2001-08-02 - 12:10 p.m.

Today I made my work experience more bearable by engaging in some light arts and crafts action we like to call the phone list.

The phone list is made up of everyone's office extension written on a white board with dry-erase markers. Simple enough.

Or is it? I should probably mention that, other than the doorway, it's the thing in my office that most resembles a window.

Yeah.

And every year, sometimes every semester, due to a few gains and losses among the ranks, I have to change the phone list. I usually start from scratch, for neatness' sake. Which is how I started today, with lots of red lines to keep my scrawling from getting out of hand, and neat printing on each one. But something was missing.

So Lakshmi and I had a fun half-hour using photoshop to turn our end-of-year office party group shot into lots of little composites that I scattered over the white board, along with a picture of our fax machine to correspond with our fax extension. (Thank you, hp.com.)

Today some women on the elevator gave my outfit disapproving looks. I checked a mirror and discovered that my hair, slim gigham pants, and skimpy sleevless wrap-top were very "Dominique Swain as Lolita." I decided not to worry, as it's summer, and I don't look overty slutty - more retro-nympho, I should think.

I'm usually among the most dressed-up people at work, or else casual in a Liesl Von Trapp kind of way. When I do wear revealing stuff, Barbara and Da Boss-Lady usually like it. Or B will say something like, "Jenn, that top looks great on you." Which is nice of her to say, although sort of a given- isn't the point of wearing slutty clothes to show off the fact that your goods are, well, good?

Da Boss-Lady pointed out that she does not exactly dress like a soccer mom, though she is soccer mom age. That is true, although, she tends to go hippie-casual, and is not the Purveyor of Fine Midriff and Cleavage that I am.

I don't know. I'm sure this dissection of my outfit has stopped interesting anyone but me several paragraphs ago. So let me leave you with this:

I never truly appreciated Bob Dylan until I heard "Rolling Stone" on an odies station, after several days of insipid "baby baby do-wop she-bop" fare.

It's true.

What I'm wearing:

What I'm reading:

What I'm doing after this: