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Scissors
Friday, April 14 2000
Trying to get a home loan is, it turns out, just another thing putting a torch to any remaining shred of faith I have in humanity. This morning I got my paycheck, whereupon I immediately sent my stub to my loan broker. Everything was cool until the afternoon, when the stub reached the underwriter. But because my company had just moved to a bi-weekly pay schedule (from a semi-monthly one), my check was a little less than had been promised. And though it was clear from my paystub what the pay period was, the underwriter said "Em, excuse me, but..." with dissatisfaction. So at the last minute I found myself scrambling to track down just one miserable payroll person to sign a note that I'd written explaining the change in pay schedule. Not finding anyone in either the new or old personnel office, at least I found the company's Chief Financial Officer. That's when my luck improved; the good man signed my document for me, and away it went by fax. But this didn't mean we'd be closing on our house today as I'd thought; something had cropped up concerning a new California law related to the financing of condominiums, and it was going to delay our plans at least until Monday.
I rode my bike down to the Main Street - Ocean Park neighborhood of southwest Santa Monica to meet up with Kim and a freshly-sprung-from-the-kennel Sophie. Sophie had a little story to tell from her time behind bars:
All these other dogs were dropping names and telling me about how famous their humans were. Some of them even said they'd been in a few movies themselves. This one Border Collie even tried to say he got to lick up some of the blood off the sidewalk the day after somebody killed Nicole Simpson and that Goldman guy. But I didn't believe any of them. I told them about how I knew that Cool Guy Gus, and how he keeps a famous web page on the internet, and that I'm in it with pictures and everything. But they told me they've never even heard of that Cool Guy Gus and that the internet is just dumb anyway. I wanted to bite them but I couldn't because I was in a cage. So I barked at them instead and told them how dumb they were.
Kim and I put Sophie in the car and went into a dark & gloomy restaurant called The Galley. Our eyes never really adjusted to the light, but I thought I could make out layers of fishing nets and occasional peeling taxidermified fish covering the wall. We put away three rounds of margaritas before leaving the place, along with excellent deep-fried calamari and jumbo shrimp at happy hour discount. The place was great fun; it rather reminded Kim of Port 'a' Call in New Orleans.
We were kind of drunk after that, of course, and as we staggered down Main Street, we came upon a hair salon called
Scissors. Impulsively, Kim went inside to have her hair done. I don't know what exactly this involved, but Kim and Mike, her hair stylist, seemed to be having an awfully good time. Meanwhile, I went off to get Sophie and then pecked away drunkenly on my Psion. Conveniently enough, the Mike had a drawer full of treats for our dog.
Amid his manic proclamations and stories, Mike declared Kim "a goddess" and entered her into his books that way. Amazed at how little he charged, Kim gave him a $20 tip. After we'd sobered up and Kim had hair to match her goddess status, we drove back to Corynna and Evan's place. Evan was staying up late working on one of his websites, so we switched beds for the night.
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