It’s been a busy month, but one major focal point was college roommie Diana and Eric’s wedding. That was in Carmel this past weekend, January 15. Congratulations to the newly married couple, Diana and Eric! As one of their friends said, “It’s all community property from now on!” Not necessarily, but I’m sure Diana knows the ropes, being a lawyer and all. They’ll do what’s best for them.

I had some adventures in hair dyeing pre-wedding. I figured I’d have a partial or complete up-do as Diana’s maid-of-honor, and hair designs don’t show up well in a mass of dark hair, so I wanted my hair lightened a few shades. When Mr. W was dropping off his dry-cleaning, I wandered into a beauty supply store next-door. I was looking for the usual box set of hair dye, but this shop was a professional supply store and sold everything separately. The salesclerk listened to what I wanted to achieve, and selected a level 20 developer for “lift” (which I found out meant “lightener”) and a colorant that she said would look very pretty on me. The color sample in front of that colorant showed an ash light brown, so I was a little concerned. She said no, the Level 20 wouldn’t let it develop that light on my dark hair, so I’ll be fine. She also pulled other supplies I’d need off the shelf, knowing I’m coloring this way for the first time. So I got a mixing bottle thingie and some tips on mixing proportions. At home, I went to work. An hour later, I showered and looked in the mirror, and the only thing I discovered that I had dyed was my left palm and fingertips. My hair was dark-dark. If anything, it may have been more dark than before I started. When I went to show Mr. W, he mentioned that he had disposable rubber gloves somewhere. Great, thanks for letting me know. And thanks, supply girl, for not including gloves in the kit you were pulling together for me.

On the drive home from work the next day, Mr. W suggested we go to my regular salon to see if they could do something with my hair. My regular haircut guy (Richard) was busy with another customer, but there was a new girl (Pearly) free. I said I was mainly looking for just a bang trim, and we discussed color, and Pearly convinced me to let her recolor my hair. I agreed. While working on my head, Pearly then kept trying to sell me other services, which was annoying, but I figured, I was doing this for a wedding in a week, so fine. “They not going to fix your eyebrows for you when they do your professional makeup,” she said in her Vietnamese accent. “It look better if I fix your eyebrows today, so your makeup will look nice next week.” Made sense. Lots of money later, I walked out with my eyebrows trimmed the same as if I did it myself, with my hair even darker than when I went in, but with my wallet quite a bit lighter. And my bangs? Looked like a dog chewed on it while riding a lawn mower: it was uneven and WAY too short. *Sigh* When Diana found out, she said, “Oh, you should’ve waited. When they do your hair and makeup next week, they would’ve done all that for you.” *Sigh*

The next day, people wanted to know what my hair looked like after two dye-jobs (I think they just wanted to see if I still had hair left on my head), so I took this photo with my cell phone to show them:

The way I swept the bangs over made it look slightly more even, altho I couldn’t do much about the fact that the short chunks are very short. And yup, people’s comments were consistently, wow, how black. I had a week to grow my bangs out to something manageable, and for the first dye to come off my left hand. Glad Pearly didn’t see that, or she would’ve upsold me a manicure.