December 21, 2001

Finding More Than My Hat

It’s ¡El Día Más Corto del Año Pero de los Días Está Consiguiendo más Largo y Soy Día Feliz!

This is one of my most favorite holidays! Yes, it’s the advent of winter (my second least favorite season) and I am not a cold weather person. BUT, the days are finally getting longer. The sun will not rise any later than it did today nor will it set any earlier. And I now have my personal equinox day to look forward to!!

A few early winter discoveries I’ve made: First, I love these!! They make my feet feel toastie and keep me just a little happier during DC’s looong winter (remember?). They are soft and unlike any wool sock I’ve ever worn. I was turned onto them at LL Bean when I was shopping for winter boots.

I tried on a few pairs of boots but settled for these. They’re more like hiking boots but my urban wintering doesn’t require anything heavy duty. And, they have a nice high arch with a seamless tongue (the shoe and tongue are one piece of leather), just perfect for sloshing around the snow muck of DC streets. They’re not insulated so I asked the salesman what type of sock he’d recommend. That’s when I hit paydirt. But he said I could get them half price if I could drag myself to one of their factory outlet stores. It took me a few weeks but I finally bought an 8 day supply! I’m much happier than I’ve been in weeks.

The second discovery I made (which isn’t really winter related but is so interesting I’ve just gotta mention it) is that if you work in a large corporation and want to encourage interpersonal interaction send an email to “everyone” in the office telling them you’ve lost something.

My hat will not stay on my head. I am constantly losing it, albeit temporarily. And, of course, it’s one of my favorites: a beige baseball cap with a G on it. I bought it at another factory outlet last summer (it pays to have a last name that begins with the same letter as a large apparel chain that has no qualms about plastering their product with self-referencing symbols).

So, earlier this week, I lost it again. I had it at lunch and made sure I made a mental note not to leave it at the restaurant. I don’t even remember my head being cold as I walked back to the office in the chilly afternoon breeze.

I had just gotten one of those office emails addressed to EVERYONE seeking someone else’s missing item and decided to do the same. It was late in the day, I sent it, and went to pick up my daughter from daycare. When I arrived, there it was hanging in her cubby!! One of the teachers at the lunch had picked it up (by the way, I also found my long lost umbrella at the daycare that day too—where is my mind?).

The next morning people at the office began stopping by my cube to ask if I’d found my hat. Others, when seeing me with it on, came up to me exclaiming: “You found your hat!” I suddenly found myself at the social apex of my bureaucracy!

The effects of this have lasted for days. Just this morning a coworker stopped me as I was running into the men’s room. “Did you ever find your hat? he said. “My wife thought she’d lost her credit card and even remembered the store where she was sure she’d last used it but it was at home the whole time! And then there’s my mustache comb. It’s always getting lost, only to resurface months later.”

Who says the internet has depersonalized our lives?!

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