i left the house at a decent time today, but got to work late because of snow-bound traffic. and when i got here i discovered i'd forgotten my ponytail holder.
i typically wear it on my wrist till i get to work, because my hair is almost always wet and i prefer to let it dry a bit before binding it, lest it still be wet when i let it down eight to twelve hours later.
last night i took it off my wrist in the bathroom instead of in front of my dresser. since i'm never aake in the morning, i rely on habit to make things happen. no ponytail holder on the dresser, so i didn't think about it.
normally i don't give a rat's ass about wearing my hair down, but lots of people think the wrong things about hair. people here (not all, but many) would either think of me as a hoodlum or assume i was trying to ``make a statement.'' well, i may be a hoodlum, but neither of those is the case. so i always pull my hair back when i'm at work, since i may as well look professional in that respect if i'm not going to dress that way.
and so i can't pull my hair back today. i sit in the lab where no one can see me.
well, that plan backfired, because these two guys i'd never met come in asking for my help with some software i'd written and the things and some stuff and all that, and i can tell it took them a while to take me seriously because when they saw me the first time they never looked at my eyes, only at my hair. (like having a head full of piercings or really big breasts, no one ever looks you in the eye.)
so a little while ago i was hungry and decided i needed to get food. but to go to the cafeteria, where there are lots of stuffy engineer types, i needed to pull my hair back and become, as my mom would say, ``presentable.'' so i started rummaging through my desk. there were rubber bands, but i haven't resorted to a rubber band in a really long time because they really FREAKIN' hurt when you try to pull them out. there were a couple of binder clips, but nothing large enough to hold a whole ponytail (and a topknot would probably be worse than nothing). i suck at braiding, so i didn't think of that. but i found a whole drawerful of little electronic gadgetry that i used to make when i started working here. eureka! there was a small (say, 1/8"x1/4"x1/4") 4-pin connector to which i'd once upon a time soldered a 2" black lead and a 2" red lead. power connector for some test rig i'd developed, i guess. i pulled that out of the drawer, pulled my hair back, put the connector on the inside, wrapped the leads around twice, and twisted the wire together.
i wonder if this will be a new fashion as we get further into the electronics age... ``electrical engineers' accessories.''
Fri, 21 Jan 2000 13:00:17