Plum crazy!

At the end of June, I had my hair stylist bleach a streak in my hair and add some purple semi-permanent dye. That only lasted a couple of week. I had her do it a few times since then, but finally got brave enough to do it myself. The photo below was a different color, courtesy of Cathy from mmm-yoso.

It wasn't as dark as my previous experiment but I wanted to give it a go.

More of OB

Just a few cool things we saw while in OB...

like this mural near a hair salon....

Streak o' purple...

After my first (and second) foray into hair dying....

my hair stylist got a different brand of purple dye to put in my hair.

Can you see it?

I went and did it...

I had my hairstylist put in a streak of purple in my hair. Since I'm on vacation, I figured it would be fun to try something new. Once work starts up again, I can always dye it back to black. Or not!

It's not that noticeable unless I am in the light.

I haven't dyed my hair before. She had to bleach the hair a tiny bit to strip the color, then added the "Purple Passion" hair dye (forgot the brand). The first brand didn't take so I went back later to have another brand put in. This time, you could see it.

Maybe she should have bleached it at 30% instead of 10%, then kept the color in for longer. It was only on the foils for 25 minutes. Gawd, imagine if it was my whole head of hair, this would have taken FOREVER. As it was only a small swatch of hair, I thought it would be a fun experiment to do. It still took about an hour and fifteen minutes. How do all these women carve chunks of time to do highlights and all is beyond me!

Anyhow...that's that!

I love purple!

McChicken and haircut

What do we have here?

Two items from the Value Menu - Fries and the McChicken sandwich. Total = $2.18 (inc. tax).

It's always classy eating in the confines of my cruisemobile car.

I fell off the wagon and gave in to my urge to have something from McD's today. Another main reason besides being hungry was also borne out of desperation to get at least $10 in change back from a $20. I went to see my hair stylist yesterday. It's been about two months since my last haircut and my once spiky asymmetrical 'do degenerated into a shaggy mess. Well, it still looked all right but the razor cuts had grown out. So yeah, I got my change so I could have enough for my hairstylist's tip.

The McChicken wasn't that bad actually. It was squarish with a dollop of mayo with one small lettuce leaf. I squeezed in one ketchup packet as well. As I was eating my late lunch, I could see the other resto's in the strip mall like Lisa's Cuisine (shitty service), Pho Vien Dong (horrid food), Panda Chef (they do make a great walnut honey shrimp), and some new bbq place. I could have chosen some other place but I wanted my two buck lunch and change.

Before and after pix of the chop:
Taken by good ole' Bert before I left for work. The right side...

and the back...

Here's the left side. You can't see my ears anymore. It's grown that much...

After shots below. Taken in the evening. Now that's more like it. My stylist razor angled the sides again. Right side is  layered and longer than the left. Back is layered and chopped. She also flat ironed it for me.

Right side.

Back. A half inch taken off. Layered and really thinned out. Slight V. Hard to tell since it's black hair on a black shirt.

Left. The return of my spikes.

After getting my hair cut, I went to the bank. I was suprised to see these wanna be thuggy guys in the parking lot trying to whore out their rap CD's.

"Excuse me ma'am would you be interested..."

"No thanks, I'm in a hurry!" (Cutting him off. Yes, I'm that nice).

"Okay, next time!" (like there will be a next time)

Then he added, "I like your hair!"

Ha ha, my first compliment from a street seller!

My hair is a big thing for me. After losing it nearly 3 years ago, I am fkg ecstatic that it's back to normal. And I'm back to normal.  I learned that 'hair is hair' and it does eventually grow back. But when you don't have it, the sensations of not having it are quite odd. You feel every breeze for example. Wigs are itchy even with a skull cap on. I'm also fortunate to not have a lot of gray hairs either. Well, I do have a few but they are hidden and I also have Bert or TC pluck any that show. Thank goodness for Filipino genes because we don't look our (cough) age.

Hair!

Hell yeah! My hair's been growing back for the past couple of months. I finally ditched my wigs a couple of weeks ago. I had three of them. One was real human hair and looked almost exactly like my rocker chick hairstyle. The other two were bob variations (one angled and the other I called my tame Robert Smith wig). I didn't like them too much, especially in the summer when it was hot.

Most people who don't know what I've been through just think I got my hair cut (drastically). I just play it off. I'm not going to go into my shit with them. I'm just happy my hair's growing back - and thick too! In May when it first started falling out, I had it shaved. But my hair fell out gradually to almost bald by June, just like Damon Wayan's outrageously gay Antoine Merriweather (not Blaine Edwards, that's David Alan Grier with the Kid 'n Play hair). Being bald? HATED IT!

In fact, I am going to have the sides and back texturized by my hairstylist tomorrow. I've been going to her for quite awhile now. Her kids were my former students. She's been so awesome to me this year. She was the one who shaved my head back in May. She styled my wigs too so they wouldn't look so farty and conservative. She does wonders with her shears/scissors/razors and makes me look pretty damn good. After my treatment ended in July, I was still bald. But after six weeks or so, my hair first came in like peach fuzz in late August. It kind of looked like this (Natalie Portman in "V for Vendetta"):

It's slightly longer than Annie Lennox's Eurythmics era do:

But the top and sides are not as long as Billy Idol's yet (pump your fist in the air here!):
My hair looks like this actually - a bit like Victoria Beckham's new pixie cut. Except I don't have man hands. Or a zombified countenance. Or a stick thin size zero body. Or David Beckham. Girlfriend needs to eat a sandwich. Or two.

The top of her hair and her bangs are a little longer than mine, but this is basically how my hair looks.

I used to have what I call my rocker chick look with razored, shaggy layers and choppy bangs. I had "hip mom" hair. At least I thought it was. Sort of like a rendition of a modern mullet (it's not as bad as it sounds!). I miss it but it'll grow back soon enough. I can't wait for my bangs to grow longer so I can rock that Rihanna look! I would make my bangs razored at an angle, and be much shorter and choppier than hers.

Some of my friends have told me to keep my hair short and "sassy". God, I hate that word! I feel like I have to do a headsnap when I say "sassy"! I have strong facial features so I think I can pull off the pixie cut, but I do want my old look back. In due time...

Fake Eyelashes

Over the past few weeks, my eyelash and eyebrow hairs have fallen out. During treatment, I didn't really lose my brows but just a few of my lashes. But they've been dropping off little by little. Kind of freaked me out. The good news is that it's all growing back but kind of slowly. In any case, my brows are almost back to normal but are just lighter than what they used to be. My bottom lashes are now growing in, but aren't as long as they used to be...yet. I was afraid I'd look like the guy in Powder. A few months ago and most recently, I bought some fake lashes for the hell of it - several kinds - the individual lashes and the full set. Here's the individual ones (You can see some empty spots in the package because I kept using them and messing up):

Luckily no one can really tell that I'm missing some lashes and brows, except for me since it's my face. I wear my black liquid eyeliner pretty thick on the top anyways so it hides my sparse top lashes. But no, not Amy Winehouse style wings. That's a little much for me, thanks.

Let me tell you that putting those things on your eyelids is a monumental pain in the ass!!! I only used a tiny bit of the individual lashes one day to try it out and it bothered me. The lash piece felt like it was going to fall off. I have never worn the full set (they are made of 100% sterilized human hair by the way), but I did experiment with them. The pair above, see the left set of lashes? It's shorter than the right one because I cut off a piece since it was too long. I was trying out a "bald spot" on my upper left eyelid. Fake lashes are just too much work and with the hot weather we're having, would end up sliding off my face with the sweat and all. Well, I was prepared at least, but who knows if I'll ever need these anymore?

Snip snip

I got a haircut this morning at my stylist's home. Since she sold her salon, she started working out of her home which has a three car garage. The "third car" portion of the garage was converted to a mini salon. My last haircut was in early June. So, it's shorter, but not by much. My bangs are over my eyebrows again and the back is still long, but cut in a slight V-shape. Not so mullety. My hair seems to grow faster when it's shorter for some reason. When it was long, no one really noticed if it was cut or not.

After my haircut which lasted 1 and 1/2 hours (yikes), I went to Henry's to pick up ingredients for a soup I was going to make. They did not have fresh chicken wings, so I went to Ralph's to get it (grumble). I also made a quick stop to Pinoy Foodmart near Henry's to get some bok choy as a greens substitute for the Tinolang Manok (Chicken Tinola or chicken ginger soup) I planned to make for a friend recovering from surgery today. Unfortunately, when I called her house, she wasn't home, so I will try again later. . Because of the E.Coli/Spinach scare that's happening right now in California, no stores are carrying bagged spinach, although I did see fresh spinach at Henry's.

I plan to post some random photos later.

Yesterday afternoon, I was a sucker. While at Wal-Mart buying pitstick and sensitive toothpaste for Bert (and pads and eye makeup remover for myself), I bought the individual re-releases of the original Star Wars Trilogy. Damn you George Lucas!

These are 2-disc sets that include the shitty bastardized versions released a few years ago by Lucas along with a "bonus" disc that includes the original Theatrical version (the ones we actually saw in a theatre as kids and young teens, sans the extraneous CGI effects Lucas added in '97 and beyond). Each DVD set came with a graphic novel of the movie, which were originally published by Marvel and Dark Horse comics which I thought was a great plus. Yes, I do plan to read those and Bert does too. The DVD's (plus the graphic novels) were $13.72, the same price they were selling the individual DVD without the graphic novel.

I survived the first two weeks of "work" at school. The year has just begun. College application season will be next along with requests for letters of recommendation (many asked at the last minute), Financial aid night, classroom visits, and the like. I'm wishing graduation was around the corner again! Can I rewind my summer?