Random rants, facts, and figures

Well I am officially done Christmas shopping now. I hate Christmas shopping for some reason. This year I had it really easy too, and I was still cranky about it. I only had to get a few gifts and just ugh, nightmare. I couldn't figure out what to get my little brother. He was impossible to buy for. All he told me was 'gears of war 2.' UGH. Yeah friggen right Josh. I don't like buying him games because it only promotes his sitting on his can all day. It is absolutely ridiculous with him. He gets home from school, goes into his "game room" downstairs (which by the way was supposed to be a guest room but never ended up happening because he took over it) and he shuts the door and begins his gaming. Then once dinner is ready he comes back upstairs, eats, and back down to the basement to play his games. He doesn't visit with anyone ever. Even when I come home to visit, I haven't seen him in who knows how many months, and he won't even come out to say hi. I find it extremely rude. That will be the day I have kids like that. There is no way that'll happen. When I have kids they are going to be getting off their little hiney's and greeting relatives at the door when they arrive. None of this "hide out with my xbox all day and night" crap. I don't expect my kids to sit and visit for hours on end, but I do expect them to at least be polite and say hello. Especially if it's someone like, oh I donno, THEIR SISTER! haha. Can you sense my bitterness?

Tonight, Dario, Pat and my friend Mark will be coming over to play some Disney Scene It. Don't knock it till you've tried it. SO entertaining haha. You think you know your disney movies, but really, you don't! Some of the questions are surprisingly difficult. I have I think the youth version of Scene It at my parents house too, I am going to steal it back from them because no one in that house has EVER played it, and I am going to bring it back with me here. Yay! haha I'm so lame I know.

My room is a pit right now, I have a couple baskets/piles of laundry that need to be folded and put away but I hate that process so much that I just don't feel like doing it today. So I will wait until tomorrow maybe when I'm in baking mode. I usually like to clean/do laundry/bake/cook all at once for some weird reason. I guess it all just goes hand in hand.

I dyed my hair yesterday which I am amazed I haven't talked about yet (but now that I've started I won't be able to shutup.) Probably because it's nothing major and it's hardly even noticeable. Which sucks cause I like it when I have an obvious change to my hair. Everyone suggested that I keep it the same colour that I last had (the dark brown with a few blond highlights) ... I really did like the colour, a lot actually, but I had some nasty nasty roots goin on (my hair had grown nearly an inch in a month and a half) so I had to do something about it.

Now... Let's just put it this way. I have never once, NEVER ONCE! "touched up" my roots. EVER. I won't do it. My reason for it? None really, I just don't like doing it. It is necessity to me, to change my hair everytime I go to the salon. Why? I don't really know, but I suppose I could compare it to how much Alicia and Melissa love shopping. :) You girls need new dressies, I need new hair. haha.

So after looking for hours of cuts and colours on the net, I decided I would stick with what I had, but change it slightly. I booked an appointment at the Axis training salon (students from John Casablancas) because as most of you know, I'm obsessed with that school and plan on doing their course one day. I had a young, surprisingly straight guy do my hair. We picked a demi-permanent base colour that was about the same as the one I had, and a blondor 20 (bleach.) I actually enjoyed having my hair done by a student, and for any of you who pay the 200 bucks at a salon or even 100 bucks, you're crazy and you should go to a student salon. I recommend JCI 100%. While you're having your hair done, there's about 10 other students in the room each doing their own thing. A couple have clients, and the rest are practicing cuts on their manequin models. The instructor is walking around the entire time, teaching all of them different things, and constantly checking up on how the students are doing with the actual clients. There is no way for the students to screw up your hair because they run everything by their instructor first. If they have any questions then they simply ask their teacher and he/she helps them out, and in worse case scenario if they fuck up, the instructor fixes it. So it's idiot proof basically.

The process obviously is a little slower because it's a student and they're still learning but it's a great environment. At least I find it great but I'm obsessed with hair and everything to do with it, so it's my heaven pretty much. The guy who did my hair ended up doing quite a good job, I wasn't in love with it yesterday but that had to do with where it had been parted. (Whenever I get a haircut or get my hair dyed, I get it cut/dyed specifically in accordance to where I part my hair. That way I know how the highlights will fall sorta thing.) Meaning my hair is entirely uneven in the front because it's meant to be parted from left to right, if I part it from right to left, it just sucks haha.

My appointment was at 10:30 and I got out of there at 1. It's nice when someones not rushing on your hair. The poor guy who did my hair yesterday didn't really have a pattern to follow of where my previous highlights were since my hairdresser didn't really use one last time, she put a few here and there and only worried about placement near the mo-hawk area. So I let him choose a pattern to go by, and then had him throw in some big chunks of blond on the underside of my bangs. It's cute, I'm liking it. The brown they used is very nice, and so rich, and the placement of all the blond compliments it all really well. So overall I'm happy.

I learned a couple of things yesterday though. A few tricks to help save time, money, and your hair, so I figured I'd share them.

1) A lot of people get bleached highlights and then use a toner to take the white blond down to a more golden blond. If you are getting bleached highlights and are having the rest of your hair that's not in foils dyed a darker colour than what the highlight is all at the same time you can use it to your advantage to skip the process of using a toner. You can ask to have them emulsify your hair. A few minutes before you wash the dye out, your hairdresser takes out the foils, wets the hair slightly, uses a little bit of shampoo, and mashes your hair together. The darker colour bleeds onto the bleach. You do this for a couple of minutes then wash the dye out and it helps colour the highlights just slightly so they're not so white. (To use a toner it's usually about 40 bucks where as doing it this way, if you can, is free.)

2) If you want a permanent dye, or a demi-permanent dye TELL your hairdresser which one you want. A lot of the time hairdressers use demi-permanents so that your hair fades faster and you have to come back more often.

3) If you're one of those people that dyes your hair often or even every two to three months, use a demi-permanent dye. Permanent dyes are really hard on your hair and way harder to strip the colour out of (for those who switch from dark to light often.) Demi's are a lot more gentle on your hair and the colour actually lasts quite a while. If you're a person who keeps their hair the same colour all the time and only ever touches up the roots, opt for the permanent.

4) If you don't like spending a lot of time having your hair dyed, demi-permanents only take 20 minutes to process, permanents take 45.

5) Hairwashing tips yay! This is actually new to me I've never been told this before. Obvs I know that you shouldn't wash your hair every single day because it's hard on it, but some of us have to because we have very oily hair. I have always washed my hair every day because once it hits the 24 hour mark it seems like grease comes outta nowhere and you can see how oily my roots are. But, the more you wash your hair, the more oil your scalp will naturally produce. So if you're an oily haired person, try to go as long as you can without shampooing your hair. You can condition your hair on a daily basis but don't condition the roots, it promotes greasiness, so only condition from your ears down, the rest of that hair is getting enough natural oils to keep healthy. See if you can make it a couple of days before shampooing, and keep doing that. Within a few weeks to a month your scalp will realize it doesn't have to produce so many oils, and will slowly decrease it's oil production. If you can get down to washing your hair twice a week you'll start to develop much healthier hair with less breakage and less split ends.

And that's enough hair talk, I'm gonna go cook me some dinna!