Possibly *I* am just another one of those weird things you see in Wine Country.
I spent yesterday in wine country with friends from Stanford; it was fun. Mostly what we did was taste wine, and I suppose I could have gotten Thrilling Action Shots of that, but I was kind of busy drinking tasting. And getting surprisingly blotto surprisingly fast from what seemed like very small quantities of wine, although I guess we did share a bottle at lunch, but come on, there were FOUR OF US. My friend Anne suggests it was the altitude, which sounds like a good excuse.
Anyway, the wineries were cool. Brandy was collecting ceramic coasters from them, and I did a little Christmas shopping. There were also some totally bizarre random aspects to the buildings and grounds, Exhibit A being the Giant Thumb at Clos Pegase:
No, we don’t know, either. Awesome thumb, though.
Clos Pegase was my favorite of the wineries that we visited, although in the interest of full disclosure, it was also the last. Their emblem was Pegasus, which was cool and reminded me of my childhood, when my parents and I would have long and no doubt frustrating discussions in which they would attempt to explain to me that “Pegasus” was the name of a SPECIFIC WINGED HORSE, rather than a categorical reference for all horses with wings, and I would steadfastly ignore them. I was a strong-willed child.*
Today I walked to Mountain View intending to visit Target and Trader Joe’s, but got sidetracked checking in at the Happy Salon, which I am always passing by and wondering if they do walk-ins, which they didn’t exactly, but they said I could come back in an hour, and I REALLY needed an eyebrow wax.
So instead of walking the rest of the way to Trader Joe’s for milk and produce,** I elected to browse the Tower Records going-out-of-business sale across the street. I was checking the science fiction paperbacks for S.M. Stirling*** when a nerdy middle-aged man wearing a baseball cap inexpertedly fabric puffy painted “45!” came up to me.
“Ah, hi,” he said.
“Hello…” I said.
“I’m on a scavenger hunt for my friend’s birthday–he’s 45–pointing at hat–we just started, and we have to find someone with at least two piercings not in their ears, and, um–I was wondering if by chance–”
I stuck my tongue out at him. He was overjoyed.
“Can I take your picture?”
I permitted it. He thanked me effusively and darted off. Twenty minutes later the woman who waxed my eyebrows at the Happy Salon was grilling me on what I use on my hair, and how often, and how do I get that color? I only wished that Kristen, who once doubted my accounts of the attention my hair draws in public, could have been there to see it all. (I realize that Scavenger Hunt Guy didn’t ACTUALLY say anything about my HAIR, but let’s consider why he was so sure that I’d have a second non-ear piercing.)
At least one wine taster guy remarked on my hair at GREAT length. Then he carded me. It’s not exactly MATURE hair, I’ll grant you.
—
*My sister gets those at the children’s museum a lot.
**Don’t worry, I stopped at the corner market on my way home. I am not going to die of insufficient vitamins.
***If you like the post-apocalypse–or as my father puts it, if you are big on revenge fantasies–you will dig S.M. Stirling.
November 12th, 2006 at 11:48 pm
I like the term “mature hair.” It’s good for describing the values of aesthetics vs age most people have, including my mom >.
November 12th, 2006 at 11:48 pm
I like the term “mature hair.” It’s good for describing the values of aesthetics vs age most people have, including my mom.
I just finished watching a Japanese series based loosely off of Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo with great explorations of vengeance and human suffering. The 2002 film adaption had me in glee with the guilty characters “Getting Their Due,” but this series made me reconsider the nature of those feelings.
Am currently re-reading the book now, but I shall keep Stirling in mind when I am done…or bored with Dumas.
November 12th, 2006 at 11:52 pm
Melissa: It’s funny, I actually get very irritated when people talk about how they are “grown up” and thus can’t have hair like mine–they don’t usually seem to consider the implications of the statement, but you know, just because I’ve got blacklight-reactive hot pink hair doesn’t mean I don’t have to pay bills and shit, you know? But I joke around in the same terms myself. It’s mostly a matter of knowing what the person “really thinks,” I guess.
Re: vengeance: it seems to be in my blood. Dunno why.
November 13th, 2006 at 12:13 am
How do you know it was a thumb and not a big toe?
November 13th, 2006 at 10:08 am
Travis: The curve. If it’s a toe, it’s an opposable one.
November 13th, 2006 at 10:29 am
In a way, it’s painful to hear people say that too. “Growing up” doesn’t necessitate the loss of personal expression or ability to do something. Also hearing people say that they’re “too old” to try/learn something new is irritating but tragic.
November 13th, 2006 at 7:25 pm
In Australia a lot of old ladies (as in Grandmotherly-old) have pink and blue hair. It’s not as pink as yours, but it’s still pink.
And I guess it’s not worth telling YOU that you’re supposed to spit the wine out.
November 14th, 2006 at 8:58 am
I was telling someone at work about the giant thumb and you getting schnuckered while tasting wine, and someone said the same thing about spitting it out. I looked at them and said:
“Now why would you waste perfectly good wine?”
It is a good question I think.
November 14th, 2006 at 1:03 pm
Melissa: No kidding. I thought I was “too old” for Facebook, and look how addicted I am to it now. :p
Matt: No one spits the wine out. Occasionally they will dump part of the tasting portion if they don’t like it or they’re getting too drunk, but there is no spitting. I’m a TRAINED OBSERVER, you know.
Do the old ladies do this to their hair intentionally? Do they talk about it? Do they ACKNOWLEDGE that their hair is blue? Fascinating.
Jenn: See above on the spitting. Perhaps people do this at really serious wine tasting EVENTS, but the winery people know that their chances of selling you exorbitantly shipped bottles of the stuff go up dramatically the more you “taste.” :p
November 14th, 2006 at 3:45 pm
I don’t mind bad characters in fiction getting their comeuppance, but orchestrated campaigns are a bit creepy. One book I will never re-read is The Stars’ Tennis-Balls by Stephen Fry, which is based on The Count of Monte Cristo and which I found quite, quite horrifying.
Interesting discussion about being “too old” for things - I don’t feel people my age are too old to have (for example) pink hair, but that my age may be too old to dye it pink for the first time ever, purely because I’d have to put up with a lot of comments, because friends would think it was out of character for me - not because there’s any reason that 27-year-olds shouldn’t have pink hair if they want.
I’m sure plenty of people* think 27 is too old to have waist-length hair**, but that’s not going to make me cut it. I think maturity is overrated; you don’t get to choose whether to pay bills and so on, so why should you have to give up the fun stuff?
(I’d have thought that one of the major advantages of having white hair is not having to bleach it if you want to dye it!)
*including my mother, bless her.
**Corollary to people making assumptions about your piercings: on three separate occasions, customers at Claire’s have asked me if I know how to use a particular hair accessory. I’d find this less odd if I actually worked there.
November 14th, 2006 at 3:57 pm
I think Dad was referring to the post-apocalypse as a kind of generalized revenge fantasy–when you read a post-apocalyptic story, you can imagine everyone who was ever mean to you being eaten by zombies, dying of plague, or being obliterated by a comet. :p
The problem with Claire’s and other such retail stores is that there’s no uniform–generally just a lanyard with a nametag or something. I would think that at 27 you’d look a bit old to be anything but a store manager in Claire’s, though. Did I tell you about how they head-hunted me when I was an assistant manager at Rave at the mall in Madison? I’d have happily taken it, except I’d already scored a better job as a telephone survey interviewer…