Yesterday I went to the hairdresser and she and I contemplated the condition of my hair. I apparently became a little impatient with the hair styling process when I was still really harried at work, and I turned my flattening iron up WAY too high. That, dear readers, can produce nice short-term results and nasty long-term results. I have a thing about fried-looking hair, and here I had it on my own head.

So I had her cut about 3 inches off the bottom. She's also starting to grow out a few of the layers, so what I have today is effectively a longer and wilder version of a Louise Brooks bob. My hair is still at the middle of my neck, so it's hardly as bobbed as LuLu's, but it has that wedge effect.

I thought this was a drastic change, so I walk into my office after getting my hair done and one person noticed. I walked back in this morning and a couple of other people (who would have said something if they'd noticed) didn't notice much of a change. Isn't it weird how we always scrutinize ourselves so intently and expect others to do the same?

I think as long as person is clean and well-groomed and doesn't display pet peeve irritants (such a French manicured toenails or artificial nails with rhinestones that may pop off and land in your lap), people really don't notice the little nuances unless you're a very visually oriented person.

So now I know that someone with a fried hair pet peeve won't be standing around, looking at me, thinking "eeeewww!"

Odd subreference with BPAL elements: I was looking at minilux's BPAL icons and noticed that Louise Brooks was pictured in a couple of icons, one being for the scent Beatrice. There's a town in my state called Beatrice; it's about 35 miles directly south of where I reside. However, it's not pronounced the way the woman's name Beatrice is commonly pronounced, which is "BEE-uh-truss." No, people call this town "Bee-AT-triss." (And put a hard midwestern "r" in the last syllable.) I do not know the source of this trend, but people where I live will jokingly pronounce the name of the town "Beat (as in the beat goes on)-Rice (as in the grain.) I don't recall what was in the scent Beatrice, and I don't think it was something that I would have enjoyed, but even if I had, it would have been terribly difficult to not tell people that I was wearing "Beat-Rice" that day.

Story that was jarred loose in my brain as a result of darkity's story from the other day, about the fake nail popping off the girl's hand on the bus and landing on darkity: A long time ago, I was eating with a then-boyfriend in a Grisante's restaurant. We were at a table that was separated from another table by a divider that was probably 4 feet high. At the other table was a couple with their young son (about 5 or 6 years old) and one set of grandparents. The kid was wired for sound anyway, and Grandpappy was not making matters better, because he kept saying to the tyke: "So are ya all excited it's your birthday? Do you think you're gonna have lots of presents when we get home? Huh? Huh?" The kid was thrashing around, kicking and waving his arms. A waitress, hoping to provide a calming influence, gave the kid some crayons so he could draw on the paper that was put on the tabletop over the tablecloth. Didn't work. Then, I looked down at my plate to take another bite of whatever it was that I was eating, and a crayon suddenly plopped down in the middle of my plate. The kid had lost control of the crayon in his hot little hand as he was waving his arms around and it landed in my pasta. The mother was mortified, grandpappy was unrepentant and the kid was too crazed from being driven into a frenzy by his apparently sadistic grandpaps to even notice. A waiter saw it happen, came over, grabbed my plate and told me he was providing me with a replacement. My boyfriend said that the look on my face, as I handed the crayon back to the mother, should have caused the entire table to turn to salt and crumble away. People! I wasn't really mad at the kid, but his adult entourage needed to have their butts kicked.