Epiphany, Part II

I have now discovered that Nutella + Irish brown bread = crazy delicious.


It's totally cool for me to eat just that for dinner, right? Maybe if I put some bananas on it and have a glass of milk it will cover all my food groups. As a consequence, though, I might die of food-related joy, so maybe it's not the best idea.

Boyfriend = awesome

I am so spoiled. It's Valentine's Day, and I ditched my true blue dude to go scurry off to Dublin for work. Harsh, right? Well, not only is he not upset...he's a total freaking sweetheart about it.

See, he got points before I even left by taking me out for dinner last week and getting me a pretty necklace as a gift. Pretty suave, I thought.

I figured he'd be bummed while I was gone, so I got him a few things and hid them away in the house. I figured I could reveal their location on the 14th, and he'd think it was sweet of me. (I was just lucky he didn't find them while he was cleaning out our apartment in preparation for our move. That would have been sucky!)

Turns out, I didn't even know "sweet." Homeboy showed me up! He sent me gorgeous flowers and a card and a picture of us. To my hotel. He had them put it all in my room. That, my friends, is sweet. And look how pretty! It's not as good as having him around, but it definitely makes me a little less sad to be without him on this Great Day of Romance.

My man rules, does he not? He totally does. Gold star for Josh!

What did you all do for Valentine's?

From boulangeries to pubs

On Thursday, I was in California. This morning, I was in Strasbourg. This afternoon I was in Paris. Now, I'm in Dublin. It's been a long few days, but good ones. It's always good to see Murielle! It's also good to head to our international office (and a city that's new to me).

I'll write more later, but wanted you all to know that I'm alive and kicking (if seriously jet lagged). See?

Hair today...

So, up until recently, I had been working some seriously long locks.










I mean, there's so much hair, that's really the first thing you notice. Generally, I'm fine with that, but I never really did anything with all my masses of hair, and I'd had it the same for about three years, so I figured it was time for a change. I used to change my hair constantly, cut and color, the whole shebang, but since I became a working girl, I got into a bit of a rut. Though it had become quite heavy, I liked the way the long hair felt (just like my mom!), but thought it looked sort of blah.

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know I'd pondered the Alexis Bledel and various other hair styles, as well as various hair colors. Heavy bangs? Maybe not with the glasses. Should I go auburn or chocolate? Blunt or layered? Oh, the myriad of choices...

I eventually meandered over to TheHairstyler.com, where I tried a lot of different styles on my badly-photoshopped head. I also flipped through my hair file (a folder with all the various styles I've ripped out of magazines over the years). Finally, I settled on one, and made the appointment at Priorities/Mona Lisa Salon before I could change my mind.

And here I am, immediately post-haircut, all curled and styled by the lovely people at the salon.


I loved it immediately, even the moment she hacked off my whole ponytail. (She did it that way because I'm donating it to Locks of Love.) Apparently most women spaz out when they cut off a serious bunch of hair (mine was about a foot), but right away when I saw it short, I thought: "Yep, this is right. What was I thinking with that bohemian look?"

As you can see, it is quite curly and awesome, however, so I was a bit concerned about being able to replicate its awesomeness back in the comfort of my own abode. Skill with hair is not innate to me, but I really didn't want to get back into the mode of ponytailing it every day (though it does make a cute little stumpy ponytail, per my request).

Well, after some trial and error, I've managed to get things down to a fairly quick blowdry + curl process that produces this sort of results, which I'm perfectly happy with.



Originally I'd thought about going dark brown post-chop, but I'm surprisingly digging the honey blonde a bit. I haven't had my all-natural hair color in ages (maybe since 2001 or so?), so I think I'll run with this for a while.

Thoughts?