This weekend is supposed to be a Big Deal for me. You see, it's my birthday. I am going to be 42.

Right around the time I turned 39, I sat getting a haircut. Inside the folds of those blue robes they snap around you, clumps of steel grey were collecting. I took one look and my pulse jumped through the roof.

"What is that!"
"Is this from me?"
"I don't have grey hair!"
(I really was upset.)

Flipped out would be a more accurate description. I whipped both my hands out from under the robe and tried to cover my head. "Dye it! Dye it! Now!"

My stylist slowly shifted her weight, standing back with comb and scissors. She was saying things, but I wasn't listening. Her pose was louder: What-Ev-Er.

For $85, she dyed it white blond, like Billy Idol. It was a two step process, and she used a brush to glop on a blue paste. It took several hours and she finished using about a pound of mousse. I smelled like chemicals and my scalp itched.

"Excuse me," a teenage girl stopped me in a restaurant, "Are you a model?" (aaah, $85 and worth every penny!) I bet she was joking, the little witch.

Eventually the blond grew out. Grey appears all over now and when I don't shave I see it in my beard. Oh hell, oh well.

I anticipate nothing so drastic this year. I'm hanging out with good friends and we're catching a band that I like...

Networking.

It's Not What You Know, It's Who You Know. Lately that saying has been marching like a drill exercise through my brain. While this blog has often been used to think through the 'what ifs', it was a few weeks ago when I decided I should stop jabber-jawing and take some action: It's time get my face out and about; possible new paths might emerge by themselves. I must start somewhere.

I'm making a conscious effort.

N Number One
A few weeks ago, I wrote of the disappointment of meeting for a date someone who turned out to be married with kids. We exchanged one set of e-mails and then he disappeared. I didn't intend to hear from him.

But he did contact me again. Last week. So much has happened in the last couple of weeks! I told my wife, I moved out and got an apartment, and -- I've met someone! (Can you hear the squeals of girlish glee?)

Oh, re-ee-ally? I admit, curiousity got the best of me. I met him and his new friend for drinks. Far from the 22-year-old twink I had expected, I met a newly-arrived executive who has some high-powered job with a major corporation. If I overlook the googly eyes and the sickening "We" this and "We" that (We just love traveling, We just love Colin Farrell, We just have so-o-oo much in common!), the evening went remarkably well. Lotsa laughs. I may have some new friends there. And when I met MWK out last night for a few games of pool and a bit of beer, he offered to review my resume and I planted the seed that I planned to corner his new friend for job-hunting tips. No problem! *success!*

N Number Two
Does anyone detest those holiday newsletters that some people send out, detailing every excrutiating high-if-not-low point of their last year? I got one of those.

This one was e-mailed, 6 pages no less, in .pdf format. Over a scattered photo spread, the headline read Our Household saw a year of boggling heights and tragic lows... Ugh, break out the Dramamine!

But... if you hadn't deleted the newsletter upon impact or have lost your lunch by page two, you might have noticed, hidden in a side column on page three next to an update on their cats, the "Holiday Party Open-House" to be held in a couple of weeks. Oho ho ho!!!

I will be there, and I plan on Mingling. This couple swings with the high rollers -- and I'm ready to play.

N Number Three
The company I work for, BIPC (an acronym), controls thousands of employees locally, which is the regional headquarters. Like that cartoon of the ever-larger fish preparing to eat the next smaller fish, the behomoth here in turn kowtows to ever-higher layers of management ensconced in gleaming skyscrapers in distant North American and then European cities.

And like that cartoon print, my career began at an outback where, after being there for a few years, BIPC digested it for lunch and transferred me here. Where in that smaller environment I had been well-known and respected, I was served up for breakfast here, a lost face in the crowd.

But I was not alone: There were a core of us from the backwater. Over the last three years, some quit or were fired; some just disappeared. But I have survived, somehow, and have tried to learn the new language.

Today, I e-mailed one other former Coloradoan whose comet has been ascendent -- he is now just as apt to be at those faraway European headquarters as he is here. I'd like to discuss trends you must see at your level, I wrote. I am ready for something new.

Tick tick, empty in-box. Then: Absolutely! I'd love to! and shortly after his secretary called to arrange a lunch -- his treat.

*gulp*