Your man on the spot picked up this fire on a nearby rooftop last weekend. The fire helicopter swooped overhead for a while before about ten fire trucks raced to the scene to extinguish the flames (rather too rapidly in my belief :)

Oh great. This is the weekend where I've lined up the first fruit of my "cuddling with Keith" personals ad, and what happens - I have a big red nose, that's what. A pustule has gathered on the very tip of my nose and is spreading its red, shiny malignancy in the most showy fashion.

It was so bad that when I went into the office the other day, I went to see Stephanie at the front desk to see if she had any face powder with which I could at least remove the shininess. She was there with two other women I work with, so I just asked all of them "can you help me with my nose". And not one of them - big hairy San Francisco dykes that they are - had makeup with them.

I hesitate to admit this, but I went through a very strange period with makeup in my early twenties. I don't recall how it began, but it must have been shortly after I came out of the closet. I started to develop a complexion complex, if you will. I'd stare in the mirror and see a face full of flaws. So I started to discretely cover up those flaws with face powder.

Things got out of hand, however. I'd continue to stare in the mirror, and every flaw became magnified. The powder started to go on thicker and thicker. Now I had to hide the blue rings under my eyes, and the incipient laugh wrinkles around my eyes. Before long, I never travelled without my little compact.

This continued until one trip to D.C. with my straight friends Niju and Guillermo. We were going out on the town, and were staying at a housesit that Niju had arranged through a World Bank officer. I emerged from the bathroom and Guillermo suddenly asked me curiously if I was wearing makeup. I probably would have blushed visibly if the blush could have been visible under the layers of pancake, but my practice stopped that night, and I let my flawed complexion emerge back into the light of day.

Now I find it so hard to believe that ever actually happened. I also wonder for how long it was obvious that I was wearing makeup. Maybe my friends were all talking about it behind my back, but never said anything. Oh well. It was the eighties, after all. And at least I was never made up like Duran Duran.

I finally picked up the new car this week, after the lease documents were signed. It's a lot of car for the money. In fact, it's not much more expensive than the Jeep, yet, in addition to a/c, electric everything and a cd-player, you get a couple of feet extra length.

This extra length has put my parallel parking skills to the test. The old tricks I learnt from Guillermo (who taught me to drive over a two hour session in a Philadelphia parking lot) about how to parallel park without even having to think about it, don't seem to work with bigger cars. Still, I haven't hit anybody yet.

The best thing, though, about the new car is that it's quiet! The Jeep, with its softtop, was so loud inside that it was practically impossible to listen to music. Yesterday, as I drove to a meeting in Marin, ignoring the hails of people who mistook my car for a taxicab, I listened and sang along to Frank Sinatra at full volume.

Marin is beautiful at this time of year. The hills are still green from the winter rains, and spring flowers are blooming. After the meeting, I drove into the Headlands where a soft, warm breeze blew. What a gorgeous late afternoon it was.