I feel pretty, oh so pretty (that's in West Side Story, in case you didn't know-I didn't)

Past couple of days have been busy, y'all. Thursday afternoon, I went with Tiff and a couple of her buddies to see West Side Story in downtown Kansas City. They took me to a mongolian restaurant in the Power & Light district for dinner. It was my first visit there and seems pretty cool. The mongolian place was tasty, I threw random meats and veggies into a bowl and asked for udon noodles...somehow it ended up tasting pretty good! We walked around P&L for a little bit since we were early. Did you guys know there's a restaurant in existence called Whopper Bar? I was disappointed to find out it was not a BK with alcohol, but more fancy toppings for your whopper. Pass. I saw an Irish pub I would LOVE to take Michael to at some point. We had a pub in Raleigh we went to a few times called Trali that had really, really, tasty food, and I miss that cuisine....fish & chips, bangers & mash, shepherd's pie...mmm.

So, about West Side Story...I saw the movie a bajillion years ago and vaguely remembered the storyline. For instance, I knew Tonight and America were songs that would be in there at some point. ;) Honestly, I just like shows, it really doesn't matter what it is-if there's singing, you don't have to ask me twice. I liked it, but Tiff and I did think it ended pretty abruptly, though. I wanted to know what happened next! Does Maria become depressed and stay in her room for six months before she moves back to Puerto Rico? Is there a huge wave of violence as the Sharks and Jets continuously get revenge on each other? Or do they realize it would be better to stop the violence and hatred and accept each other? Who knows. Thanks for having me tag along, Tiff! Loved getting out of Lawrence for a little bit. :)

On the way home, I got whiplash. Tiff's friend Laura remarked that as we were driving past a parking lot, she happened to see a guy puking. Everyone else groaned...I whipped my body back so fast to try to catch a glance, you'd think Colin Firth was in the parking lot, not guy-with-montezuma's-revenge. Why did I want to see that so bad? NO IDEA! It was one of those "Why am I doing this?" as I was doing it kind of moments. This is why you can NEVER send me "don't open this email or else..." type of chain mail-my sense of curiosity just gets the best of me. It's also REALLY hard for me to not try to snoop for presents around my birthday/Christmas, or keep secrets with what I've bought for people. You guys don't even know how hard it was for me to not spill the beans that I'd bought Michael an xbox 360 for Christmas last year...I had to buy it Dec 23rd to reduce the risk of telling!

Today was fairly normal. Work as usual. Then I went to see my friend Pam, who is an ah-maaaaazing hair stylist. So let me tell you a story. Back in July 2009, I decided that since Michael and I were moving 1100 miles, finding a new hair stylist wasn't going to be top priority. Also, Michael didn't have a teaching gig his first semester, and my hours were part time, so very low on $=no budget for hair. I didn't want to have several months worth of roots showing. So I had my NC stylist take me from a very light blonde to dark brown.



I KNOW. This was one of the only pictures I could find with my hair brown. Sorry for no makeup-just scroll quickly.

Reaction was varied and pretty polarizing. Some people said I looked way better as a brunette. Others mourned the death of my blondeness. It was funny to hear such extreme opinions.

By November, I was over it, so when we went home for Christmas, I had my NC stylist begin to take me back to my former blonde self. She couldn't just pour bleach all over my head (well, I guess she could have, but that would have sucked), so she did some highlights to get me started and I left NC with a brown/blonde mix. It was lightened a second time in April, when I was back for a few weeks. She planned on doing one more round with me, but by then I'd found someone in Lawrence I felt like I could trust to do this thing. But it never got back to what I really wanted. And I thought I was okay with that, until I saw pictures of me from the Glitz & Glam event. Holy yellow hair batman! So not what I wanted. So I bit the bullet and did the hairdresser break up, which sucks for both parties involved, but was necessary.

So today Pam and I went through a few options she thought would look good based on what I'd already discussed with her. I left my cut up to her, just letting her know I wanted to keep some length.



LU-HUV. And Michael, the king of not having an opinion when it comes to girly stuff like this? Well, I finally found out that this length and color is what he likes best. He didn't have much to say but trust me, he liked it. ;)