Hairvolution

As my laziness increases, my hair pays the price.

When I first started working at my new job, I took the time to get up every morning, shower, blow-dry my hair and then usually ran my CHI over it to make it nice and smooth.  The result = pretty hair.

Then, I started getting lazy.

Instead, I started showering at NIGHT, right before bed, so I could just get up in the morning with dry hair and straighten it with the CHI.   This allowed me to sleep an extra 10 minutes or so, but I literally had to straighten every strand since my hair is naturally wavy.  The result = very flat hair.

I started getting annoyed with the process of straightening my hair every day, and discovered that it didn’t look particularly bad if I just let it air dry.  This meant, of course, I had to switch back to morning showers.   The result=wet head for work, limp and wavy hair when dry.

It’s winter.  It’s cold outside.  Wet hair is annoying when I leave for work in below freezing temperatures.  I’m still too lazy to dry my hair, so my only solution is to shower at night.  However, I’m now also too lazy to straighten my hair in the morning.  The result = bed head at work and/or utilization of a hair tie.

If you’re lucky, I might take a pic during my lunch break.  I’m trying to pretend my hair looks like this on purpose.

UPDATE:

Check it out:

And yes, Jenny, I’m mocking you with my thumbs-up.  

Bad Luck Ally

Bad Luck Ally strikes again.

This is a running joke with me.  Bad Luck Ally has a constant stream of bad luck.  Luckily (ha!) it’s little bad luck.  If you’re going to have bad karma, I guess it’s better to have a little bit of bad luck every day than have one big bad luck, right?

Bad Luck Ally strikes at the drug store, when I run in to grab my specific brand of tampons and they are the only ones sold out on the shelf, or when I’m late and looking for a parking space, and always ALWAYS when I’m trying to make it through a stoplight.  In fact, Bad Luck Ally has become such a joke at work, no one will sit at my table when door prizes are being drawn.

All of this build up is to tell the tale of Bad Luck Ally and the Dump Trucks.

Here is a photo to help me tell the tale:

You’ve seen the dump trucks that say “stay back 200 ft” and “not responsible for windshields,” correct?  Well, I actually keep my distance from these things because we all know that if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen to Bad Lucky Ally.   About two months ago, while driving over a drawbridge, a dump truck passed by going the opposite direction and rock flew out and chipped my windshield.  Yes, it’s true.  I was minding my business in my own lane and a truck spit out a rock as he passed by.

I realize that could happen to anyone.  It was a small chip, and I didn’t bother fixing it.  What takes the story from normal bad luck to Bad Luck Ally is the fact that Monday afternoon I was smacked by a dump truck rock…again!  This time, I was driving in the left lane and the truck was in the right lane.  As I passed him, 3 rocks (one quite large) flew out and hit my windshield.  One barely dinged, another chipped, and the third and largest left the beautiful crack you see above.

Maybe Bad Luck Ally has had little back luck her whole life because karma is saving up for one big good luck one day.  That’s what I should keep telling myself, right?

P.S.  I would have posted this yesterday, but I managed to get a friendly little computer virus.  Nice.

#68: $5 to savings per check-off

My my my…I’m starting off the year slowly with my check-0ffs.  Only one in January.

I think I might change this to $50 per check-off instead.  I already put a set amount in savings every month, and $5 extra here and there doesn’t do much for me.  Time to up the ante.

Bathroom upgrades: A semi-amusing tale

Our house was built new in 2007, and we opted out of a lot of the upgrades because in some cases we didn’t like the options they gave us and in others we knew we could get a better deal if we shopped around ourselves.  We didn’t want to add cost to the mortgage when we could pay out of pocket for most of the things we wanted to do.

I won’t go into detail here.  If you want to see our house upgrades, I have a blog for that:  Ally’s Web Space.  It’s not that impressive but my family likes to check it out.  I certainly do not update it as often as this one.

Fast forward to this past weekend.   We decided to do a little upgrade on the master bath, just some simple changes in hardware, lighting and paint.  It was SUPPOSED to be simple, anyway.  What we discovered when we took down the ugly standard Dollar Store-looking vanity light was that the wiring & box were well off-center.   Cue Ally Temper Tantrum #1.

Assuming the construction workers were being slack (why in the world would they put the box off-center when the wall was CLEARLY marked with a bullseye where the box should go????) my husband took out the box and pulled the wiring through.  The plan was to patch the hole and cut a new one where it should have been.  At least that was the plan until he peeked inside the hole and saw…..dun dun duuuuuuuuuuuuuuun…a huge pipe right behind the drywall, preventing the wiring from being placed centered over the sink.  Cue Ally Temper Tantrum #2.

I won’t go into any more detail, suffice to say he managed to pull off  a nice-looking light installation that is still slightly off-center but can be remedied by getting a different mirror.  The story above is how I became frustrated and cranky.  What comes next was what made me temporarily insane.

My husband is a stubborn mule, and decided to change the light without flipping the breaker.  I told him I’d run out to the garage and do it, but he said no no no.    It didn’t matter anyway, because about 10 minutes into his work he tripped the breaker anyway.  I was annoyed for all of the reasons above so I went to the living room to watch TV instead.

He finished the installation, flipped the breaker back on, then went to check out his handiwork.  About 30 seconds later….bam!  Lights out in the entire house.   You probably guessed that my Temper Tantrum #3 happened right about this time, sounding something along the lines of, “How the hell did you knock out the power to the entire house when you were installing a bathroom light???”

We went out to the garage to flip the switches back on, and to our mutual surprise none of them were tripped.  Confused, I went outside to see if anyone else had power and sure enough several of our neighbors were outside checking out the street for the same reason.

We soon found out that the entire TOWN and parts of the city were out of power.  The power outage at our house timed with the installation of the new light was a complete coincidence.  End of tantrum; I just had to laugh instead.

P.S.  This pic from my Project 365 coincides with this story…

#15: Mat 20 photos & give to friends as presents

Ta-da!

I think everyone has received their presents, so I guess I’ll explain my last post now.

I’m a chronic picture-taker.  It didn’t start until I purchased my first digital camera.  Film cameras, with their guessing-game shots and expensive developing, never appealed to me as anything other that functional tools used to take pictures of events and friends.  Digital cameras appealed to my need to take shot after shot after shot, discarding those that don’t work for me.  I’m not a natural photographer, other than the fact that I can take pictures for people without cutting off heads or being out of focus.  I’ve always had an above-average artist’s eye, but not something that is so special as to give me any kind of bragging rights.

Over the years, I’ve taken many pictures, none outstanding but ranging from decent to pretty good by my own standards.  These pictures have been condemned to a grave either on my hard drive or on online accounts such as Snapfish of Shutterfly.   Out of the hundreds of pictures, I have few shots I would consider framing and to be honest I have never made the effort to do so.   This is where #15 comes in.  It forced me to pick pictures I thought my friends might like and mat them for easy framing in case they wanted to use them.  Most importantly, I wanted to send them as surprises, not for Christmas or birthdays.

The response has been positive, and I hope they really liked the pictures they received, and if not, forwarded the picture along to someone who might be interested.

Now that I have my first started DSLR camera (the Nikon D40) I have really started to become interested in the art aspect of photography.  Through Project 365, I hope to better my skills, although I’m certain that 99% of my pictures will continue to be of the hilarious faces of my precious pups.

Dear Friends,

Within in the next few days, some of you will know what the above picture shows.  For the rest of you, I will explain later.

Extra: To donate, or not to donate…

My hair looks like crap.

It’s too long, and when it gets too long it gets very flat and unflattering.  I usually grab a morning shower and let it air dry into part-waves, part-straight, part-frizz.   What were once sideswept bangs are now layers dipping nearly to my shoulder.

At age 22, when I was bracing myself for life after college graduation, I decided to take the plunge and donate my hair.  As a biology major (specifically, interested in ecology), along with my classmates I spent my senior year looking quite crunchy.  In fact, I don’t think I even had a trim in nearly a year, and I rarely touched a hair dryer.  As a result, my hair spilled a few inches below my bra strap by the time graduation rolled around.  I’ll supplement this with pictures if I can find some.

At the time, the only program I knew about was called Locks of Love.  The requirements were simple:  no hair dye,  minimum of 10 inches.   After the chop chop my neck felt freer but my ego took a hit.  As someone who spent most of her life with shoulder-length or longer hair, my new barely-past-chin look was not at all flattering on me.  My normally gently round face took on a new basketball quality.  The cut itself was cute, but it just didn’t work on me.

So, you may ask, why am I considering torturing myself this way again?

This time, I plan to donate to a different program – Pantene Beautiful Lengths.  The requirements are similar – no permanent dye, but only 8 inches are needed to donate.  My hair has grown to about the same post-college length (this time more out of laziness than crunchiness) and eight inches would put it right above the shoulders.  Still too short for comfort, but long enough I don’t want to waste it.

So, now all I have to do is wait and suffer through this stringy mess a few more months.  A couple more inches would result in a shoulder length cut I can live with, and hopefully help someone out at the same time.

#50: Leave a 50% tip

I frequent very few restaurants, and out of those restaurants there are very few repeat servers.  There is, however, one server in one downtown restaurant who I can count as my favorite.  The food is good, the service is fast, and she has all of her repeat customers memorized by heart.  So naturally I singled her out as the recipient of my 50% tip.  My plan was to give her a bit of a bigger tip around Christmastime, but as it turned out I didn’t go to the restaurant any time near Christmas at all.

Today, my husband had my car since unfortuantely his vehicle was in the shop getting expensive repairs.  Therefore, I was stranded at work during lunchtime and decided it was a good day to head over to my old favorite lunchtime haunt.  As usual, great service and food, even though I was still grumbling about the monotony of my job and the surprise expense of car repairs.  Usually I don’t bother to check my bad attitude when I’m on a streak, but when the bill came I remembered my intention to give a 50% tip and it gave me a bit of a cheesy reality check…at least I have a good, stable job, a vehicle to repair and money to go out to eat lunch if I so choose.   With that, I paid my bill, added 100% tip instead, and headed back to work.

Thank you…

My awesome boss and co-workers had sympathy flowers sent to my office.

And yes, my office really is that cluttered all the time…

More pictures…

I updated my Project 365 with pictures from days 3, 4, and 5, all days I spent in my hometown with my family for Mawmaw’s visitation and funeral.  I, of course, did not spend a lot of time with a camera in hand, but captured a few shots for my project I felt reflected my brief time at home.  Those were posted on my Project 365 page, but here were  a few that didn’t make the cut:

My sister’s dog, the always adorable Reilly.

Bobo, acting silly for a treat

A yard turtle at my parents’ house…yes, very random.

A stool I have always loved, at Mamaw’s house

evidence of Mawmaw’s green thumb, all around her home

The last three pictures were taken with my iPhone instead of my regular camera, and I have to say I was still impressed with how they turned out.   We’re back home and getting settled in.  I think I’ll take the Nikon to work with me tomorrow in case I get inspired to make Day 6 a work picture.