Today I decided to look nice. Not that I don’t want to look nice all the time, but most days lately I wear jeans and a jumper. Nothing very exciting. Sure my boots cost me 160 quid but I don’t walk around with a big sign that says, “Hi. These are very expensive boots.”

Today I wore one of my favourite standby black dresses. I’ve had this thing for at least five years. I got it at JCrew for 19 dollars. It’s a polyester shirtdress that shows off my Marilyn Monroe tits and ass curves, while still being work appropriate. I paired it with my fuck me boots, a vintage Kelly bag, (no not a Hermès) pearls and red lipstick.

I was in the building for two minutes when I had received five compliments- three of them from women.

By the end of the day I had received at least eleven, “Wow, you look great, hot, elegant comments.” (I liked elegant best of all since that was what I was going for).

It does make you think however when you don’t usually hear a nice word about your appearance- that you must look like a dog every other day. It must be said however whenever I make an honest effort to look like a girl, people say nice things. It’s just that most of the time I can’t be assed. This is partly due to- 1. It’s winter. 2. I don’t fit in my cute clothes because of the current circumference of my ass.

I’m not a huge fashion addict, but I know what I like. While I may wear my boring jeans and jumpers, most of what the average London female wears is in my opinion beyond dire. But what do I know. . . Maybe leopard print ballet flats look fantastic with black flower patterned tights, koolats and a fuzzy sweater. Maybe the sun spins around the earth.

So while I’m not a big fashion whore, I know what looks good. Which is why I found myself really pissed off when Liz at work was giggling hysterically Monday when she found out that I was writing the fashion questions for the work pub quiz that the social committee will be putting on in the next month or so.

I chose to let it go and not make a snotty comment about the fact that she was wearing leg warmers. I guess the fact that she was a zygote in 1982 gives her a get out of jail card for what I consider one of the worst 1980’s fashion disasters.

In any case, since only maybe one or two people at work read this, I give you the fashion quiz questions.

Feel free to take it, post your answers in the comments and I will e-mail you the answers. No fair wikipediaing any of it. Go with your gut.

Something tells me that Liz will fail it.

Is it wrong that I feel pleasure about that?

No, my snootiness has nothing to do about the fact that she absolutely gorgeous. Nothing at all. . .

1.    Who said, “Fashions fade, style is eternal.”
A.    Yves Saint Laurent
B.    Coco Chanel
C.    Oscar Wilde

2.    Which Parisian fashion designer introduced the New Look silhouette popular in the 1950’ s- a mid-calf length full skirt, large bust and small waist?

3.    Chanel No. 5, the signature fragrance of The House of Chanel debuted in which year? 1910, 1921 or 1935.

4.    Translate Prêt-à-Porter into English.

5.    Carnaby Street was made popular of followers of what style in the 1960’s? Rockers, Hippies or Mods.

6.    True or False. Cardigans are named after the Earl of Cardigan who led the Charge of the Light Brigade into battle.

7.    What was the style of hat popular with flappers in the 1920’s?
A.    Beret
B.    Snood
C.    Cloche

8.    The zipper was invented in 1893 but was not wildly used in clothing until what decade? 1920’s, 1930’s or 1940’s.

9.    Oleg Cassini designed over 300 outfits for which American First Lady?

10.     True or False. Paul Poiret (1879- 1944) the first designer to break away from soft Edwardian styles and used vibrant primary colours is wildly considered to be the ‘Father of Haute Couture’.

11.     True or False. English fashion designer Mary Quant named the mini skirt after her favourite make of car, the mini.

12.    True or False.  The character of Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada is wildly believed to be based on Englishwoman Tina Brown, who author Lauren Weisberger worked with at Vanity Fair.

13.    What 1983 film inspired women to rip the collars out of their sweatshirts wearing them off of one shoulder?

14.    What actress did Hubert de Givenchy meet on the set of Sabrina and then went on to design almost all of the wardrobe worn in her films?

15.    True or False. Popularized by Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca and Peter Sellers in The Pink Panther films, the trench coat was created by Burberry during World War 1.

16.     True or False. Based out of Los Angles, California, American Apparels claim to fame is sweatshop free clothing.

17.    True or False. The first known use of the word ‘supermodel’ was in 1967.

18.     True or False. The British actress Jane Birkin who co-designed the famous Hermès Birkin bag, no longer carries hers because it gave her tendonitis.

19.     True or False. In 2005 British Designer Vivienne Westwood joined forces with the civil rights group Liberty and launched limited design T-shirts with the slogan, ‘I AM NOT A TERRORIST, please don’t arrest me.

20.     On January 25th Giorgio Armani’s couture line, Armani Prive, became the first couture show to be streamed live onto the Internet. “Couture has always been a closed world to all but a few,” said Armani. “Now, through the democracy of the Internet, we can provide a front row seat for everyone.”

The fashion show streamed worldwide at what Web site?

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Waiting to get on the Southbound Northern line train at Waterloo. People stream out of the train. There is a group of us poised to push onto the train the moment no one else is getting off so that we can either get a seat or find a spot between the seats to stand in where we won’t be crowded too much by icky, nasty strangers.

A woman steps up to the doorway, but doesn’t step onto the platform. She blinks. She looks confused.

We wait for her to move. “Step onto the platform or move,” we think.

We wait.

and

wait.

We wait a very long time.

Five seconds at least.

An Englishwoman in front of me says. “Er, Ex-cuse me. . .” right when I bellow, “ON OR OFF!” I sounded every inch an obnoxious American.
She scuttles onto the platform and we get on the train finding seats, which in the middle of rush hour is lucky, then again the train was only going to Kennington, which was not lucky.

I know I should feel guilty for yelling at the woman, but I don’t. I have zero patience for people who decide to fiddle with the luggage the moment they get to the bottom of a crowded stairwell without moving to the side or people that decide to do their taxes at the ATM when there is a gineourmous queue and I can now add to the list for people that stand in the door of a train during rush hour not knowing if they want to leave or not.

I usually don’t let the urban bitch out however. The New Yorky, “HEY! I’M WALK’N HERE!” vibe cause, well. It just isn’t very nice. But it does have its place.

It certainly worked a bit better than the Limey, “Er, excuse me. I say, do you think, perhaps, it might be possible for you to move out the way, perchance?”

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That I:

1. noticed and

2. giggled to myself

when I observed in Bath that Queens Square is next to Gay Street?

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We went to Bristol this weekend to see Ollie and his pink kitchen and then we drove into Wales Saturday and Bath Sunday.

I know this is going to sound stupid, but I was charmed by how the signs in Wales are in English as well as a Cymraeg translation. Through the help of Ollie’s trusty GPS, we stumbled into the lovely little village Caerleon and walked around the Roman remains of a amphitheatre. Then we took pictures of cows. (The cows were near the amphitheatre.) We tried to pet the cows, but they weren’t terribly interested. I think they knew that we wanted to eat them.

Then we wandered into The Hanbury - a 16th Century pub with views over the river Usk. On the way out I saw a poster talking about the pub and I learned that Tennyson had written the poem Idylls of the King there in 1856. (According to legend, Caerleon is one of the places said to have been home to Camelot.) I told Ollie and Stuart about Tennyson writing a poem there and they said, “Who is Tennyson?”

Sigh.

I’ve decided that listening to the English try to do a Welsh accent, is probably even more annoying than listening to an American trying to do an English accent, isn’t it.

I do have a confession. I drank this weekend- a total of four pints the entire weekend. 1 ale in The Hanbury Saturday afternoon. 1 beer at Ollie’s Saturday night. 1 ale in a fantastic pub we found in Bath called The Raven. 1 Guinness Sunday night. While I did drink, I am still not giving myself permission to go on the piss. The ales I justified with, I can’t get them down here. The other two beers I could have and should have passed on.

I really loved Bath and I need to go back. If you imagine away the cars and the modern stores, it is really easy to see how things were 200 years ago in this lovely Georgian city.

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160 pounds. . . 5.34 pounds lost in 29 days (72.57 kilograms. . . 2.42 lost in 29 days).

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SMO

Originally uploaded by colm_bracken.

I’m doing my laundry.

I decide to be comfortable, so I pull on a pair of black Nike nylon sweatpants that have a narrow white stripe and a t-shirt.

I get cold, (because I am always cold) so I add the workout jacket that was a Christmas present from work (see team picture from Colm’s flickr page. I had the day off so I am not in the picture.)

My hair is in pig tails and my fringe (bangs) are pulled off my face with a clip because I had earlier in the evening applied one of the over priced masks that I had purchased from Origins spending much of the evening looking like Gloria Swanson doing her beauty treatments in Sunset Boulevard.

Stu came home with I’m guessing a .09 blood alcohol count.

Luckily I had removed the charcoal mask so I didn’t scare him to death.

He took one look at me and said, “Why are you dressed like a chav?”

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Warning. What follows is rather girly, and more than a little insipid.

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As anyone who is familiar with Plato’s Theory of Forms, the idea of something is often better than the reality. An item of deep importance to me that I have been searching for much of my life is the perfect red lipstick.

This obsession may surprise some that see me come into the office every day as my appearance (especially recently given that dawn isn’t until 7:30 at the mo) is haphazard at best. I don’t wear a lot of make-up. . . I wear it, but I try to look as natural as possible. Base, a touch of blush, neutral eye shadow, maybe some liquid eyeliner if I can be assed, maybe mascara (but usually not since my lashes are so dark). My one slightly dramatic thing is my lipstick, which usually wears away completely my 2nd cup of coffee.

I’ve had this lipstick problem for a number of years now, which has resulted in my buying many tubes that are rather similar to the other and they end up piling up in a drawer with only a few in heavy rotation. The worst is when you find one that you love and then the bastards stop making it.

Since I’ve moved here, I’ve controlled this shopping habit. I’m not sure why. I have a few old standbys that I have been leaning on so I’ve forced myself to be good.

For evening I currently like Revlon’s Classic Red, but it isn’t as blue a red as I want. I want a 1950’s stop traffic deep red. The closest I’ve gotten was made by Elizabeth Arden, the name of it I can’t recall. I managed to misplace it somehow. I’m sure one of these days I’ll open up an evening bag I haven’t used for a while and I will once again be reunited.

A red lipstick of this sort is not appropriate for the daytime however. My favourite current daytime red is from Origins and has the very sexy name, ‘Service With A Smile.’ I am nearly out, so today I decided to schlep up to the Origins store near Seven Dials to prevent this eventuality.

Horror of horrors, the UK stores are not carrying lipsticks at the moment! Oh, I’ll be fine. I’ll break out a lip brush and I will scrape the last bit of whatever lipstick is made of out of ‘Service With A Smile’. I’ll have to stock up when I go back to LA. If they still make it. . . I can’t find it on the US Web site.

Oh well. There’s lots of lipsticks in the sea. . .

Like an idiot, when I heard that Origins was sans lipstick, I chose to wander around the store and spent 60 quid anyway.

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Stu got up at four to go to the bathroom.

“It snowed.”

“It snowed?” I bolt upright.

“Snow. Yes. It snowed.”

I jump up and peer out the window. Our roof and the trees are covered in a light sprinkling of snow. Victorian houses look very nice with snow.

“It snowed!”

“Come to bed Thomas.”

I’m not certain why I get so excited about snow. Well I do know. I’ve never had to deal with it year after year. The most I have was at Southern Utah University but even there it wasn’t that bad, although I would slip and fall at least once in the winter.

Growing up in Las Vegas, you just don’t get a lot of snow. However one year in 1977 we did get enough so that schools were closed for a week.  We were out there in our bell bottoms making snow angels and snowmen. We were very protective of our snowman.

I’m seven, Tara is five, Missy is three or four. There was a rumour on our Las Vegas street that there was a snowman killer coming around. Boys knocking over the carefully constructed balls of snow made by little children.

We were very concerned.

One afternoon we heard a noise outside. In the front yard.

Where the snowman lived!

We shrieked, “Mommy! A boy is knocking over our snowman!”

My mother flung open the door, “YOU LEAVE MY BABIES SNOWMAN ALONE!”

There was a boy there.

Our paperboy.

Our learning disabled paperboy.

We didn’t get a newspaper for a long time after that.

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It is currently 0 C (32 F). The low today will be -3 C (26.6).

Stuart lifts up the edge of my jumper (sweater) and holds a coke can against the small of my back.

I shriek.

“Thomas, I’m preparing you. It’s cold out there and I want to make sure that you’re ready for it.”

“Thanks honey.”

“You’re welcome.”

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At some point, when I wasn’t looking, Brad Pitt became a really, really good actor.

I think Babel is fantastic. . . But I loved Amores Perros and I like stories where a random event causes dominos of dramatic action to be knocked over that you weren’t expecting. . .

Anyway. Two thumbs up from me.

I have either a raging headache or those bugs from the Wrath of Khan are eating away my brain, so I’m not really in the mood to write more. But Babel is beautiful and terribly sad.

I do think however that the next trip to the cinema is going to need to be a comedy.

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