And in extra stupendous randomness

Okay the move and working are getting me back to feeling like a grown up.  The house closing is hopefully less than a week away so I will officially be a homeowner type person.  In October there's a piece of land next to the house we are buying coming up for sale that we want to purchase to build a one or two car garage on so I can quit parking on gravel and mom can quit freaking out about me stepping out into the empty yard.  She wants to enclose the front porch and have that connect to the new garage.  I truly don't care truth be told.  It would be nice to have a place to pull the car out of the snow but that's about it for my concerns about it.  There are some other minor things that we want to do that will basically be pick a project every few months or once a year kind of thing.  I kinda hate the wood laminate floors in the kitchen.  They look nice but really don't like them under my feet.

All of that is well and good and some things that I expected to be more expensive are actually cheaper.  Waiting to see what the utilities end up looking like, especially the gas bill in the winter but other than that so far I'm enjoying the move.  What I'm not enjoying is all this extra alone time with mom cause she's making me remember all the alcoholic beverages I love to enjoy.  Like for real I'm experimenting with new things and keep buying things that I just have to open and enjoy because she is seriously killing my desire to take things and mix them up.

Beyond the empty calories I have been enjoying a WHOLE lot of tennis.  I swear in a past life I must have been a tennis champion because I can really watch tennis for hours on end as long as it's not Nadal or Federer on my screen.  And I will even tolerate Fed depending on who is is playing (and hopefully it's beating Nadal and his ass mining shorts crap).  So in my final poll for the day I am asking you about sports and your consumption.

Have a great weekend all

Fresh Relaxer, Shorter Hair, New Stylist?

Okay I barely made it to 12 weeks because my hair and I were fighting something awful the last few weeks.  My hair was feeling really brittle no matter what I did to it a few days post wash.  I think I mentioned a few weeks, possibly months at this stage, my ends were looking a little funky and that was confirmed today after my hair was good and straight.  The hair at the back of my head hasn't really suffered much but my sides were supporting my lazy and were wilting as a result.  So I lost a good three inches on each side but my hair looks full and feels better right now.  I really like the woman who did my hair she's funny, prompt and was pretty affordable.  However, she was a bit pushy and her shop is in definite need of an upgrade.  The chair was busted a bit, worked but it has seen better days.  There was exactly one sink, two dryers, and limited chairs.  Mom went with me and had a blast chatting with the random women in the shop but after seven years of being kinda spoiled in a different kind of environment this was definitely a new experience.  Plus as I said she was kind of pushy.  My old stylist knew I wanted to take care of as much on my own as possible and this woman wants to see me again pronto.  She says it's to remove some of the yellow tint to my gray but eh not sure.  So that leads me to my first poll for the fall about how to decide on finding a new stylist.  The woman I saw today came highly recommended so I don't discount that and really I am a bit of a passive client which may not be the best for anyone lol.  So I'm open for suggestions and anything else you want to share in the poll or on this post.

I did take a photo so you can see what my hair is looking like now.  It's a shorter version of my last cut in June.  I tried to take it with my new Samsung Galaxy 4 but my fingers and the touch screen not loving each other yet for that anyway.  Surprisingly adapting to that lack of keyboard option pretty well.  The hair in the back is still on my neck and driving me slightly crazy.  The hair on the sides when stretched hits my collarbone.  All that slightly lighter hair on the top is JUST GRAY.  I mean it will happen in its own time man that's a lot of gray isn't it?  I'll make a separate post for all of my other randomness.  This is really just for the hair kids lol.

For REAL Wash Day

Hey everyone,

life has finally settled down enough that I had a full fledged mostly normal wash day.  After running around and getting my passport application done (check one more thing off the bucket list) as well as letting mom do normal mom running around, I came home and added my Strong Roots Red Pimento Oil to my scalp and the Organix conditioning masque to my length.  Time kept ticking and my lazy overwhelmed me.  I washed everything out this morning and was impressed that with a few less products my hair still felt really good and maintained some slickness longer than normal--my hair can dry out quickly.  It is MUCH more humid here than where we just moved from so I am having to get used to that and based on the amount of hair that shed this morning I think I have two weeks tops to get a relaxer on this hair or embrace going natural and chop it all off.  I'll give you a moment to stop laughing cause we all know that's not happening.

I opted for a flexi set since I've already used a heat pass for this stretch and still kinda don't know where my flat iron is because it's in a box in the room of no return--or where all the boxes are and I can't quite get to my boxes because of all of mom's boxes that are in the way.  I did find a few more products and used our shiny new washer and dryer.  It's amazing how quickly new appliances work.  Anyhoo, I probably only used about 12 flexirods and most of those are in the back of my hair because the length is the most different back there.  I feel like the routine is more stable now so I'm doing a better job of moisturizing when it feels dry and taking my vitamins when I remember--it's not back to being a habit yet which I know is bad.  My hair will have about 20 hours to get good and dry before I leave for work in the morning so I'm happy about that.  If it's not dry then I know the humidity will continue to be an issue and have to work around it.  No classes tomorrow but a few meetings and office hours for students.  I will be grading papers and looking over assignments for the week since none of that happened this weekend lol.

How is everyone doing?  Where should I go first with my first official passport?  I was on my mother's as a child because we were military and I was 2 ish so I wasn't old enough (at that time many moons ago) to have one of my own.

P.S. I made my first pseudo button.  If you ever get bored and want to see my bucket list click on the overly festive bucket and it will take you to my bucketlist.org page.

Long Overdue Update

Hey everyone,

not sure when I posted last but it's not when I wanted to for sure.  There's lot to get to so if you don't have a lot of time then you may want to head on to something else and come back later lol.  Well the last two weeks has been jammed pack.  After moving in, finally getting our stuff and unpacking slowly but surely I had things on my agenda almost immediately.  Lots of trainings and planning meetings and then last week was prepping three brand new courses, not completely alone I have gotten a lot of help from the current staff as well as the new staff, and getting things set up, tweaking calendars and trying to plan things out to fill 16 weeks of teaching instead of five.  I mostly finished that on Friday and had minor things to tweak yesterday and today and while it doesn't feel perfect I am ready for the semester.

Life Could Be a Dream, Provided One Doesn't Get Kicked in Their Sleep

Not sure if anyone was looking for me or not but I apologize for not posting in the last week.  We were packing and tossing and packing and tossing things until the movers arrived.  Then what I predicted would happen--that is we would have way more ish than quoted (thanks Mom) did happen and mom nearly canceled the move like we would be able to find cheaper ones to move across country before I needed to start work.  They loaded and we passed out that evening.  We woke up on Saturday and cleaned everything within an inch of it's life, loaded my car for the driver--wasn't driving 12 hours with mom after the last few days--and donated more stuff to neighbors and strangers.  We flew out that afternoon after getting a ride from one of my former coworkers and honestly flight went great, rental car was fine, staff was good and one night at sketchy hotel aside before moving into much better digs and I was feeling good about life.  That is until we WENT to the house that mom decided she wanted and didn't make it in the door five feet before she threw LITERALLY the mother of all tantrums--no pun there it was just fucking epic.  Because of the supposed delivery date from the movers (I saw supposedly because yeah it hasn't happened yet but I didn't know that on Sunday) we had exactly 48-72 hours to get out of the contract with house from hell, find another one and someone willing to let us move in early.  Well let me say that God is good because we found a nicer house that was MUCH cheaper, nicely renovated and bigger so mom's stuff should all fit and what doesn't she has allegedly decided to sell.  It doesn't have a full driveway or a garage but considering what we are saving on the house that did have a garage and not much else I am willing to find builders and finance a garage.  Plus what I can tell from all sites regarding building a garage we would get a significant chunk of that back upon selling the house.  It doesn't seem to have central ac but the fan from the heating unit made this place kinda nippy the other day so we'll see how that works later.  Neighbors all seem friendly as well and it's far enough from my job that it feels like I have to drive (it's like 7 to 10 minutes lol) but seriously walking distance from a church, hairdresser, school, two grocery stores, a big box store and a nail shop--among other things.  Let me just say we saw a lot of houses in two days and was sad by one that was so freaking cute on the outside it was ridiculous only to go inside and wonder if munchkins had lived there and how they could possibly have seen the tiny area next to the kitchen as a bedroom--it was barely big enough to turn around in.

I have been by my office, gotten my id, parking pass, met with the folks who helped hire me, talked to a lot of people and have a very busy week next week but I am very excited about this opportunity.  I will be more excited when the furniture is here and the security system is installed so mom can quit jumping every time it sounds like something is brushing against the house and she can quit waking me up at every single solitary noise she hears.  Last night was the worst.  I got kicked in my lower leg cause she swore she saw something on the ground crawling.  She can't describe it and didn't want to look for it but fell back asleep within minutes of injuring me.

In other news my hair and I are fighting.  Not sure if it's getting adjusted to the temperature or water differences here or what but I feel like a puff ball.  It's super soft but is not holding in any moisture at all right now.  Trying to take care of my hair without all of my products is a pain too.  Hoping desperately that the movers come tomorrow so we can have beds and some privacy even though I'm pretty sure we'll be sleeping in the front until we get the house secured more than it is right now.  Just wanted to give a shout to say I'm okay.  Still a bit tired but okay.

How's things for all of you?