Panic

I'm not one that looks as if she's in a panic state much of the time. I move slowly and while I talk too much, it isn't in a breathless panic-kind-of way. I know I'm perceived as slow and deliberate because recently a colleague saw me riding my bicycle just off campus. I like riding my bicycle around campus, it keeps me from walking slowly from meeting to meeting. This colleague cannot stop talking about how "fast" I was going on the bike. The campus I work on is essentially on a slope that slopes gradually north. I was moving south when she saw me. It is very easy, as even those of you who haven't ridden a bike in while should remember, to move quickly downhill. Still her rather odd focus on my "speed" on the bike strikes me as indicative of how slowly she expects my movements to be. (Bike geek moment: It's a Cannondale F400 bike with semi slick Continental Town and Country Tires on it. I had the lock-out turned on the headshock. I was probably going 10-12mph at most).

As my partner can attest, I do panic. I've been in panic mode this morning. My lingering cold has made sleep difficult and I was clearly having sleep apnea episodes last night. I also felt panicky yesterday at the Getty where we went to see two photography exhibits. The Getty used to take parking reservations and there were fewer people up there. Now they let you park as long as there is parking. We had waited until the last weekend to see the Juilius Shulman (architecture photographer) and Weegee (crime photographer) exhibits. The latter was really crowded, the former moderately so. I worked hard at not panicking all day. Inasmuch as I succeeded, I enjoyed myself, inasmuch as I didn't, I had little fantasies about yanking people's hair really hard.

Today we're off to see another exhibit on its last day. If this one is crowded, I might wander off elsewhere. Today, already pre-panicked, I may not be able to handle crowds. We'll see.

A Battlestar Galactica note (spoiler if you haven't watched Friday's episode): Since Rosalyn is alive, does that undermine the prophecy about her? I will say that in my weaker moments yesterday that I consoled myself with her recovery from cancer. How pitiful is that? A t.v. character survives a disease and I take consolation.

I guess it makes as much sense as my jerking the hair of the young European man who badly needed a haircut away from each picture at the Getty. His general approach was to put his hand on the wall on either side of each photograph and lean in closely, thereby cutting it completely off from others' view. So all I could see was the back of his head while he looked at the pictures. And I became a little obsessed with the thought that he badly he needed a haircut. When did twenty-something (and younger men) start wearing the same haircut Kate Jackson wore in 1976?