I cut Gil’s hair today. As thrilled as I am at the money-saving potential of this newly-learned ability (especially considering how quickly the man’s hair grows), I have inadvertently discovered that hair-cutting is a terrible task for a woman with even mildly obsessive compulsive tendencies.

Here’s how it went down:

Erin: “Okay, let’s go cut your hair!”

Gil: “Yay!”

Elapsed time: 10 minutes

Gil: “Are you done yet?”

Erin: “Shh.”

Even. Must make it even.

Elapsed time: 20 minutes

Gil (with growing frustration): “Unngghh!”

Erin: “Hold still! I’m almost done!”

Even. EVEN. EVEN!!

Elapsed time: 40 minutes

Gil: *Weeps silently.*

Erin: *Keeps snip-snip-snipping. Her eye twitches. She is blind to everything except the giant, sneering, uneven haircut in front of her.*

_____

Furthermore, this neurosis has gone ahead and extended itself to everything I see today, as evidenced by the fact that I am sitting here on my parents’ front porch trying to write my thesis and all I can think about is how much I’d like to take some giant scissors to the uneven patches of grass on their lawn.

I’d snip those bits there… and those there…

And those ones over there…

Would you like to see the very best picture I took at that wedding I told you about? Wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you? You would?

Okay, here it is:

Obviously, I am joking. This picture cannot possibly be the best picture that I took at that wedding, because it is a picture of a slug. Granted, it might be a nice picture of a slug, but it is still a slug. If this was the best picture I took at a wedding, I would not let the bride and groom pay me. (Unless they really loved slugs or something.)

No, no, I have very many much more lovely pictures from Zeb and Sarah’s wedding—photos that they have not yet been able to see, even though I promised to deliver them last Monday.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Erin, isn’t that highly irresponsible and unprofessional of you to be late with a couple’s wedding photos?” And the answer is, “Yes, it is.”

However, this brings me to a fun little story called, “Backing up your data will make your bones stronger and your eyes more vibrant and your teeth whiter—also, it will save your life and prevent you from looking unprofessional in front of the entire world.”

Now, before anybody freaks out, I should mention the fact that I have fastidiously backed up the originals of every single wedding I have shot. Never, at any point in this story, were the originals from Zeb and Sarah’s wedding in danger. So that’s one teeny-weeny sigh of relief.

Unfortunately, there are other things you can lose in the event of a disaster, such as, oh… three+ days of work on processing photos. You see, Adobe Lightroom, as wonderful of a program as it is, has this little thing—it doesn’t like its catalog to be messed with. It is very particular about how it reads the data held in its catalog (meaning all the alterations I have made to any photos within Lightroom), and if it gets bumped into or jostled, well… it gets… moody.

And that is exactly what happened on Monday afternoon when my computer, just as I had finished my work in Lightroom and was moving into Photoshop, rebooted itself for no apparent reason. This is just the sort of jostling that makes Lightroom grumpy—so naturally, when my computer came back on it stomped off into a corner and refused to speak to its catalog anymore.

This is the point in the story at which I had to lie on my bed for half an hour with a hot pack on my forehead in order not to hyperventilate. But after I got done doing that, Dad and I poked around online to see if there was any way we could talk Lightroom back into showing me the edits I had made to my photos.

What we found was a savior—a man who works at Adobe and who had offered to take in people’s injured Lightroom catalogs and show them how to reconcile themselves with the program. By the end of the evening, he had emailed me back my catalog, right as rain. Unfortunately, though, I had lost the whole rest of my day to this adventure; and seeing as today and yesterday and the day before were all already filled with plans, this rebooting incident has set me back considerably on Zeb and Sarah’s photos.

So, kids, as you can probably already guess, the moral of the story is: BACK UP, BACK UP, BACK UP. I know you don’t want to; DO IT ANYWAY. And after you’ve finished backing up? BACK UP AGAIN. Because you never know when one of your programs is going to throw in the towel.

The end.

One more thing… here’s a little story that I hope will make you giggle as much as it made me:

I just recently ordered some test prints from this company, because I am planning on using them to fulfill print orders for my clients.

The UPS tracking information said that they were supposed to arrive yesterday afternoon. The UPS truck often does not reach our house until late, though, so I knew I probably had a wait ahead of me.

At one point in the afternoon, I wandered listlessly by my Dad’s doorway and, looking for all the world like I was horribly distraught, sighed, “Dad… I really wish my prints would come.”

…

Then, as I heard the words replayed in my head, I laughed and groaned, “Not like that!”

Dad just looked amused and said, “Someday, someday.”

(P.S. All kidding aside, the prints are awesome. I’m really excited to offer these to my clients.)

… but this one probably didn’t.

I should have known I was in trouble as soon as I left the house. I needed to be somewhere only twenty minutes away at 4:15, and I was leaving at 3:45—giving me a good ten minutes to spare. This never happens.

“Hmmm,” I thought to myself, “I’m not sure if I like the idea of being early and just sitting around waiting. Maybe I should take a longer route there.” And I almost did, before reminding myself, “Hey, I’m never early to anything. Why not savor this moment. I’ll just make sure to drive exactly the speed limit the whole way there—that should use up a little more time.”

So I did. I got on the freeway and I concentrated on fastidiously following the speed limit; I made it a little game with myself. (I daresay cars around me did not appreciate this little game.)

Pretty soon I started thinking about where I was headed: to get a haircut. Now, getting my hair cut requires me to summon up a bit of courage; not only because it involves interaction with other human beings (and we know that doesn’t always go so well.), but because I have only been to a hairdresser one other time in my entire life. On top of that, this was going to be the first time I would have my hair cut by a guy. Would that be weird?

These are the kinds of thoughts that were going through my head, combined with my obsessive watch over the speedometer… as I drove past my exit.

At first, I refused to believe what had just happened. No, that wasn’t my exit… couldn’t have been… there’s no way that I just drove by it… Oh, bother, it was my exit. Well, I’ll just turn around and go back.

And this is where my important life lesson for today comes in: it turns out that there’s this funny thing about freeways… you can’t turn around on them.

As this fact began to sink in, I admit that I started becoming a tiny bit irrational. “What?? I can’t just… turn around? This is the 21st Century, people! We can speak to our toasters and tell them to do things for us! I should be able to TURN AROUND ON THE FREAKING FREEWAY!!!”

Then I saw a sign on which the first town listed was at least an hour away—and that’s when I almost burst into tears. Suddenly my “going to be a bit early for my haircut” had turned into “going to be horrifically late for my haircut.”

In actuality, the next exit off of the freeway was ‘only’ 10 miles from the exit I meant to get off at… which, when you count the time it took me to drive back after I had turned around, gave me plenty of time to consider the sheer stupidity of what I had done.

The blog-worthiness of the whole situation did not escape me, of course, even at the time—nor did the irony of the fact that the one time… the ONE TIME I was going to be EARLY for something… I ended up still being five minutes late.

The moral of the story is: Don’t try to be early to anything. You will just end up bungling it.

Right?

For some reason, my subconscious feels that the best time…

… to start designing my photography website is the night I have a 20Below column due.

… to redecorate my wall with pictures and paintings is the night before my synopses are due.

… to have lots of deep thoughts that must be written in my journal is the night before my Greek and Euclid finals.

But don’t imagine that I’ll do any of those things when I actually have time for them.

Heavens, no! That would be far too sensible.

My car has… a rather quirky sound system. Anyone who has ridden in it in the last two months can tell you this is true. Before this spring, when my CD player’s faceplate got stolen, it was perfectly normal. But after living the whole summer without any music at all, I installed a friend’s old tape deck right before the school year started, and that is when my stereo started to manifest some of its more unique qualities.

I still remember the first time I drove some of my new classmates in my car at the beginning of orientation week. I was all flustered and worried about impressing them with my impeccable taste in music (silly me ), so I plugged my iPod into the tape deck and put it on shuffle. The first song that came on was a Beatles hit—great, everybody liked that. This was going well!

One of the back speakers suddenly stopped working—”Oh well,” I thought, and I turned the volume up to compensate. That, of course, is when the speaker suddenly came back on and blew out the ear drums of the poor impressionable freshmen sitting in the back seat of my car. Then one of the side speakers went out. Then both the side speaker and the back speaker came on and went off and came on and went off until we reached our destination, and until my car’s audio system had been firmly established as a running joke.

So much for impressing them.

Since then, I have observed a few things about the behavior of my car’s stereo:

1. The speakers come on and off when jarred by something like a bump in the road. Or, like the door opening or closing. Or like me breathing. You know, reasonable stuff like that.
2. There is a sweet little spot on the dashboard directly above the temperature control panel that seems particularly receptive to such jarring impacts. If, for example, my speakers were to stop working and I were to level a blow with my hand, or my water bottle, or a nearby book at that exact spot, my speakers might magically begin working again! (Not that I would know from experience.)

I actually only discovered “the sweet spot” in the last couple of days. But now that you have that picture in mind, let me describe what this afternoon’s drive home from my friend’s house was like.

“Can’t buy me loooooo…”

bump.

WHACK.

“…oooooove! Everybody tells me so…”

bump.

WHACK.

“… Can’t buy me looooove! No no no, Nooooo…”

bump.

WHACK.

“…ooooooooooo!”

This was, quite literally, happening multiple times every minute. And as I ‘bump-WHACK’ed my way home, my hand was growing tired and the song was growing less enjoyable and I was growing irritable. And it was right about then, when I had reached the “pretty darn fed up with my speakers” stage, that I stopped at a stoplight—and my speakers went out. Again. I wound up, ready to slug that dashboard for all it was worth, when I happened to glance over to the car next to me.

Now, the nicely-dressed man sitting in the sports car next to me was not actually looking at me when I looked at him, but I swear I saw him glance away right when I turned my head.

And suddenly I realized what it must have been like to be driving next to this car for several miles, and to notice this crazy redheaded female inside striking her dashboard with her fist—Repeatedly. Over and over. (And possibly swearing at it as well.) That is probably about the time that you would think to yourself, “They should not have given that women permission to operate a moving vehicle.”

That thought was enough to make me slink a bit lower in my seat with blushing cheeks and not “adjust” my stereo anymore on the rest of the way home.

But the point remains, whether I am embarrassed about it or not, I need a more long-term solution for my speakers.

I’m thinking about purchasing a mallet.

(WARNING: People who don’t care about Lost will think this is boring, and people who do care about Lost but haven’t seen tonight’s episode will be spoiled. So basically, nobody should read this.)

Dear “Lost,”

I want to like you, I really do. Your first season was so promising. Sure, it scared me senseless, but it was intriguing. Your second season, although not as tight, still (mostly) held my interest. But your third season… well, let’s just say my reaction to finding out that you are going on hiatus until February was, “Good! Now I don’t have to watch this stupid show every week.”

Do you want to know how bad it really is? Well, so help me, Lost, but I was not even sad when Mr. Eko died last week. Mr. Eko! And he was, like, my favorite character last year! Do you see how senseless this third season has made me? I just don’t care anymore.

I’m sorry. But I can only take so much beating up of main characters and mysterious “others” talk before I have to say, enough is enough! There have been so many times when it seemed that nobody—not even you!—could take yourself seriously anymore. When Locke entered his “smoke hut” contraption and started hallucinating about Boone my ’shark jumping‘ sense was tingling.

But I’m not saying goodbye for good… yet. Three months is a long time; by February I will probably be ready to give it another try.

But please, Lost, I am begging you: when you come back, leave your melodrama, your gratuitous sex and violence, and your gory operating scenes at the door. If you don’t… well, if you don’t, I might be saying “sianara” to your island and its messed-up little inhabitants for good.

And we don’t want that, do we? :-p

Sincerely,

Erin

Let me tell you a story…

Once there was a girl. She was going to be starting college soon, and she needed a laptop! So her parents decided, as a graduation/birthday present, to help her buy a Macbook Pro. She was such a lucky girl! So lucky, in fact, that her Macbook Pro arrived almost a week before she thought it would… on a hypothetical date that could have been September 7th, 2006.

And this girl immediately fell in love with her new Macbook Pro. She loved its camera and its clean lines and its lovely operating system. She lost no time in moving her files to this wondrous new machine and settling in to her new computing home. She spent the whole weekend geeking out on her new computer, loading songs onto her new iPod Nano and working on websites and getting things done and video chatting with Glynnis and realizing, “Why yes, Macs are the shiznit.”

But this poor, naive girl was much deceived. Her new Macbook Pro was not the happy, well-adjusted companion which she assumed it to be; no, it was very depressed. It knew that it was only a matter of time before it was Jobs’ed… any day now his Steveness would release some brand spanking new laptop that would permanently demote it on the Apple totem pole. No longer able to handle the stress of such a fragile existence, it committed suicide one grim Sunday evening, mere days after the girl in question welcomed it into her home.

Never did this girl suspect that her new friend would resort to such desperate measures; imagine her shock and dismay when its lovely, bright, colorful display suddenly went black! She tried everything: she hit control-command-power button, she reset the PRAM, she reset the Power Manager, she gave it mouth to mouth, she sacrificed chickens, she promised it her firstborn child, but the little Macbook Pro would not turn on.

So she went to bed that night disheartened and distressed, unwilling to believe that the plucky little machine had actually given up the ghost. When she awoke the next morning, she tried again to revive her friend. She whispered sweet words into its metallic ears; she assured it that she would love it just as much if Apple released a newer, faster Macbook Pro. It would always be the spiffiest Macbook Pro in her eyes. Crossing her fingers, she touched the power button once more… and, lo and behold, tones chimed and the hard disk spun and the screen lit up! It turned on!

After giving it a celebratory pat on the keyboard, the girl pranced off to eat some breakfast. But when she returned, she realized her mistake; without her there to offer encouragement, her Macbook Pro had once again tried to take its own life. And this time, no honeyed words could coax it back to this world.

She knew what she had to do now. So she carried her poor, stricken Macbook Pro down to the neighborhood Mac Store. And there she spoke to a young man who seemed confident in the ways of Apple computers, and who wasted no time in showing her how his expertise would solve this problem. So he tried to turn it on. And he tried again. And he tried all of the tricks that our girl had tried the night before (minus the firstborn child bit). And after trying all of his tricks he looked resignedly at the screen and uttered these words of immeasurable wisdom and value: “Wow, it really won’t turn on, will it?”

The girl resisted the urge to roll her eyes, instead filling out the necessary forms to check her little Macbook Pro into the Mac hospital. The young man assured her that their personal Tech Man would look at it as soon as he could—which, he said, was probably a week from when she dropped it off. She sighed and tried to act grateful and walked out of the store with a sadly empty baby-blue laptop sleeve hanging limply from her arm.

And now this lucky, college-bound girl has been without her Macbook Pro for as many days as she had it—so long, in fact, that she hardly remembers what it was like in the first place. But when she does remember it, she hopes and prays that it will receive the therapy necessary to bring it home safe and sound, and COMPLETELY UN-SUICIDAL.

The end.