Or, in this instance, the machine.

Got an e-mail from an old client/acquaintance: Your recent e-mail contained a virus.

First, I didn't send her an e-mail. Second, I run Norton 24-7. Third, I NEVER open e-mail from people I don't know with subject lines like: "a good joke" and an executable file attached. For that matter, I routinely trash e-mail of a certain size: approximately 132K, because that seems like the standard size for the Klez virus.

But, being a responsible adult user of computer technology, I shut down all my programs and started a Norton scan. Well, it's been over an hour and a half, we are only half way through the scan, and not even to my second hard drive. But as I anticipated, there isn't so much as a hint of a virus.

Bah and humbug. No pun intended.

Like every other sentient human in America, I've been hearing all about e-coli and samonella and how we need to eat our burgers and steaks well done. To which I have said: Feh. Well done meat ain't worth eating. And I have continued to eat my beef medium rare to rare. I even eat a lump of raw ground beef now and then, when I'm cooking something that uses ground beef. Which I did Tuesday night. And I spent the rest of the evening and Wednesday paying for it in ways that you truly do NOT want to hear about.

Today I'm a little less green. Will I stop eating raw meat? Um, yeah, probably. Will I start eating it well done? Never. I'd rather be a vegetarian. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

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.

Things I've seen lately and wished I hadn't:

A woman wearing her coat backwards during the recent cold snap. This one confused me alot. Did she think she'd stay warmer with the opening in the back? Did she think it was faster to put it on that way? Could she have seriously thought it was cute?

Young men wearing those super low-riders, and having to continually pluck at their crotches to pull them up. Or not. Maybe they just like to pluck at their crotches. What's the point of a fashion that you have to fuss over constantly? It'd be like having a manicure that never dried, that you needed to retouch every 15 minutes.

Women wearing acrylics on their big toe nails, and those nails long, really long, and sharp. Do they sleep alone? Do they rip their sheets with those talons? How does that work with a closed-toe shoe? Again, is there really a popular dementia that this is attractive?

Hats that are too small, and positioned askew on the top of the wearer's head. This is particularly a baseball cap phenom.

To paraphrase Ozzie, "Ugly, ugly, fucking ugly."

I went shopping yesterday, and almost came to the end of my patience with the human condition. Every single store I went into, and I was only shopping independently owned boutiques in a small downtown area, had the shoddiest, snottiest help I've ever had to deal with. It is a miracle that I didn't turn into Edina on the spot and tell each and every one of those ratty-assed salesgirls to "get over the attitude, sweetie, you only work in a shop."

Store the First: I go in to pick up my new glasses, which I had confirmed on Thursday would be ready for Saturday pickup. They were, to a certain degree: the one pair wasn't ready because THEIR vendor had sent the lenses without the requested coating. The other pair WAS ready, except for the tint, which hadn't been applied. Could I come back in 20 minutes to an hour. Sure.

Store the Second: My favorite up-scale shoe store is in the middle of their biannual 2 for 1 sale. There are two sales clerks. One is behind the register, the other on the floor. I walk in. I am ignored. I peruse the sale rack, all the while overhearing the girl on the floor in a deep, and to me, personal conversation about breast enhancement surgery. The customer is showing off her new size D- es, but they may be considered C+s. They are discussing the exact size in ccs, and I cannot remember the difference between 500 and whatever the other number was.

Even while she is vaguely considering getting a shoe for me, my clerk is discussing her upcoming boob job with the other customer. This is pissing me off, big time, and nobody is catching the vibes, although, frankly, I think that they are capable of being picked up on a seismic scale.

For what it's worth, these two women were conscious of the impropriety of discussing their boob jobs with the general public: each talked about the dos and don'ts of telling your very young daughter about what Mommy had done. Each concurred that small girls are town gossips. Even a third customer contributed to that discussion about what a six-year-old knows about plastic surgery. For what it's worth: this conversation took place on Saturday, January 25, 2003 on Sunset Drive in South Miami, Florida in a shop called Capretto's. The sales clerk in question is 5'10" tall (I know this because she justified wanting D cups by repeating the phrase: "I'm five-ten, I'm a big girl." over and over. I don't know her name, but perhaps you do. She's having surgery on February 8th at Baptist Hospital as part of a symposium and the fee for the Vanderbuilt University surgeon is only $1,500 which really ticked off the other customer, who had paid $6,500 for her tits.

Hey, bitches: there WAS another human being who spoke English within 3 fucking feet of you. If you think it's inappropriate for me to repeat all this, well think about it the next time you open your fucking traps in public and announce with pride the inner workings of your petty little lives.

PS: I don't care a rat's ass about you, your tit size or the number of children you have.

Store the Third: The shop was completely empty, except for exhorbitantly priced slips of chiffon, poorly sewn into size 0 slut wear. I was asked twice in five minutes if I'd like a bottle of water.

Store the Fourth: In the middle of another sale, all clothing is in a disordered heap in the middle of the room. Nobody asks me anything.

Store the Fifth: Not only do they not carry what I am looking for (very expensive, over-dyed embroidery floss), they "don't pay any attention to what the other shops sell" when I ask if their competitor shop down the street carries it. They argue with me when I tell them that when I stopped in the previous week an hour and a half before their posted closing time, the store was locked and shut. They give me the fish eye and they get none of my money, despite the fact that I like the canvases they have.

Store the Sixth: My glasses still aren't ready, but the sales girls insist on having me wait, while they pour me a glass of wine, offer me nibbly things and apologize for the delay.

OK, readers, which store am I going back to? Of course, the one which offers service. I will never stop doing business with Edward Beiner Opticals, because they understand the concept: If you want me to pay more for something, then you have to offer something more. And they do. They offer service. They remember your name. They are customer-driven.

Fluffy was my beta fish. But he was a beta fish among beta fish. He was magnificent and he lived for 3 years in a spacious bowl with a plastic replica of a small, decaying log. He was rose colored with turquoise flash, like a really nice hot rod flame job. Fluffy loved little ants. He'd lunge at them like a bonzai version of Jaws. He passed in November. Moment of silence.

I missed Fluffy immediately and sought the solace of another beta. Now I have an inky cobalt blue beta named Rover, and frankly, he's a whiner. He's not fit to hold Fluffy's fins. Granted, Rover is a handsome devil, but he just annoys the hell out of me.

When the weather dipped down into the 50s last week, I had to put his bowl outside in the sunshine, because he "looked chilled". He won't eat. He's a fucking finicky eater. He won't eat the fish kibbles that Fluffy ate. He won't eat the more expensive, fancy beta food. He won't even eat fresh ants.

Now, I have a terrier, a pair of siamese cats and a husband. They are all male and they are all finicky eaters. Every one of them likes my cooking. But I will be damned if I'm going to deal with a finicky fish. There are limits, even for me.