Day 1003

A good haircut is kind of like a car that has been freshly washed and waxed, or clean sheets on the bed. These things make you feel like life is a little more neat and orderly than it actually is. I like that feeling. Betty did a good job today and I walked away feeling I was ready for anything. When I was leaving the Northpark Mall, I stopped by the Apple store. The UPS man said they were already delivering the new iPhones to the store and I thought they might have one on display. No such luck. Apple is far too orchestrated to display anything early. I'll have to wait until next Friday like everyone else.

I spent most of the day building web pages for the new employees I had photographed yesterday. I also photographed some existing employees. When I was editing the images in Photoshop, I noticed that I had photographed a few people at this company four or five times already. When I put these photos side-by-side, I noticed something interesting. The first photos in the series showed bright and eager faces that were full of enthusiasm. With each succeeding year, you could see the stress of the job start to take it's toll. By year five, everyone just looked tired. It wasn't age I was seeing. It was something else. I'm glad I don't have a boss or office politics to deal with. I'd look terrible by year five. My advice if your company requires you to display your picture publicly is to stick with the first picture you ever take. It's not going to get any better.

It rained today, so I had to plan my schedule around Dot's panic attacks. She's getting so old that I'm scared of leaving her alone in a thunderstorm. I'd feel terrible if she had a stroke or something while I was gone. Luckily, I have my trusty weather radar app on the iPad. I've gotten remarkably good at scheduling things between rainstorms. Everything worked out fine. When I went to get my haircut, my car didn't even get wet. For those two hours it was completely dry.

I watched a bit of Neil Armstrong's memorial service while I was eating breakfast this morning. Several people said that the country needed more men like Neil Armstrong. That was probably an understatement. Neil led a relatively quiet life after his trip to the moon. He never tried to capitalize on his fame. There were no multi-million dollar book deals. He refused to give autographs and never got tangled up in politics. He even sued his barber once when the barber tried to sell his hair to a collector. To me, this all added up to integrity: something that is currently in very short supply.

Molly is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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