This Sunday's LA Times

Sometimes, for one reason or another, I send myself an email, either from my phone or from my laptop and a couple seconds later I hear the ding of my mail application indicating I've got a new message and I get excited. Psyche! It's only from me. Like with each and every ding it could possibly be a Vogue editor, or an invitation to the White House, or a long overdue message from a friend. Amazing how that all passes in an amnesiac millisecond. Pathetic but true, and it just happened now when I sent myself this picture from my laptop:
I'd wanted this picture from my laptop to post it here not for the lovely limited edition Trop bag which was pictured. No, I wanted it as it is the only one I have of my dining room chair. You can't really see it, but that's OK because I hate it - the chair. It is a benign, oak, inoffensive, straight back chair. We've got 6 of them or so. I hate them all. They are uncomfortable, and they squeak and creek and squawk with every slight movement of the unwitting sitter. I dream of getting something lovely like a Wishbone chair, but until that day I'll just go on silently ruing them with each dinner party we have.

On the day I was leaving for Paris 2 weeks ago, Ringo, an LA Times photographer came to take my picture for this lovely piece written by Victoria Namkung, and I thought the chair, that I've cursed so many times was going to have the last laugh and was going to crush me.
Ringo had the beyond kooky idea for me to scatter the bags about the floor and for me to lay amongst them while he, whom I've just met minutes before, stands upon the rickety old chair straddling my body. (While I knew it was kitschy, I just didn't have the heart to tell him. He seemed really into the idea, and who am I to take away the creative impulses of a Times photog.) He kept asking me to smile and I kept thinking how the chair was finally going to let go and Ringo and the chair would crush me and my obit would read, "She died whilst being photographed." And so all that and the fact that I only had minutes before I had to dash out the door for my transatlantic flight, made for an extremely forced smile.

I know hardly anyone likes a picture of themselves, unless you're Christy Turlington, but I really never do and I've had (the very good fortune) to see my pic a few times lately. There was this picture taken by the very talented Christina von Messling for LA's Mondette website where I look like I had waaaay too much make up on, but really it was just the lighting, I swear.

And the top image was an outtake taken by le mari at Echo Park at a shoot for a national magazine which will run - in full color and without the snarky smile - in their May issue (if they run it.) It was a story of people who bike to work. What? I bike. And that is my "bike" messenger bag in winter white. ;)

3rd photo - credit LA Times