#10 a hair donation

Got to check another off my 101 list!

✔ 10: Donate my hair again.

I had been excitedly waiting to do this.  My hair was LONG!

Never dyed, rarely blow-dried, and super thick!  And HOT on my neck!

I've had to wear it in a bun a lot lately because my ponytail would stick to my neck if it was really humid.  Yuck.

The previous times I've done a donation, I went somewhere that would do it for free.  But the only place I could find around here that did that was Hair Cuttery or Great Clips, which I have "matured" from.  I wanted a good style, so I just went to my regular place.  I'm 26 years old, and I think I'm worth a $30 haircut now.

The stylist sat me in her chair and said, "So what are we doing today?"  

My response: "Chopping it all off and giving it away!"

She asked me if I was nervous, and I wasn't even a tiny bit!  I was so ready for a change!

I immediately felt 3 pounds lighter.  Let's take a look at all that hair:

And how's about my new 'do?

I told the stylist to make me look my age, since I'm tired of being mistaken for a college freshman.

I think she did a good job!

If you look closely at the above picture, you can see my hair in the plastic bag behind the purse strap.  I then took it home and completed my research on who to donate to.  My previous two donations have gone to Locks of Love and the salon sent it off, but I'm not their biggest fan any more after reading this NYT article.   They seem to be more of a PR-factory than anything else AND my perfect hair might have been sold off to pay for overhead (um, if I donate food to the homeless shelter, I'd rather them not sell it off to pay their bills; I'd give them a check if that's how I wanted to help them).   

Wigs for Kids had a million regulations that we didn't follow (and wanted 12 inches, which I'm not quite sure I had; it was probably in the 10-11 range), so I settled on Pantene's Beautiful Lengths program.  They only needed 8 inches, and they didn't seem as strict.  Also, after working (3-month temping) in a corporation's community affairs department, I kinda trust that they'll do it right since it's their PR-ass on the line.  And they have the commercial and monetary backing to do a lot of good.  Look at the numbers in the article: in 10 years, Locks of Love distributed 2,000 wigs (and they charge for them on a sliding scale).  In less than two years since it began, Pantene gave away just as many (for free).  I could be wrong, but I just want my hair to get used and I had a feeling this was the best bet.

I needed a padded envelope, and the post office was closed all weekend, so I got it this morning and sent it off.  I even enclosed a little note with a dumb little picture.  I hope some kid/adult/whomever gets some mileage out of it, because I sure did!

trip to OBX

On Friday, we took a day trip to the Outer Banks. We hit up the Wright Brothers National Memorial, where I learned a lot and then attempted to retain it. My usual antics ensued:



Then we drove around way too much (it was gorgeous though!) and finally settled on a beach in Nags Head. Gotta love boogie boarding!

calamaties of our pensacola trip

So I guess the last month of my life couldn't be called an "adventure" if nothing went wrong.  The good thing is that we are both still healthy and still talking to each other.  But here, I will present to you, my dear readers, a list of what went wrong!  Enjoy!

• The oil change with a few 'surprises' (of the expensive sort).  I'm sure some of you have had these.  B took his car in before we drove it 900 miles to Pensacola, and apparently it needed new wheel bearings and two new tires. 
• The move date.  I knew it was high-PCS season, but I didn't think it would take a whole month to get the first open move date.  We had to extend our lease out an extra 10 days, and then we found out the owner of our rented condo wants to sell, so it's gonna be shown.  I brushed that off and let them look at it as is.
• The laptop computer.  We took the laptop down to FL, and halfway through our stay at the Navy Lodge, something goes awry with the power.  We ended up finding out it was just the cord.  We ordered a new one from Dell, and got it in the mail yesterday!
• The desktop computer.  When we got back to Virginia, we figured we'd just use the 8-year-old desktop since the laptop was shot.  Well, the keyboard on my trusty old Gateway decided that NOW was a great time to bite the dust.  This did result in a slightly funny Facebook status, but overall it was just frustrating.
• The canceled flight, the Kindle.  His Kindle.  Left on a plane that got into Atlanta at 1am after his first work trip to D.C.  (My mom picked him up and he slept at my parents' house for the night.)  I made some calls, and he is officially Kindle-less now.  :-(  He also can't find his mp3 player, and earlier this year my digital camera got stolen.  We are cursed when it comes to portable electronics.
• The new tire.  Yeah, the one from the oil change... we hit some sort of debris while driving back through Alabama, and there we were on the side of I-65 with a flat tire.  The lugnut-tool-thingamajig somehow stripped out and B couldn't finish changing the spare, so I called AAA.  However, before they made it, a friendly State Trooper came by with a much better tool and helped us out.  The only major casualty from this side-of-the-road debacle was that I stepped in a big bed of ants and I still have the bites on my pinky toe!  Then we stopped in Evergreen, AL, to get yet another brand new 80-thousand mile tire.  Sigh.

Other than all those biggies, the trip was by most accounts, a pretty smooth one.  Seems like we were hit with a lot of "mo' money, mo' problems" kinda issues.  Many worse things could've happened, and I'm glad they didn't!