unconnected notes

[redbird]

• The chapter I'm writing (my first piece of the current paid project) is going well. browngirl checked over my Minoan section, and confirmed that I have it basically right. Also, I got an answer to my query, and no, I don't need to dig for obscure information on Neolithic cultures in the Yangtze Valley, if there even were any. I won't get my first check until early February, though.
  
• I'm re-purpling my hair, and for some reason, knowing I shouldn't touch my head is making various other bits of me itchy.


• I'm still approachable, it seems. I was on the A train this afternoon (a short hop, having gone out for a loaf of rye bread), and someone apologized for interrupting me, but wanted to ask a question. About my hair. She's considering green, and wanted to know whether I thought it would take on her gray streaks. I guessed, and told her I was guessing--she had a scarf over most of her hair, including those streaks--but described the effect I get. Then I sorted out that she needed a downtown train and assured her that she could get the F at West Fourth Street (she had gotten on an uptown train by mistake, and we were at the north end of the line by then).

Comments

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I don't have purple hair, it would get in the way of my disguise of looking like somebody's mum. However, I clearly look as if I am well meaning, which is true, but also that I know where I am and can give directions -- which is far from always true.

People stop me to ask things when I have just got off planes in countries I've never been to before.

And once a total stranger on a train asked me a question about the time we'd arrive in Crewe in Greek. I was probably the only person for hundreds of miles around who could answer -- but how the heck could he tell?

[redbird]

I've always had that "ask me directions" thing, including, as you say, when I've just landed in a new city or country. Sometimes it's easy: my first trip to Toronto, someone asked me where the subway station was. It was behind him, so easy for me to answer because I could see it, not because I'd ever been to that part of town.

[jerusha.livejournal.com]

I don't so much have the "ask for directions" thing as the "ask me for help" thing. I couldn't begin to tell how many times I've been in a store - bookstore, grocery, general store, whatever - and had someone bustle up to me and ask me which aisle the left-handed widgets were in (or other goods appropriate to the store type). Even if, for example, all the store employees wear blue vests and I'm wearing a yellow T-shirt. They *still* think I work there and can answer their questions.