The other B

Gentle reader,

You've been wondering where I am and what I've been up to. I've been wondering the same.

I'm still not sure, but I'll take a stab at it. I'm in the other B. Not the BB B, the other one, Boston. Growing a little weary of summer in the city, I decided it was time to visit my country home (also known as my little apartment in Boston). The same flight from summer had the beneficial byproduct of reminding my employers that I still exist. Of course, I've been working the whole summer long from New York, but in these days of automation an employer might begin to suspect that all the files I'm posting and reports I am producing might somehow be the byproduct of an automation scheme. A little face time with the boss, not a bad thing really...

On the plus side, I've got a little more space here in Boston than New York, so I've been cooking (yes, and being cooked for). I've got my car, so little half day trips out to the coast or the shore are all feasible. All in all it's been nice.

I'll have a few pictures and a more detailed update soon.

In the meanwhile, hope you're all having a summery summer.

xoxo

BB

Bad hair day

I'm having a bad hair day. I know it's a weak excuse for a blog post, but really for me it's quite an issue.

It's not that my hair looks terrible. It's just that I woke up today and no matter what I try my hair comes out looking like it did in 1985. I did consider the possibility that I was caught in some sort of time warp (and even more fleetingly consider that I might be getting younger rather than older), but no luck on either front.

And you know what's worse? No one noticed!

* * *

Perhaps they were being too polite to say anything? But didn't they notice this big wavy flip that has taken root on my scalp? Perhaps my new glasses were distracting them from noticing. It was one of those days when I said to myself, lucky I don't have to look nice today! But wait, don't I want to look nice every day like one of those creatures who inhabit the streets of Paris with an elegantly bored expression on their face? 

Speaking of that, I've actually gotten good at a related expression, that of looking on with interest as though I'm uninterested - you know, one of those I happen to be looking, but truly I could care less looks? The key here is that you shouldn't look bored and uninterested, but instead alert albeit disinterested. Noticing things without being curious, taking it all in with at most a slight flicker that any of it really matters. Not scowling, not pleasantly vacuous, but self-contained and neutral. It's the kind of look that is usually turned on me by someone who is too impossibly elegant to bothering looking at me. 

But even though I'm not too impossibly anything, I've been working up the look. And you know what? Sadly or happily it seems to work. I can make shop assistants come running with a glance and dismiss even the haughtiest of their species with the slightest quiver.

But of course only on a good hair day, not to mention a regular hair day, and not even to begin to think about a day like today, a bad hair day.

BB

Found: Summer

For those, like me, who have been looking for it high and how, I can confirm that it still exists: summer. It is mid-July, and he has been playing coy (why should it always be a she who plays coy? I know many a he that is an expert at this game...) but has finally decided that it's time to come out and play.

Friday was a nice enough day, but then there were the inevitable sprinkles of rain that we have become used to here in LondoNY. But Saturday and Sunday the skies opened, the sun shone through, and we were all very happy indeed.

True, I didn't make much of Saturday's sun. Went to the gym, went to the movies (saw the new Woody Allen film, which is not as bad as everyone says but not as good as one would hope), had some quiet dinner at home. I had been thinking to drag some some friends into the park to see the fireworks, which this year were in the Hudson River so the aforementioned park in this case would be Riverside Park. But living in that part of town, I saw police barricades forming, boys in blue streaming into and out of the park, and just about everyone else streaming in. I decided it wasn't quite for little old me and contented myself with listening to the booms in the distance.

Sunday was an equally glorious day, but this day I decided to grasp this summer by the...ah... hands (my metaphors are slipping badly here and veering into dangerous terrain...) and head into the park with friends for a picnic. It was warm but not hot, quite still. We found a shady little hill and listened to the mixing of music from Summer Stage and a nearby brass band. We sipped Alsation wine grape juice (wine is forbidden in the park -- didn't you know? And I'm not the kind of person to decant wine into water bottles, am I?), enjoyed the sun, wondered about the motives of a twenty something girl who was wandering around with a pet cheetah on a leash (ok - not exactly - it was one of those crosses between a wild cat and domestic cat that have become very popular lately), and enjoyed a leisurely afternoon.

And so summer has been found. And let's hope he's not letting go, just yet.

BB