manicures and mezzos

I've been a busy girl, I have. Got myself my very first manicure and my very first pedicure. My fingers are pink, my toes are red, got me some earrings--

...check it out. I'm a woman.

***

I've never had a manicure or a pedicure before, and to be honest I was vaguely worried about the entire procedure. My roommate, who occasionally goes out on such cosmetic adventures and returns with beautifully polished toes and, occasionally, bright yellow jewel flowers, reassured me on the issue of pain.

"It only hurts a little bit," she said comfortingly. "And that's only if they're not very good."

So on one of my last days of freedom -- Thursday, that was; the countdown was four days to the new job -- I trotted up to San Francisco to visit my sister, bearing: 1) running shoes from Seattle so she could train for Bay to Breakers; 2) a solid block of mochi, home-made by Mom during the second to last day of my visit and vacuum sealed with her brand new Food Saver (tm) toy; 3) $40 to pay for a manicure and pedicure. My sister and her workplace were in a royal mood that day. One of the girls there, Mary, stalked past us both without so much as a glance of acknowledgement despite the fact that we'd had a friendly luncheon outing only a few weeks previously. My sister's boyfriend stared at me blankly for a long moment before registering my presence. "Oh, Yuh-jinski," he greeted wanly.

I have no idea why he does that. At what point did he come to believe that 'Yuh-jinski' was an acceptable alternative for my name? "Your workplace is a real joy today," I observed to Masako. She made some sort of growling sound.

"I can't go to lunch," she said savagely. "You came all the way up from Redwood City. Sorry. I have to do some of this stuff and wait until so-and-so gets back."

"I'm going to get a manicure," I told her happily, and wiggled my dull, hang-nailed fingernails at her. The dregs of the earlier Tahoe wedding polish were still making blodgy spots on them. "I'm going to get a pedicure and a manicure and that's why I'm wearing sandals. Isn't it exciting?"

She patted me on the head. There are times when I suspect that the reason our family has this chronic problem with conceptions of time is that my sister and I were, in fact, born in a temporal flux of some sort; she was meant to be the older sister, just as I was meant to be the younger sister, and in our typical Hirata fashion we managed to schedule it all wrong. "That's nice. Go get your nails done while I wait for so-and-so to get back."

I kissed her on the cheek and trotted off.

There was a nail boutique on the corner, "Union Studio Nails," and it was populated by business-like Chinese women in white lab coats. We managed to communicate to each other through interpretive dance more than actual English; my experience with foreign interpretations of English spans the gamut of Japenglish to Chinenglish, but I've yet to master the latter. After we'd managed to establish that I wanted a pedicure (I waved at my toes, pulled it out of the sandal and did a flamingo impression, wiggling them at a lab-coated attendent) we sidestepped the hurdle of whether I wanted a spa manicure/pedicure by my careful finger-stabbing on a list of services and prices hung up inside the door. Those pleasantries exchanged, one of the women ordered me to "PIG A GALLA."

"Um," said I. "What?" said I.

She gestured impatiently. "PIG A GALLA." There was a wall of fingernail polish bottles neatly arrayed behind her. "PIG A GALLA. PIG A GALLA."

Pick a color. Aha. My keen translator's mind snapped into play. "Oh," I said wittily, and dithered over the selection under her annoyed eye. I emerged triumphant with a deep wine color that wasn't too bright to be embarrassing.

"--Except," I said weakly as the women began herding me to one chair after another, in some sort of 'Hide the Sock' game played behind each other's backs with live bodies. ("YOU SID DERE." "WHAT YOU DO DERE? YOU COME HERE, SIT DIS CHAIR. YOU STAY.") "--Except I don't want to paint my fingernails. I want to...."

The lab coat ladies weren't interested. One of them came at me with a large tub of some sort, and began gesticulating fiercely. I was to put my feet in the tub. Crushed, I obeyed. Another woman came to plop down at the table next to me, and demanded I move my chair closer. Trapped with my feet in a tub, my jeans rapidly soaking up moisture, and one hand firmly clasped in her long-nailed grip o' death, I attempted to comply and got scolded for my pains. "YOUR FEED NO WATERING."

Once they'd settled me to their satisfaction, the two women bent competently and briskly to their business. I was fascinated, I admit. They buffed, they polished, they snipped, they scraped; every so often the woman at my feet would demand one foot or the other, rub it semi-dry, then do some obscure and vaguely ticklish thing to the toes. I attempted to explain to the woman doing my fingernails that I didn't want to have them turned red. "I don't want them painted," I explained, while she splashed some sort of chemical on them. "I don't like my fingernails with color."

She shook her head and said firmly, "NO COLOR ON YOUR FINGER. NATURAL BEST FOR YOU."

One stern eye glared at me in case I felt like arguing, and I found myself meekly agreeing. Apparently, I wasn't to be given a choice in the matter. Natural was best for me. Yes'm.

It was absolutely fascinating, every second of it, and I took turns inspecting my toes and my fingernails, much to the amusement of the attendents. They chattered at each other in Cantonese, before my manicurist, moved by some obscure principle of customer satisfaction, demanded to know if I was from Hong Kong. Why she'd decided I must have been from Hong Kong mystifies me still; was it because I spoke English without an accent?

"Seattle," I said, which is what I always say when people ask me where I'm from, as though I should confess to the original motherland that spawned my slant-eyed, Imperialist ancestors. Then, because I knew perfectly well what they were really asking, I added, "I'm Japanese."

The manicurist frowned. "NOT HON KON?" she demanded.

"Japanese," I insisted.

A few minutes later, my toes now tangled in some foam apparatus and wet nail polish, all my fingers scraped to bits and firmly trapped by the manicurist, I was asked to pay for my visit.

It's not my imagination, is it? Usually one's asked to pay at the beginning or at the end of a service visit, right?

Utterly cowed by my manicurist, I fished around with my free hand until I found a credit card. The manicurist eyed my open wallet and added in a hushed and determined voice, "TIP."

She'd seen the green. I had no problem paying a tip. I obligingly pulled out a five dollar bill. One minute it was in my hand; the next, it had evaporated into who knows where.

She wasn't done yet.

"FOR FEED," she said firmly, and nodded towards her colleague, now busy attending someone else.

I found five more dollars. The manicurist confiscated that as well.

Having established my financial credibility, the woman very kindly finished up my fingernails, making them shiny clean and NATURAL. I wandered up the street back to my sister's store, where I discovered her in the middle of an argument with her boyfriend and a representative from Patagonia. Ordered to go to lunch, she grabbed me by the elbow and dragged me to the bar-slash-cafe across the street, where she downed two martinis in quick order.

I told her that I'd bought them tickets to Stomp for the following Friday, John's birthday present. She blinked at me soulfully. "If John and I break up, can I take the tickets and go with you?" she wanted to know. "We separated."

"Butthead," I said. "No."

"You're a bad sister."

***

For several months now I've had an on-again off-again relationship with a guy named Jeff.

Jeff works for the San Francisco Opera, and once every two months, Jeff calls me to find out if I'm interested in season tickets, and if I'd like to purchase season tickets. The first time he called, I was in the middle of a financial downturn and a bit leery about spending money in the face of what looked like Excite@Home's forthcoming implosion. We had a nice conversation on the telephone about my past history with the Seattle Opera and how I really wished I'd had a chance to see the San Francisco production of Der Rosenkavalier. "I'd really love to buy tickets," I told him apologetically, "it's just that I'm not sure if I'll have a job in a couple of months, and I kind of want to save my money---"

"No problem!" said Jeff, really a friendly guy and very nice on the phone. "What say I call you in a couple of months and we see how you feel then?"

I felt a flush of gratitude. Really, he had a lovely voice. "Thanks. Would you mind?"

"Not at all," said Jeff. "I'll talk to you in a few months."

Three months later, right on cue, Jeff called. Excite@Home had just kicked the bucket; I was freshly out of a job.

"Hi," said the guy on the other side of the phone. "This is Jeff from San Francisco Opera---"

"Jeff!" I cried. Not many telemarketers get this kind of reception from the people they call. Then again, Jeff and me, we had a Thing. "I was just thinking about you. Dude, you called at a bad time. I'm so totally broke right now."

"Oh no. Really? That's terrible. What happened?"

We had a nice little conversation about my job and my defunct company. I explained to him the spectacular rise and fall of my dead company. ("It went Chapter Seven? What's that? Is that like Chapter Eleven?") and the end result was that I confessed to being utterly incapable of paying for season tickets.

"Maybe when I get a job," I said wistfully. I really wanted to buy those tickets. I wanted to watch the San Francisco Opera do its thing. Plus, I wanted to make Jeff Happy.

Jeff was understanding, which I thought was nice. He didn't hold my unemployment against me. "I understand completely," he said sympathetically. "You really should save your money. Maybe when you get another job? I'm sure it won't take you too long. Tell you what; there are some other half season series where you can pick and choose to go to only a few of the operas instead of the entire season. There are also some three-opera series that you can select which are a lot cheaper since they tend to happen on weeknights. Why don't you take a look at the brochure and online, and think about it, and I'll call back in a few months. How's that sound?"

"You're the best, Jeff," I announced. "Thanks."

We hung up. I hope he breeds someday, I thought.

Then we have this past Thursday. Just the night before I'd been speaking with my mother about my relationship with the Man from the San Francisco Opera. "He has a nice voice!" I told her.

"Don't you have a boyfriend already?" my mother asked innocently.

On Thursday morning, the phone rang. In one of those rare moments of pure telepathic congruity, I thought, I wonder if that's Jeff? and picked it up.

"Hello?"

"Hello! Is Yuhri there? This is Jeff from the San Francisco Opera."

He was a salesman whose time had come. In some sort of mad frenzy of spending, no doubt related directly to my forthcoming start date of Monday with this new job, I promptly signed up for a six-opera series. "Two tickets, Jeff," I carolled. "Balcony front, series Y."

Later, I called the Guy. "Guess what!" I told him. "Guess where you'll be going with me come June?"

All things together, he took it rather well. Of course, he's never been, but aren't men supposed to dislike going to the Opera on principle?

(un)employed

We were in the car on the way back from Lake Tahoe. The Guy was singing the Smurf theme song.

"Laaa laaa la la la laaa... Don't try to out-Smurf ME!" he shouted triumphantly. "I am a member of the Secret Brotherhood of the SMURF!"

A three hundred mile car ride with a man who sings the Smurf song is no laughing matter.

***

The wedding was a cheerful affair, in the Germanic fashion of the Austrians and Swiss. There was much incomprehensible singing, several entertaining plays, and an absolutely impenetrable skit put on by several European engineers that had at various times been sponsored in the US by the bride and groom.

It was set at scenic Camp Richardson, a resort in Lake Tahoe. Why it's Historic, I have no idea. They were married on the dock, in 20-degree weather, and we piled into a large boathouse to hold the festivities.

I wrote a fairy tale. We performed it. Shall I link it up? It'd be in Microsoft Word and some of you would regret it. If I get a request, maybe I will.

I won't spend too long on this, since we have a lot of things to cover today and I've a limited attention span of late. I will mention that I painted my fingernails at Tara's urging -- five times; I'm very bad at painting my fingernails, and thank heavens she'd brought fingernail polish remover, though I think I used almost the entire bottle -- and that I changed my clothes during the reception, it was so damn cold.

We spent the weekend in one of the cabins, a two-bedroom affair that we shared with Tara and Remington. There was a fireplace in the small sitting room, and it was one of the most relaxing weekends I've ever spent, just lolling in that warm room with our friends, painting my nails and sometimes, just sometimes, inserting a non sequitor in what passed for conversation.

Tara, who has a passion for jokes most people get off the back of cereal boxes, jokes that were old (and bad!) even when we were in kindergarten -- "Why don't cannibals eat clowns? Because they taste funny. Bwah hah hah!" -- was absolutely determined to tell us a joke involving a neutron, an electron, a proton, and a bar tab. Remington and I had both heard it, and we unkindly waved away her attempts at retelling with more haste than grace. I hate to admit that in this time of incredible trial, I utterly failed in my womanly duty. I sacrificed the Guy.

"He hasn't heard it yet," I told her cravenly, knowing full well that he was trapped in the kitchen sawing a coconut in half with a leatherman.

Yes, coconut. Don't ask.

Tara's eyes brightened at the thought of a new victim and she instantly bounded off to the kitchen, where we shortly heard her declaiming her joke to the resigned Guy. Every word was audible, it being a small cabin, but at least the joke wasn't being told to us.

At one point, she stopped, waiting expectantly for laughter. The Guy failed to satisfy. Like all of Tara's jokes, it wasn't high on the Richter scale of hilarity.

"That's a physics joke. You're a bit of a nerd, aren't you?" he accused.

She laughed, and started talking again, only to be cut off by the Guy's wail.

"There's MORE?!"

Remington and I exchanged grateful looks in the sitting room -- there but for the grace of a sacrificial lamb -- and failed signally to come to his rescue.

***

Like I told those that were notified, a lot of stuff has happened in the last week. The Tuesday interview that I was supposed to have was rescheduled to Wednesday, and on Wednesday I ripped apart my wardrobe with the classic female complaint ("I have nothing to wear!") before tripping off wearing black slacks and a beaded blouse and cardigan I got in Mauritius.

Least anybody disapprove of this choice in attire, allow me to reassure you all with the knowledge that my roommate heartily approves of this particular combination.

Expecting to be interviewed, I was therefore somewhat taken aback when I was instead told that the interviews had been cancelled as unnecessary.

They wanted to offer me the job, instead.

There are a few details to iron out, starting date, wording on contract -- intellectual copyright, folks, and check your contracts; you'd be surprised what the law constitutes as property of the company, depending on what you've signed. A lot of companies put down a variation on "...any creation developed during your period of employment..." which apparently could mean everything from code you developed at work to stuff you tinker around with on your own for fun at home, and thank God California's law is stricter than New York's on this -- questions about work hours, dress code, etcetera.

But hey, assuming all those answers are good, I'll start work on April 29, a little over two months since I started looking for a job.

I've long been convinced that my good luck professionally is tied in to Flamingo's. We both found jobs last time at approximately the same time, and now we've done it again. Well, we'll see if bad luck is tied in as well; it is a start-up I'm going to, and after all, we all know how precarious start-ups are. Hopefully though, things will go well, and we'll all live happily ever after.

I like happily ever after. It's so ... bland, isn't it?

back

I was driving with the Norwegian down Veterans, a fairly busy street, when we pulled up at a stop light. It's a beautiful day today; of course the windows were rolled down, and kitty corner from us a female jogger was waiting for the light to change. She was wearing a blue and black jogging bra and spandex jogging pants, bare-midriffed, and I have to admit that I actively admired her form. (After all, I was lesbian for a whole 24 hours. A bit of that lingers.)

I distinctly heard a man's voice say, "...And they wonder why they get raped."

A big, open-door white truck was parked next to us at the light, with the words "Redwood City School District" emblazoned on the side panel. There was a greying, paunchy man driving, and obviously another man hidden inside the truck itself. The two of them were also actively admiring the woman who was waiting, oblivious, on the street corner.

Except it wasn't exactly admiration she would have appreciated. It wasn't the kind of admiration any woman would have appreciated.

I rolled up the window on their conversation (how they would rape her, I believe it was; how she would turn the corner and bang, they'd nail her on the head with a bottle) and rediscovered a deep, dark disgust for the entire male race.

***

Well, and then I remembered Jim Henson. Did you know Jim Henson's speaking voice was Kermit the Frog's voice? I hadn't realized that until I watched an interview with him. There was a very officious Serious Newsjournal Interviewer in stilted accents painstakingly asking profound and carefully articulated questions of an awkward-looking man in plaid that could very well have played Tim Allen's sidekick in Home Improvement. Out of the blue, Kermit the Frog warbles something back, equally solemn. How can you not love that?

I laughed and loved men again.

Well, until someone told me that Jar Jar Binks is in the next Star Wars movie. Then I just ended up hating men more all over again.

***

It's been almost two weeks since I last wrote, and this is due to the fact that I spent part of the week in Seattle visiting my mother. I'll put up pictures -- I swear, this time I really will -- after I finish watching a week's worth of television.

Part of the purpose in my visit to Seattle was to teach my mother how to use the computer. She'd received some sort of laptop from a colleague. "It used to belong to Barbara," she told me over the telephone. 'It used to belong to Barbara' translates to 'It's a Macintosh laptop from 1982.' My ability on the Macintosh extends to turning it on; it turned out, after studying the sitation, that it definitely didn't extend to plugging it in.

Ah well. Live and learn.

As it was, we moved to a Microsoft platform and I spent two days teaching her how to turn the computer on. We'll be working on the use of the mouse during the next visit. She was baffled by the shut down process.

"To shut down I do 'Start'?" she said, puzzled.

"No, see, it's a menu item that you get when you click start."

"Why is it 'start'? What does it start?"

Good question. Any answers, Bill?

***

Anyway, I'm back. Miss me?

clothes

"You wore what?"

"Okay, it wasn't all velvet. It was just a little velvet, the black part, and the rest of it was purple."

"Oh my God. Purple?"

I was trying to explain to my book club what I'd worn to my interview.

"It's just, I woke up in the morning and I thought, oh, I should ask Kristine what I should wear and then I heard you leave and thought, Shit, so I tore out my closet and found this old suit from high school that my sister gave me."

"Velvet."

"Purple and black velvet."

Is velvet not a good thing? The looks on the faces of the other women were starting to make me think that maybe, just maybe, it wasn't.

"The collar's top half was black, see," I said weakly, "and the buttons down the front were velvet, and--"

"Oh my God."

"Purple?" another woman asked incredulously.

"A deep, dark purple. Not ugly purple. Just purple."

"Why didn't you come to me for help on what to wear?" shrieked my roommate.

I started to sulk. "You left."

"I work! I have a job to go to!"

Fine. Just rub it in. And here I was all happy about having found a suit to wear at all. What, I should've shown up naked after all the talk about how important a suit is to wear to an interview?

She inspected it later, and professed herself relieved.

"Oh. It's not all velvet."

All Velvet is a bad thing?

"Just half the collar and the buttons ... I told you that."

"You did? I must've missed that. I was sitting there thinking, 'Oh my God, Yuhri went to her interview wearing a Prince outfit'."

Hah. As if. Er...What does Prince wear?

***

I was watching Iron Chef the other night with my roommate and her friend, when Chairman Kaga showed up on the screen. For those who don't know, Chairman Kaga is the mover and shaker for the Iron Chef series; according to the show, he's a billionaire that loved food so much that he gathered the top chefs to be his Iron Chefs and summoned challengers to "do battle in Kitchen Stadium." If you don't know Iron Chef, you're missing out. There's a link here for more info so follow it, you poor, ignorant platypus.

The thing about Chairman Kaga is those outfits that he wears, all of which left entire forests of sequin trees stripped bare.

He appeared on screen wearing some flashy black and rhinestone-y number.

"Holy shit," quoth I.

"This guy is some kind of freak," said my roommate.

Me, my next word was going to be "COOL." Sensing that that wouldn't have met with unqualified approval, I held my tongue.

Deep inside my Japanese genes -- and I'm going to blame the Japanese genes because dammit, surely no American cultural anomaly (with the exception of Elvis and Prince, and maybe Michael Jackson, and okay, Liberace, but nobody else) could be responsible -- there's a yearning towards the garish and visually unacceptable. I watch Chairman Kaga and his flamboyant clothing and wistfully imagine having those shirts in my wardrobe and the body (female!) to wear them with.

I've always lacked clothing sense, and being fully aware that I'd been cruelly shorted on the whole Instinct for Fashion, God was kind enough in a backhanded way to give me a body that manages to look awful in almost anything but simple, straightforward outfits. To God, this somehow balances out the equation.

To give God credit where credit is due, this was probably a wise idea. If I'd been given the physique of Cindy Crawford, for instance, I would have cheerfully adorned myself with rejects from Liberace's closet and become one of the sights of What's-In-Your-Closet San Francisco. As it is, I can't afford to go out dressed that way, and err on the side of conservative attire, to the chagrin of my diva DNA.

I might've told this story before -- who keeps track anymore -- but one day during summer vacation, Binky came to visit me in Seattle. My sister, Binky, and I went out to see the sights in the city; I was wearing an ultra-conservative grey blazer that I'd picked up in a thrift store somewhere, while my sister was stylish in the peak of Seattle Grunge-Kid fashion. We were standing on a street corner in the middle of Broadway, surrounded by people, when my sister suddenly announced in a loud voice:

"Yuhri, why are you wearing that jacket? You look like a dyke."

Is it wrong that I should lust after Kaga's tailor?

eat drink and what?

I can't drink.

Does that not suck?

No, really. I'm allergic. Thanks.

No, I mean it. No. No wine. No vodka. No gin and tonic. Well, maybe the tonic, but definitely not the gin. No tequila, no rum, no whiskey, and definitely no beer.

Well, okay, I could maybe drink the beer, but I'd rather not because it tastes like dog piss.

Yes, damn you, I know perfectly well what dog piss tastes like, and that's beer, right there, that's beer, I had a dog when I was three years old and who the hell can explain what goes through the mind of a three-year old? Just don't shove that beer in my face. I don't know for sure if I actually drank dog piss, but I might've, and all I'm saying is, beer tastes like dog piss.

No. No schnapps. Why? Because my heart stops, that's why. Yeah, go ahead, laugh it up you stupid fraggle monkey, just wait 'til the police arrest you gaping at my cold, lifeless corpse. I can drink a glass -- or maybe half a glass, I'm not sure about exact measurements -- and then all of my limbs go numb, my chest starts to seize up, I get black spots in front of my eyes, stop being able to breathe, and start to panic. It gets ugly.

Yes, it sucks. You know why it sucks? Because I can't drink. When everybody else is getting drunk and having fun, me, I'm sitting in the corner being all inhibited and repressed, cradling a tonic (or maybe a diet coke if I'm feeling wild, sugar high, woo hoo!) and watching jealously while everybody else cuts loose and rides the ethanol roller-coaster.

My genes have made me the designated driver.

For eternity.

Bet I invented wine in a box in a past life. This is my punishment. Who says God don't have a sense of humor?

***

Second interview today, for which I uncovered -- huzzah! -- a suit of purple and black velvet, one that went quite well with the sensible shoes I love so much. The interview went from 2:00 pm to 3:30, and over the course of the time I met three other people at the company: two executives and an engineer. Did it go well? I'm not sure. I felt comfortable with two; less comfortable with the first, though that was perhaps inevitable considering it was the first of the three interviews.

Ironically enough, it was also the most important of the three interviews. Well, we'll see what we'll see.

In the meantime, I've five more jobs to apply to in order to make California Unemployment's Department happy for the week. It's not the applying so much as it is the finding. It can't be helped.

***

Last Sunday was Easter.

How does one figure out when Easter is? It's a Catholic thing. I have no idea. (Or a Christian thing. Are the two distinct? Educate me, beloveds; I'm pagan, by your standards.) As per tradition, said tradition being all of three years old, I went to Tara and Remington's for Easter dinner.

It was yummy. Tara cooks good. I've mentioned this before. She cooks real good.

In the meantime, back in the real world completely apart from my rapidly ballooning stomach, the Guy attempted to reward me for my first interview by purchasing the new Sims expansion pack at Best Buy. As it turned out, I had a gift card that covered all but about a dollar-and-change of it; excited for us both, he popped it into my computer and discovered that my hard drive is running out of room.

Add a new hard drive to the list of things I have to get eventually.

In the meantime, Sims Vacation is running a little slowly but well. It's a spiffy little attachment, with lots of fun items. It works much like the Hot Date expansion did, except now there're games that can be played, and a strange fellow dressed up in a shark costume waddling around the screen.

My hope is that the next pack the Sims come out with will involve animals in a more interactive part than mere "Pet-Feed-Clean." I'd like to see them come up with a dog or a cat that actually wanders around the house, a domesticated pet that has to be potty trained, fed, played with, and groomed. Not to mention neutered, else it get a little happy with the neighbor's li'l pal Mister Tinkles and drop a litter of fuzzy baby Sims.

Too much time on my hands. I'm going to go study something. The ingredients on a Coke can or something . . .

anniversary

In the State of California, a California state senator is proposing a tax on popular soft drinks to help reduce obesity in children.

Meanwhile, hopes for peace between Israel and Palestine turn to ashes as everybody's favorite friends, Arafat and Sharon, succeed once more in making an utter cock-up of the process. My personal opinion: return the majority of the West Bank, split off Palestine, split off Israel, put Jerusalem under International Secular rule, build a Berlin wall to separate the two. Let each country take time to build a national identity separate from the other for about four generations. Would that solve the problem? Dunno. But then, nobody's asking me.

You wander offline for a few days and suddenly the world goes to hell....

***

I'm catching up, but slowly. My body's on April 1st, but my mind is on last Wednesday, for no particular reason that I can fathom. In today's Yuhri news: the interview, and what came afterwards, and the first anniversary.

First, the interview.

I had it on Tuesday, as rescheduled, and I thought it went rather well. I was, perhaps characteristically, unprepared for it, at least in the sense that I hadn't sat down and soberly attempted to memorize rote answers to rote questions. After all, I thought blithely, I've worked in an employment office and I've memorized those answers before. Besides, if they're going to hire me, they'll hire me, not some artistically rendered version of me.

It's cute how naive I am, isn't it?

I actually start all unemployment seasons like this, operating under some abstract notion of honor and truth in advertising that gradually wears away as the season wears on. This is the same deluded sense of honor that kept me loyal my last company while I was employed there, preventing me from searching for new work at a company that wasn't about to go under. At my previous job, it also kept me from working on my resume while employed, with the idea that this would somehow constitute disloyalty to the company.

In the case of the interview, it meant I spoke exactly the way I always speak, and answered the questions with my actual honest opinions. I was sniffling a little at the time and coughing a bit as well -- it turns out the allergy decided to be a cold, rat bastard that it was -- but I made very sure not to infect the nice lady with any of my germs.

I think.

In the end, she asked me to come back at the end of the week to meet with the CEO. "We'll schedule a time when I find out when he's free," she said.

Good sign, thought I.

Haven't heard from her yet. Should drop her an email and see what's up.

***

Okay. Heard from her. No worries.

***

Irishmen seem to have been put on this earth for the sole purpose of recovering my watch.

I like them.

It's a peculiar phenomenon, and I have to admit that it's a little bit freaky. I'll acknowledge that I've actually met Irishmen in the past that have had absolutely nothing to do with my watch. On the other hand, every time my watch has ever fallen off of my wrist, an Irishman has picked it up, chased me down, and returned it to me. It happened once on the escalator of CompUSA. It happened in a mall in San Francisco. It happened on Fisherman's Wharf. Once it even happened in my laundromat in Chinatown, and while I'll admit there was an Irish pub half a block away, really, no Irishman has any business being in Chinatown.

The watch is a present from my father for my sixteenth birthday, and it has -- as you might have figured out -- a loose clasp that makes it a little dangerous to wear. In the beginning, there was a little gold chain that held the two ends together in case the clasp came undone, but that fell off at some point during the last twelve years. The watch is one of the few things I have left of my father, excepting the poor eyesight, the tendency towards fat, the straight teeth and the inability to tell a story that has a point. Oh, and the power tools in my Mom's garage, though it's a little hard to wrap those around one's wrist and go for a jaunt in the City. ("Hey, lady, you know the time?" "Sure, just give me a second to plug myself in and make a clock.")

At any rate, it's from my father -- yes, the dead one -- so naturally it's a little precious to me. Somewhere in the afterlife, my dad was making note of the fact that the little gold chain fell off. "Well, that's no good," he was up there thinking. "She might lose the watch. Better assign her some guardian angels to keep that watch safe. I know, I'll give her some Irishmen. They're nice and appreciate beer and their names make me giggle."

Irishmen notwithstanding, I'm leery of wearing my watch now; who can say if the heavenly stock of Irishmen runs out, and I'm stuck having to depend on a non-Irish, union guardian angel?

The Guy and I have been dating for a year now, as of the end of March; that is to say, we first met at the end of March, and it's impossible to say exactly when we started dating, mostly because I have this whole problem with units of time.

Naturally we gave each other presents. We're Present People. Part of the reason I dislike being poor is because I like giving people things. (Once I get a regular paycheck back, you guys can send me your wish lists and I'll prove it.) As it happens, the Guy collects watches -- less harmful than, say, collecting fish, which have a habit of smelling bad once they've stopped twitching.

He got me a Seiko, that actually shows the date in a little window on the face. It appears to alternate between giving me the first three letters of the month and the first three letters of the day itself, in French. It's possible I'm imagining that. I'll have to get back to you on it. It's very very cool. I now know the time, or could, if I could remember that I'm wearing it. The Guy, who knows me well, no doubt realized that anything that combined Shiny and Yellow would be a big hit with Yuhri's little brain.

"See," he said while sizing it for me, "it's jewelry."

"It's not."

"It is," he insisted.

We've had an ongoing issue with jewelry. He wants to buy me jewelry. I don't want him to buy me jewelry.

Did I mention I'm an awesome girlfriend?

It takes a crowbar to remove this thing from my wrist, which saddens me a little because, with the exception of the Guy's brother, I won't ever get to meet Irishmen anymore.

In the meantime, I gave him this, quite possibly the coolest watch ever. Yes, it actually shoots. There is a down side to it, in that catapult arm has to be up in order to read the time, but c'mon. Minor inconvenience.

Am I not the coolest girlfriend ever?