I love this book....
I went to the library the other day and picked up a book called Haircoloring in Plain English by Roxy Warren. It answers just about every question about hair color that you'd ever ask...and then some. It explains a lot of the chemistry and biology about how and why hair dye works. I thought the book was fascinating and read it in one day.
Of course, when Kirk saw me with it he asked, "Why do you need a book to tell you how to color your hair?" He didn't really get that there's more to just grabbing a box off the drugstore shelf. Yes, you can do that, but you might not get the color you want. For example, no matter what box dye I used, my hair was still too orange. Using beauty supply store colors, you get a lot more options of base tones (the underlying color that box dyes never give you beyond the general "ash" or "golden" in the title). To fix my orange-y hair, I bought dark ash blonde with a green base (using the color wheel, green cancels out red--it was a toss-up whether I should use a green base or a blue base). Strangely enough, despite the base tone, the dye still looked purple. Of course, who cares what the dye looks like as long as your hair comes out the right color in the end.
It tastes just like Cherry Coke, only cheaper.
I did lots of shopping today....I finished my Christmas shopping in an impressive hour and a half, then I went to the grocery store. While I usually go to Save Mart, I stopped at Albertsons, 'cause it was on the way home. I found some amazing things there. Number one, off-brand cola. The Albertsons brand cherry cola actually tastes like Cherry Coke (my favorite soft drink). I've mostly given up on actual Coke because it's expensive. But the Albertsons stuff was $1.25 for a six-pack.
The other great thing I found was an entire 6 feet of freezer section of vegetarian goodies. They had vegetarian taquitos with fake beef or fake chicken. I bought the beef ones, and they're quite good. Much better than my cooking disaster the other night. I'm terrible at frying things.
In an update from the last entry, I got my DHC CD from Tower (yay!), and I sold the Best Buy card to my parents.
Don't buy Best Buy giftcards!
One of my friends bought me a giftcard for Best Buy for my birthday. Stupid me forgot about it (and didn't have it in my wallet) when I bought the car stereo. That's okay, I thought. I need to replace my Dance Hall Crashers Live Record as it was stolen along with Kirk's car stereo. (Theives with good taste.) So, I logged on to bestbuy.com, where they had the CD for $13 and shipping's free. Cool. But when I went to check out, I learned that you can't use giftcards at bestbuy.com. Many retailers let you use giftcards online or in the store...heck, I even used a gift certificate for towerrecords.com once; I just had to mail it in. But Best Buy has yet to graduate to the 21st century.
You can also arrange for store pickup through bestbuy.com, if there had been a single store in the Bay Area with my CD. ("Available for pickup in most stores," it says. Yeah, just not in the ten around here.) I called the 800 number just to make sure there was no way around my problem. The guy's only suggestion was to call my local store and see if they could order it. According to the lady at my local store, nope. However, she told me that two stores in San Jose had the CD, according to the computer. I called one of them, but I was told they don't carry that CD anymore. So, the only way I can get my DHC Live Record is to buy it...from a different store.
So what have we learned...don't get a Best Buy giftcard unless you know the person has mainstream tastes and can actually use it at the store.
Downtown Snow, the revenge
Two weeks after the adventurous three decided against partaking of the San Jose Downtown Snow ritual (i.e. skating on ice that looks like it hasn't seen a Zamboni in a week), we decided to try again. The weather was questionable, so I was smart and called the rink. They said the ice was wet and thus they hadn't run the Zamboni...again. No big this time, 'cause I had a backup plan called the Ice Centre. The adventurous three (Jenny, Kirk, and I) plus my mom headed to the nice big indoor rink. Of course, even this ice hadn't seen Zamboni love for several hours, but it was bearable. The center patch wasn't bad at all. And, as with public sessions, there were far too many small children for my taste.
After skating, we adjourned home to change clothes, etc., before meeting for dinner with a few other folk for my happy birthday to me event. After some running around by people who misinterpreted directions, we all met for a nice big meal followed by presents. Fun! After that, all the twenty-three year olds went off in search of the Britannia Arms. I only had a vague idea where it was, and apparently Jenny's idea was even more vague, 'cause she and Megumi ended up wandering around San Pedro square.
At last, we found the Britannia Arms, but there was no karaoke. We (well, mostly the boys) amused ourselves with foosball and some sort of hockey game. When I'd resigned myself to games and TV, a soundsystem appeared. The karaoke lady had arrived, bringing with her binders full of songs to choose from. We sat ourselves around the binders and took eons to pick anything. Finally, Jenny and I busted out with "Lady Marmalade." Of course we spent as much time cracking up as singing. It was a whole lotta fun, especially when Megumi and Jenny did some Linkin Park. I'm all for a return to the Brit...nice casual atmosphere, free karaoke, and reasonably priced drinks (I've heard the fish n' chips are good, too). All in all, a nice way to spend a Sunday night.