I read email today. Lots of email.

About 6 weeks ago some oh-so-necessary upgrade at work marked all of the email in my inbox unread.

Every day I scan through my email. Some email I can file or delete right away. Other stuff I need to keep handy so I leave it in the inbox marked red. Email I need to follow up on I leave in the inbox, marked unread so I can scan through and find it quickly.

I get a lot of email at work.

Thanks to the oh-so-necessary upgrade from hell, I ended up with 700 unread email messages in my inbox, with no idea of which ones were important and which weren’t; which needed follow-up, and which didn’t; which needed to be filed, and which needed to be deleted.

I really tried valiantly to get through that mail. Really. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get it down lower than around 430 unread messages. Email came in as fast as I could deal with it.

Then yesterday it was discovered that I’d missed a semi-important email that got thrown into the vast pool of unread. Oops. It was nothing that couldn’t be recovered from. But it gave me a little added incentive to get the rest cleared out.

After an extreme push, and by multi-tasking during teleconferences, I’ve managed to work my way down to 265 unread messages. I’m hoping to get my inbox cleared out by the end of the week.

If you work with me, I’m begging you… please stop sending me email! Thanks you.

On the knitting front, I managed to get about an inch done on #1 Son’s socks. I’m 1/2 way up the instep. I like the way the fabric feels. I don’t think they will be too hot to wear until the weather really heats up in August.

Question for the week: Why is it that my wavy hair can behave itself more or less during the winter when it’s raining constantly, but let us have a couple of dry days followed by a good rain and all of a sudden my hair acts as if humidity is a newly discovered experience and gets really, really, really big. Really big. Why?

#1 Son needs a suit. A suit that does not feature studs, bullets, pins, painted decorations or denim. A suit that doesn’t look as though it were painted on. A suit worn with a nice button-down shirt that hasn’t been “tightened” by hand with a contrasting color of dental floss. A suit that can be worn on formal occasions without his mother cringing. A real suit.

One wouldn’t think that would be a difficult item to procure…

Last Wednesday I was home sick and #1 Son was under orders to go downtown and find at least a jacket that could be worn last Thursday when we attended a friends wedding. He called me every 1/2 hour or so, each time from a different store. The conversations all went something like this:

#1 Son: I’m in [store name]. I’m not seeing anything I like that’s cheap.

Mom: Are you seeing anything you like that’s expensive? [note: he's spending my money, not his]

#1 Son: Not really. I tried on a jacket that you would like but it was too big.

Mom: You do understand that a suit jacket fits differently?

#1 Son: Yeah, yeah… it was too big. I did see a casual jacket that I really liked and it’s not very expensive. It’s not really OK for the wedding, but can I get that?

Mom: No! Try a different store.

Lather, rinse, repeat through several stores. Finally:

#1 Son: I tried on a black suit jacket. I think it’s too big, but the lady says it looks good.

Mom: Buy it.

#1 Son: It’s kinda expensive.

Mom: Buy it!

#1 Son: I’m not sure it fits right.

Mom: BUY THE THING ALREADY!

And he did. And when we got it home it (1) was, of course, too big and didn’t really look very good and (2) still had the anti-theft ink doohickey which the clerk had forgotten to remove, and we didn’t have time to have removed before the wedding. So we made do on Thursday. He looked OK. Not formal, but not too punk.

Now we come to Mother’s Day. I insisted on finding a suit that fit and that he could stand to wear. I knew it would need to be tailored, and I wanted somewhere convenient to pick it up post-alteration. So we headed back to the west side to the Men’s Warehouse in Beaverton. Hey… you’ll like the way you look, right?

We wandered around the racks for awhile until a salesperson, let’s call him Napoleon, finally asked if he could help us. Yes, I said: Suit, shirts, shoes, socks, belt, tie. The works. Thus I signalled my willingness to spend a buck or two.

He showed us some suits in #1 Son’s size. Several jackets were tried on and discarded. Then a middle-aged couple walked into the store. Napoleon said, “just a minute I’ll be right back,” and immediately deserted us. It turned out that New Customer Guy wore a size that was on the same rack as #1 Son’s size. We were literally pushed aside so that Napoleon could show suits to New Customer Guy and Mrs. New Customer.

#1 Son had picked out a suit that he liked, so I suggested that he try the pants on while we waited to be helped again. On the way to the dressing room, another sales person, Tallman, said to go ahead and put the pants on and he’d call the tailor over.

The pants were tight. Really tight. Tallman thought they might be too tight to be successfully let out enough to be wearable. The next suit size up was too big. Tallman said that the only recourse was to by “suit separates.” They only offered one style of jacket and one style of pant. Napoleon could help us with that.

So we waited and waited while Napoleon finished up with New Customer Guy. Then Napoleon brought over the suit separates jacket. #1 Son hated it.

OK. I said. What about a separate jacket — one that’s not in a suit — and some nice contrasting slacks to go along with it? Napoleon led us back to the rack to show us jackets. In walked a couple with their teenage son Athlete Boy who needed a suit. And once again we were deserted by Napoleon.

Now… there were at least two other sales people — Tallman and another guy — standing around and not helping anybody. So I was beginning to feel a bit pissed off by the inattention, and I aimed a few snarky remarks in Napoleon’s general direction just loud enough so that he could hear them. Remarks like, “We seem to have become uninteresting for some reason. Too bad because I was planning on spending some money.”

#1 Son said “mom… I just don’t like any of these jackets. I’m not seeing myself in this style. I like the one suit.” OK. I said. Let’s talk to the tailor. We trooped back to the dressing room. Tallman started helping us again, but Athlete Boy went into a dressing room and Napoleon turned his attention back to us.

He was fairly attentive through the rest of the ordeal, although he did desert us a couple of times to help Athlete Boy. But he did come up with some cool shirt/tie combos and found some shoes that fit and that #1 Son liked. In the end, the suit pants could be let out just enough to fit, and we added another pair of contrasting slacks (slightly larger) just in case #1 Son gains a few pounds.

#1 Son looks great in this suit — great! — and it’s a very, very conservative suit. (yes, I’m surprised that was his choice)

At one point in the ordeal, #1 Son turned to me and said, “How do you stand to buy clothes for work if it’s always this frustrating?”

” It’s not usually this frustrating. I’ve never been invisible before when I had money to spend.”

As you can see, I’ve finished the new PI theme. It’s a complete re-work from the old look. As well as changing the color scheme, etc., I’ve added a navigation bar at the bottom of the header and moved some content off to other pages.

There are a few things I don’t have completed yet. But I’d be interested in hearing what you think of the look. I also want to know if you find something that’s broken or looks out of whack. I’ve tested in IE 6, Opera 7.5 and Firefox 1. I’m both Mac and Linux challenges, so I’d especially like to know how things look on those platforms.

There are a couple of things that just don’t work in Opera, but since less than 1% of my readers are using that browser, I may not bother to figure out why.

Thanks for any comments and welcome back to the 50’s!

The socks for #1 Son are on the needles now. They’re in Meilenweit Cotton Fantasy #801.

He really wanted something in seafoam green, but I just couldn’t find any yarn I liked in that color. He has declared that this will be “cute” and he likes the colors. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Taking a hint from Queen Kahuna’s Crazy Toes And Heels book I’ve done the toe in Eye of Partridge to add reinforcing. I’ll do the heel in the same stitch.

On the blog front, I’m working on a total redesign of PI. I was going to just do a new skin, but I decided that it was time to bite the bullet and really use the new template setup in Wordpress 1.5. The new look will be sort of 50’s retro in rather subdued colors. I’m hoping to get the rework done and published some time this weekend — if life doesn’t get in the way of blogging.

And, not to worry, the old moon & cow will always be available.

Back in 1963 during an after-hours session at the Northwestern , Inc. studios, an unknown rock group called The Kingsmen recorded a simple song about a sailor longing for his lady. The lead singer, Jack Ely, was either hungover or had just had his braces tightened (depending on which version of the story you believe).

Louie Louie made it to #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It’s success may have been fueled by rumors that the vocals were intentionally slurred to mask profanities of one kind or another (depending on which “real” version of the lyrics one reads). Many radio stations refused to play it. The governor of Indiana banned it from the entire state based only on the rumor, since nobody could understand the lyrics.

The FBI investigated, but in the end concluded that … nobody could understand the lyrics.

A few years ago the notion was suggested, rather tongue-in-cheek I believe, that Washington statue use Louie Louie as the state song. Nobody would be offended by it since… nobody could understand the lyrics.

Following a long, long tradition of believing what you can’t hear, Benton Harbor, Michigan School Superintendent Paula Dawning has ordered the McCord Middle School Band not to perform Louie Louie in Saturday’s Blossom Time Grand Floral Parade. The band is now trying desperately to learn a new song in time for the parade.

Said Dawning:

It was not that I knew at the beginning and said nothing. I normally count on the staff to make reliable decisions. I found out because a parent called, concerned about the song being played.

One wonders if perhaps Dawning has never considered that her staff may have made a reliable decision, and it’s the sole “concerned” parent who is out to lunch? Hopefully she will be laughed out of town and the kids will get to play the song they’ve practiced all year.

For those interested, Wikipedia has both the original lyrics and the Kingsmen’s version. Neither is obscene.

Today is Persistent Illusion’s first blogiversary. You can see that for the first time the Wayback Machine in the left-hand column says This Day One Year Ago. The question I asked way back then was So What Do I Do With A Blog. I’m still sort of wondering.

I supposed that I should do something special, although I’m not sure exactly what.

I’m actually a bit surprised that I haven’t lost interest before this.

So… happy blogiversary me!