Self absorbed as I am, several years ago I determined that I needed a new look. This realization was prompted by several things, all of them connected. The first was that my personal, quirky style was starting to show up on the runways and on much younger women. The gauzy, flowing aging hippie act was being co-opted by willowy young things like Jennifer Anniston and Gwyneth Paltrow. Hmmm. Not good. Also, the red hair, which had been quite shocking fifteen years ago was as common as dirt. Finally, there was the birthday that put me closer to 50 than to 40. Aging hippie chick chic had to go.

I thought on this for a while, and determined that mid-career Kate Hepburn, Georgia O'Keefe was the look that could take me into my next couple of decades. Man-tailored shirts and khakis. Long hair, let gone to grey and in a hefty braid down my back. I needed to pare down my jingly jewelry to single, large "statement" pieces. I needed to get a tan and loose weight. Aging beatnik chick.

To that end, I quit dying my hair and discovered that it's still browny-blondey: getting those white hairs throughout, but not in clumps. I let it grow long, too. And for someone with the sort of mop of Shirley Temple ringlets I have, is a mission and a half. For every inch of length I have to grow another three of spiral. And so, three years later, I have enough length to braid.

I tanned, I cleared out the closet. I started wearing solid colors. With great regret, I gave up the wire-rimmed bi-focals with the soap bubble pink and orange tint.

All was going well with the plan and then I started watching VH1 and saw way, way too many episodes of the Big Hair 80s retrospectives. Last week I went and got a David Lee Roth-when-he-was-fronting-Van Halen big hair shag. The really sorry thing is that it looks Totally Kick Ass on me. And my new glasses are Anna Sui tortoise shell cat-eyes. With a sort of ruffle.

Now, every time I see my reflection, I crack myself up.

Well, imagine my surprise when I discovered that there is like, a whole web site devoted to the poem in the Chevy Tahoe commercial. You know the one, James Garner doing a voice over, guy standing on the edge of a remote cliff by his glamorous Chevy. And you on the couch, thinking: Uh, did my mother read that to me when I was a child? Is it Robert Louis Stevenson? Is it Robert Frost? Is it Dr. Suess?

Well, the answer is no. It was none of those men, and you never heard it before you saw the commercial for the first time. It was written by a guy named Patrick O'Leary who works for Chevy's ad agency. And as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter that it was ad flak. I love the recitation.

In fact, so many people love it, that if you go to Chevy's web site and go to the Tahoe page, the poem is formatted as a PDF with nice type and a parchment graphic, suitable for downloading and printing out. Which I just did and hung it over my desk, right next to a particularly poignant Dilbert cartoon.

And then there are days like this. It's warm out, even for Miami. There is a tacky little vendor fair in the park in the middle of the hospital campus. Sunglasses, beads, orchids, cheap cell phones, and food. I am sitting in my office now, with a cold green coconut. It has had its little top punctured and a straw stuck in it. The spanish word for this delight is Coco Frio. Cold coconut. Now, where else could you do that in the middle of December?

I missed out on the steamed pork buns from the Korean guy two tents down.