Quickie Amanda update:

She's "recovering from her procedure, but she's not in a room yet." Quoth the kind woman who answered the hospital info number.

Will update with further info as I have it.

link (20 oct)

This is how I know it's Fall in Washington:

The Uniform.

Not the weather, not the color of the sky at night, not the leaves on the ground (there aren't any yet anyway), not the fact that it's suddenly less muggy and sorta breezy, no, it's The Uniform.

I first noticed The Uniform two years ago, not long after I moved here. Koog and I were at Nordstrom (she was depressed, but only at lipstick level, not yet at shoe level and definitely not at new car level) and she was looking at lipstick from some froofy cosmetic counter, and I was standing there being bored and wondering why it was I'd thought going to the mall was a good idea. I think maybe I wanted to look at shoes or see if anything good was on sale at the Gap or something. Anyway.

I was standing there being sort of bored and detached, and I noticed this weird thing: out of about twenty women in my line of sight that day in Nordstrom, about 15 were wearing the same thing -- which came to be known (to my brain, it's not like I've ever brought this up with anybody) as The Uniform. The Uniform is this: blue denim or chambray shirt; black leggings. Individually, these are not particularly notable items of clothing, but their ubiquity in combination that day tripped some breaker in my head, and now I increment a mental counter any time I see a woman wearing The Uniform. I don't count whenever I see women in jeans or khakis, so you could say my methodology is wrong, but it's my worldview and I'm sticking with it.

The Uniform does not appear until "Fall," a vague term meaning the first weekend when you might want a jacket. I've determined that The Uniform is standard casual Fall apparel for some large demographic of Washington women. I think that first sighting was an anomaly, as it doesn't appear that three quarters of Washington women are wearing The Uniform on any given Saturday, but I see that particular combination enough on evenings and weekends to think that something's a bit odd about it. Odd enough to keep me noticing, anyway.

I've come up with a theory to explain it - the women in The Uniform work in Serious Jobs and they don't tend to buy casual clothing. So as with business attire, they find the thing that works for them, buy enough for one weekend, and run it into the ground. Conversely, the women out of Uniform probably have casual jobs, so they've got casual clothing in full supply, and aren't as likely to produce The Uniform out of random selection. And the women with the Serious Jobs are also likely to be ones to stick to protocol, and if that means wearing something specific with each season, then so be it.

That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

Anyway, I had four Uniform sightings last week and didn't even set foot in a mall. It must be Fall then. I wonder how soon the leaves will change.

link (2 oct)