to the last week of a deadline - the project has to be done by Friday - and I spent most of the day going line by line with my manager through code that wasn't working trying to figure out why. Finally, around 4, we decided that the actual problem with in my manager's code, and he went back to his computer to go through his stuff a line at a time.

At 4:30, I poked my head in his office. "I've got a guest coming for dinner," I explained, "so I'm going to head on home. If you get it figured out, drop me an e-mail and I'll check it first thing in the morning." He nodded, and I went home. I spent a little while straightening up the living areas and hunting down placemats and napkins for three people.

Matt got home about the time I was finishing up. I told him about an e-mail I'd gotten from T in the middle of the day that had said he would call around six to make sure everything was still on. Matt nodded and went outside to turn on the sprinkler. When he came back, he said, "If T doesn't leave his place until six, that means he'll get here around seven, and we'll eat around eight?" I admitted that sounded like a reasonable estimate. Matt shook his head and went upstairs to log onto the computer.

Realizing that it was going to be at least two and a half hours until I had dinner, I decided to fix myself some popcorn. Just as the timer rang and I was dumping the popcorn into a bowl, the phone rang, and it was T.

He had to cancel.

Well, last minute emergencies happen without warning. I asked him what was wrong, and he told me that he didn't want to go into the gory details, but what little he did say sounded like his parents were the ones with the emergency and they'd asked him to come to their place and walk the dog. Why he couldn't walk the dog and then come over, I don't know, but I didn't ask. Maybe the dog is incontinent or something and has to be walked every half hour.

T wanted to reschedule for tonight. I don't handle sudden changes in plan very well, especially when I'm very tired, so I asked Matt if we had anything planned for tonight, and he said he thought tonight would be fine, and I passed it on to T.

Matt and I went out to dinner, and in the course of chatting over our dinners and trying desperately to catch the eye of our waitress, it occurred to me that tonight might not be fine.

Having left on time yesterday (which, during a deadline crunch when nothing is working correctly is too early) I really can't do that again today. In addition, I've got a doctor's appointment this afternoon and will probably spent at least an hour on hold with the benefits center trying to get my insurance number, thereby losing around two hours. I decided to give myself a list of things to accomplish today, and if I haven't got them done by the time I leave for the doctor, then I'll have to come back in to the office after my appointment. If that happens, I'll get ahold of Matt before I leave and have him call T to cancel. (Though my dad pointed out this morning that it's when you're working late that it's nice to come home to a ready dinner, so maybe what I tell Matt will depend on just how late I think I'll be running.)

At any rate, I don't blame T for cancelling - I'm sure that his reasons, whatever they were, were good. But I'm still slightly annoyed. Ah, well, them's the breaks. Here's to hoping things go more smoothly today.

7 March 2000

Blargh. Another late night on the Hall. We're finally getting closer to solving the mystery, though, so that's good. Zoya invited Marten to stay at the Tower, where he'll be safest, and he accepted. If - as Jaret believes - Marten is a demon posessing MoonDancer's body and sent to do mischief, he'll never get better chance.

Marten laughed at Lisl's suggestion that he was romantically interested in Zoya, though, so Zoya's trying to stop considering the idea and wondering what had gotten into her that she listened to that notion of Lisl's anyway. She can't quite get the notion out of her head, though, and it's worrying her - they're getting closer and closer to recovering MoonDancer, and Zoya's trying to convince herself that she can't afford to get wrapped up with a personality that might be subsumed soon. (Not to mention that the Marten personality might be malevolent. She'd like to believe that he's been misguided, but she's too experienced to take anything for granted.)

Naturally, that didn't make any sense to those of you who aren't participating. You'll just have to take my word for it that it's a very exciting plot.

Have you ever had so much on your mind that you can't get any of it out?

The things that I can best articulate are too sensitive to post in this journal. The rest - work and gaming and yardwork - all seem too trivial to bother with.

Maybe I'm just tired; I didn't get enough sleep last night, and because my project at work is due Friday I'm staring unpaid overtime in the eye. Maybe it's because I got caught up in re-reading my own journal, and I'm up to the slightly depressing part where I'm unemployed. Maybe it's because watching Red Dwarf makes me remember graduate school, which was pretty miserable.

I'm not unhappy. I'm actually in a pretty good mood, considering that I'm glassy-eyed from exhaustion. I've just got this knot of dread slowly uncoiling in the pit of my stomach, and I can't pin it down, and I don't know where it's coming from.

Here's hoping it turns out to be nothing.

6 March 2000

Not bad. For a weekend which featured having to use alarm clocks to get up Saturday morning and an afternoon of manual labor, it was a pretty good weekend.

Saturday morning, Matt and I got up early (well, early for us on a weekend - 8 and 8:30, respectively) and after we were showered and dressed, drove down to my folks'. Once there, we split up - Matt rode with my dad, and Mom came in my car, and we all went down to McDonald's Nursery in Hampton. (Nothing to do with the fast-food chain, I promise.)

I hadn't been to McDonald's since I was about eight. I found it vastly more interesting this time. Naturally, we managed to pick the weekend they were having a show - we knew we were in trouble when we pulled into the left-turn lane to enter the parking lot and found a guy with an orange vest directing traffic, and another half-dozen orange vests inside the parking lot. The place was packed.

We headed for the sign marked "Trees and Shrubs" and found ourselves back outside, pushing a cart the size of a small car. After deciding that we didn't really want a fruit-bearing tree and that we were still somewhat leery of dogwoods (that being the tree that had died over the winter) we did a leisurely stroll around and decided on a Japanese maple.

Just behind the Japanese maples were a bunch of pots of tall, bushy grass, labeled - I'm not kidding - "Mondo Grass." I'd been looking for ground cover for the mulch that will go around the tree, and the Mondo Grass was on sale at less than $3 per pot, so I grabbed four pots. (A slight miscalculation on my part; the mulched-in area will be triangular. But the way the grass is growing in the pots, I should easily be able to divide each pot into sections and spread the sections out over the triangle.)

Then we made the mistake of going around the corner into the flowers section. Two of every three pots grabbed my eye. I nearly bought about four hundred little bushy flowering plants. I eventually got a grip and just picked up three pots of what the label said was dianthus, strawberry parfait color. (That place is dangerous. And now I know where it is. Must... Resist...)

My folks paid for the tree - they'd promised to buy us a tree as a housewarming present - and some new azalea bushes for their yard, and we paid for our potted plants, and the four of us headed back to my folks' house. We were there only long enough to drop off the azaleas and for Dad to pick up a shovel, a rake, and a wheelbarrow, and then we were on our way back up to Williamsburg.

It only took about an hour and a half to dig up the old tree (its poor little root ball had shriveled up to something about the size of my two fists) and plant the new one. Dad, excited and happy that we'd asked for his help, couldn't just stop there, so he wandered around our yard and eventually decided to work on erosion control in our back yard. (We'd had a couple of bad storms just after we moved in, before the grass had taken root, so there are deep channels where water flowed.) He had us picking rocks out of the earth and building little dams every few feet in the channels, then packing leftover clay from the tree's hole upstream of the dams.

He pushed the idea of terracing our back yard to both of us, but we're not sure we're really ready for that much work just now. At the very least, we've got several other projects we want to take care of, first - clearing the ditch behind the house, planting some bushes along the ditch to begin a privacy hedge, turning over the soil for my garden plot (nothing big; I'm just planning some tomatoes and maybe squash on the sunny side of the house), and keeping the front yard moderately attractive.

While we were at it, we raked up the excess straw left over from the grass seeding in September. (None of my books had said it had to be raked up, or I'd have done it months ago; I assumed it was meant to compost itself into the dirt.) Oh, well, live and learn, and now we have a bag of collected straw to use when we re-seed this week.

We'd wanted to take them out to lunch, to express our gratitude for their help. After Dad and Matt finished building little dams and came in, we tried to decide where to go. I don't know where the idea came from, but I suddenly said, "Did you know the Backfin's re-opened?"

There was immediate interest. The Backfin had been a favorite of my parents' some years ago, before they packed up and moved to a new location out of our reach. A few months ago, I'd noticed the sign at the location of an old farmer's market, but hadn't ever passed along the news. (The Backfin is one of the few seafood restaurants I like to eat at - they make cornbread to die for - but I'm still not a seafood fan, so the thought got somewhat buried.)

I called to make sure they were still open (it was 2 o'clock by the time we'd finished everything) and we went over. The cornbread was just as good as I'd remembered it, and we were all happy with our meals. Dad was so thrilled, he was like a little kid at Christmas. He announced to everyone who would listen that he'd be coming back for lunch at least once a week. (Dad and I work in the same office, only about three miles from the Backfin's new location.)

After that, Matt and I went to K.T. and Kevin's for the weekly game. We managed to arrive early, but it still took us until nearly seven to make our Heroes characters. I decided to go ahead and attempt to play a male character. I've tried that before, and everyone always forgets - but Heroes is over-the-top enough that I think I can keep it in line. Besides, Greg was already playing the token female.

I thought my character would turn out to be a real brick, with all his extraordinary stats, but it didn't work out that way. I guess he's just got a glass jaw, despite being extraordinarily strong and quick. He's an ex-military spy (he used to sneak into the alien enclaves and take pictures and memorize conversations - even the friendly aliens are notoriously close-mouthed) with the mutant ability to control the atmosphere (generate winds, call lightning, affect the weather). He's called The Weatherman. His real name, because I'm terrible at coming up with names, is Geoffrey Jefferson. (His friends call him Jeff-Jeff.)

After we created our characters, we went on our first mission - to collect some renegades who'd stolen a prototype mecha suit. I can tell K.T.'s trying to set us up for moral dilemmas - the person who stole the suit tried to protest that we were slaves (in her universe, supers are by law required to be "sponsored" by normal individuals or organizations) and that we should be helping her escape - even joining her.

We might have been more sympathetic if they'd just have tried to sneak or run past us to the border, but they attacked us first. One of their number, deranged by the results of experiments done on him by his "sponsor," set a small village on fire. We weren't going to be swayed by an unreasonably embittered normal and a few rogues, even if they had been abused by their sponsors. We called our base and turned them all in.

But Greg's character is wondering if there might have been a seed of truth to what she'd said, and mine is thinking of asking for internal ops next time - immoral sponsors who perform experiments on their wards should be exposed and squashed like the bugs they are! (I told you Heroes was a bit over-the-top.)

We spent most of Sunday lounging around the house, doing the laundry, watching videos, reading, and playing on the computer. I've gotten re-hooked on Red Dwarf, and I'm systematically going through all my videos of it. I'm also in the midst of re-reading the Harry Potter books, and making lists of things I want to buy for home projects. (I bought an herb-garden starter kit, for example, and assuming the seeds sprout, I want to transplant them into a window box. And I want to get a generic spring/summer flag so we can put up our flagpole. And... and... and... Like that.)

It looks like it's going to be another gorgeous day today - sunny and mild. I love early spring.

3 March 2000

You know what I said on the first about the graphics? I went looking yesterday for a tulip theme for April, and I found the exact daffodil design I'd had in mind for March! Argh!

So now, the question is whether I should go ahead and use the daffodil pattern this month, or save it for April, since I didn't find a tulip theme. I'll probably just wait and use in April. As slow as my flowers are coming up, it'll match better then anyway.

It looks like it's going to be a busy couple of weekends for us. My folks want to buy us a couple of trees - they'd promised us one when we moved into the house, and I'd completely forgotten about it. So we need to get the trees and plant them before Dad hauls us a truckload of mulch (he found a place that will fill the bed of his Dodge Ram with mulch for less than $20 - we'd be crazy not to take advantage of it, even if that much mulch would fill in our entire back yard). And, of course, before we plant the trees, we'll need to go to Lowe's and buy a number of things - Dad suggested getting some peat moss to put around the roots of the tree, to counteract the awful clay around here. And I want barriers to separate the mulched areas from the grass, and stuff like that. And as long as we're putting mulch down, I want to pick up some plants - preferably something that will live around here and doesn't have to be transplanted or replaced every year.

So it looks like the next couple of weekends will be divided between running around to hardware and gardening stores and the manual labor of putting all this stuff where it belongs.

So, K.T.'s decided that she's feeling uninspired about her Werewolf game and wants to do something new. She isn't even interested in finishing out the current quest. After tallying the suggestions and votes, it's looking like it's going to be a Heroes game. A new Heroes game, so I won't be resurrecting Danielle.

While I understand K.T.'s dilemma and frustration with the Werewolf game, I'm slightly irritated. Just once, I'd like to be in a long-running game. Every game I'm in sputters and dies. I've never played a character through more than four or five levels. My MeadeHall characters have been around for a couple of years, but that's a role-playing forum, not a game.

Ah, well. Worse things have happened. If I get too irritable, I suppose I can always go on haitus for a while. In the meantime, I have to think of a new Superhero concept for this weekend.

2 March 2000

Last night, for no particular reason at all, I was thinking about John Grubb.

John Grubb, Jim Skinner, and Kevin Hulsing. They were inseparable. They liked NASCAR and baseball and beer. They chewed tobacco when they played softball - but not at any other time. They were faithful to their girlfriends, but enjoyed a little eye-candy as much as the next man. They were always ready to help someone in need and to greet you with a smile. Jim had dark hair and a beard; John was fair and always needed to shave. John worked for a local racetrack, collecting money for parking, and he frequently drafted Jim and Kevin to help him. John and Jim were both the sort of charismatic, fun-loving guys who make the South a pleasant place to be.

When I first got to know the trio, I thought Kevin was a charity case. He was somewhat overweight, with red hair and freckles and glasses, and he was deaf, which made him sound sortof stupid when he talked, because his words slurred together. (He got by on a combination of lip-reading and a very powerful hearing aid.) But after I'd known them all for a while, I realized that they genuinely liked him. They were like the Three Musketeers.

It was Kevin who first invited me to join them at lunch, and after that I went to lunch with them at least twice a week. I never talked much - John and Jim talked a lot. It was fun to watch them, though. They joked and kidded around and generally had a lot of fun.

John pestered me for weeks until I finally agreed to go play softball with them and some other folks. I expected to be either teased or patronized - atheletic I am not, and they both played a lot. Jim had the kind of muscles that made t-shirt sleeves look uncomfortably tight. But they did neither. The first time I stepped up to bat, the guys in the outfield didn't even move in, though once I made it clear that I couldn't hit the ball further than the pitcher's mound, they did. But they didn't tease me for that, or try to offer advice. They did tease me when I missed a catch, which was all right - because they teased everyone that way.

When I last saw them, all three of them were preparing to carry on where I had feared to try: They were going for their PhD's. The four of us spent most of our working hours together in the graduate student offices of VA Tech's math department. The three of them were almost frighteningly intelligent - the more so because they looked like such "regular" guys. But when I made my farewells to them at the graduation ceremony where we collected our master's degrees, all three were planning to continue on to a doctorate, though I think John had plans to change departments and get his PhD in statistics rather than theoretical mathematics.

I don't know what happened to them after I left. I don't know why I thought about them last night out of the blue, but it was such a strong, clear memory - from John's "Jack Handy" wall-calendar to Kevin's imitation of the Caddyshack's gopher dance - that I wanted to share it with you today.

1 March 2000

 I'd wanted to do a theme for March with daffodils, but I didn't get started soon enough to find any decent graphics. So I dug into my repository of themes that I'd downloaded many moons ago, and decided on this. Maybe I'll do a tulip theme for April.

Speaking of flowers, I'm not completely hopeless when it comes to plants! I kill houseplants with startling regularity, but I think most of the bulbs that I planted last autumn survived!

Actually, I'd known that already. Last autumn, I planted a bunch of daffodil and tulip bulbs that Matt's mom had sent us as a housewarming present, augmenting them with some grape hyacinth bulbs that I bought myself because hyacinth flowers smell divine.

The hyacinths sprouted immediately. Short green shoots turned into long green shoots which lay across the ground and turned brown with the end of winter. I figured I'd killed them - that I'd managed to stumble across the one bulb that should be planted in the spring rather than in the autumn. I tried not to let it bother me too terribly much, because about the same time I noticed all the hyacinth leaves were turning brown, I also noticed that the daffodil bulbs had put up shoots.

About a week or so ago, I started getting depressed again. All of our neighbors who have daffodils planted already have flowers. All I have are green shoots. None of the directions I got with the bulbs said there was anything special you had to do to get them to flower! And the tulips haven't even put up shoots yet. How distressing.

This morning, while Matt was scraping the frost off his car, I stepped over to look at the daffodil shoots again. And lo! most of the little shoot clusters are sporting a shoot with a suspiciously yellow bulge at one end. It looks like I'll have daffodils after all!

And better yet, when I leaned over to look at one of the shoots, a bit of purple caught my eye - there's a hyacinth flower, half buried in the mulch! I didn't see any others, unfortunately, and I thought hyacinth stalks were at least a few inches long, but heck, I'll take what I can get! I guess I'll just keep an eye on them and see what happens. Maybe hyacinth flowers aren't really flowers, and they come out of the ground already like that? I have no idea. It doesn't seem right, but right now I'm so thrilled that the daffodils are going to bloom that I don't care.

I wore a yellow shirt to work yesterday.

I broke rules for that. Fat people are not supposed to wear bright colors and call attention to themselves. Besides, I've thought for years and years that yellow looks absolutely awful on me anyway.

But I went shopping a couple of weeks ago, and there was a rack of these shirts. Bias-cut t-shirts, with sortof ruffles around the arms and at the bottom, and when I pulled the grey one on and turned to look in the mirror, my eyes nearly popped out of my head. The way the shirt is made, it calls attention to my curves while de-emphasizing how big my hips are. This shirt was made just for me. It was perfect. I had to have more than one.

So I went back over to the rack. Besides grey, they had them in white, black, and primary red, yellow, and blue. I tried on the black. It made my chest look smaller. The blue looked all right, but my eye kept being drawn to that yellow. Don't be absurd, I told myself. Yellow makes you look sick! But I couldn't stop looking at it. Blue is my favorite color, but for some reason, the blue shirt just didn't work...

Okay, I said, exasperated. Try on the yellow shirt, see what it does to your complexion, and then put it back, okay?

I put the shirt on, wrestling momentarily with the stupid anti-theft device, which was as big as my fist and attached to the shirt in the armpit, of all the stupid places. I turned around...

This yellow didn't make me look jaundiced. It made my skin glow. It made the highlights in my hair lighter. And even more importantly, the way it hugged my curves made me gasp with surprise.

I argued with myself. I don't wear yellow. I don't own a single piece of clothing that has so much as a yellow button, stripe, or flower on it. I'm fat, for petesake - fat people can't wear bright colors!

I tried to compromise on the red. Still a bright, happy color, but not nearly so eye-grabbing. I tried it on, and had the same blah reaction as I'd had with the blue. Apparently the magic of the shirt worked with the very neutral grey, and with the extremely bright yellow, but not with the slightly less neutral blue or less bright red. Normally, I'd have just given up and bought the grey. But, heart pounding, I approached the register with the grey and the yellow.

The same trip, I bought a bra specifically to wear with a shirt I have that tends to slip over the shoulder. You understand? I bought a bra that's meant to be seen. (Well, part of it, anyway.) I've been fiddling around with makeup and hair accessories lately, too.

Is it a sign of increased self-esteem? A reviving fashion sense? A mental spring cleaning?

Whatever it is, I hope it doesn't go away anytime soon. It's kindof fun.