Walking home tonight from the train I saw a woman in a hijab eating an elote from a pushcart vendor parked underneath the grocery with the cambodian signage outside.

I'm writing all of this down to remind myself that it's actually a happy, multi-textured world out there. Because inside my head it's all August.

What's wrong? Nothing. Things are objectively fine...not only is there groovy, multicultural action going on right outside my door but work is going well, I'm about to go on vacation, I have money in the bank, food in the fridge and messages on the answering machine. Still, I feel like a big, cranky baby.

Last year I got an astrological explanation for all of this...something planetary is happening to me in August, shortly before my birthday and it puts me off. My friend Lillian is an astrologer and, as peculiar as this may sound, a no-bullshit sort of astrologer and once when discussing it with her I decided that astrology was kind of like punditry. For an astrologer to declare that my celestial alignment is such, therefore XY and Z will occur is much like the talking heads who point out that the midterm elections normally result in a loss of seats for the party who controlls the white house. It's not an ironclad rule, it's just an observation. And the Astrological pundits have declared that while Leo is out galivanting around, this particular Virgo is on the dormant side.

So I'm holed up here, eating corn chips and blogging. One day soon, Lillian's web presence(s) will be back up and running and I will link to them and delete this sentence.

Today I heard an interview with author Mike Stanton who wrote The Prince of Providence about the corrupt, mobbed-up mayor of Providence Rhode Island. The New York Times gave it a mediocre review but the detail that made me want to go buy the book in hardcover was that the mayor kept several different toupees depending on the occasion. For instance, he had a tousled toupee for fires, accidents, tornadoes, events when he didn't want to look too slick.