MY HAIR (and other unimportant issues)

LESS THAN SOME BUT MAYBE MORE THAN MANY, MY HAIR IS IMPORTANT TO ME.

I generally don't make much of a fuss about how I look.

I don't buy any of the latest fashions, I struggle to clip my nose hairs and ear hairs, I'm not picky about keeping my nails cut every week.

I'm a walking fashion disaster who wears jeans and a t-shirt almost every single day during the winter and shorts, sandals and a t-shirt every single day of the summer.


For those Nitpicky Nellies or Nigels among you, in the spring and fall I wear whatever I can get away with that's appropriate for the weather.

My thing is comfort, not culture. Fusion, not fashion.

But when it comes to my thinning hair, that's another thing entirely.

I wash it the same way and brush it the same way, every single day. And when it's not right -- or as right as I can make it at the best of times -- I freak.


I don't use any goop or any conditioners. It's naturally curvy or wavy or whatever, and long ago I found out what it naturally likes to do. And that's whatever it wants to.


So I went with the flow, so to speak, and found a style that I've lived with most of my life.

And when I go to get my hair cut, I tell them the same thing all the time and I want it cut the same way, all the time.

And I'm not a very organized person. I don't make haircut appointments every six or eight weeks in advance, because of my work schedule -- and just because I don't think ahead.

I think in the here and now. I'm impulsive.

On Wednesday, my hair was OK. On Thursday, it wasn't. So I needed to get it cut.


So imagine my horror when I tried to make an appointment on Thursday with Ashley, my "hair girl," for Friday or Saturday.

All booked up, she said (she's very cute and she can cut hair well...what can I say?)

I called my backup "hair girl," Barb, who charges a lot more but whose place offers massages while you're waiting and then hair massages before she cuts.

Every time I've gone there, she talks about her other business in construction (snore...)


All booked up, she said.

There's another few places I've been to around here in such dire circumstances, but at one, they barely speak English and at the other, they once cut my ear.

So I set out Saturday on a multi-faceted, high-risk mission:


Get my income tax done, mail some bills, pick up some new cutlery to replace the stuff my daughter takes to work and loses, hopefully get a new camera battery...

And, if possible, get my hair cut.

Almost certainly I forgot several things, but who's counting?

After finding out I'd be getting a lot less back from the government from my income tax file than I had hoped, I remembered a place two doors down in that strip mall. I went inside.

"Are you Dennis?", one of the stylists asked me.

"No, but you can call me Dennis if you want," I replied with a smile. "I'm Chris. I haven't made an appointment but I came in on the off-chance you could cut my hair."

"We're waiting for someone named Dennis to show up for his appointment," she said. "I'm Anne. We can take you in right away."

So Anne, who has a space between her two front teeth just like me, cut my hair.


And she did an OK job, because I hate getting my hair cut.

I always let it grow too long and I wait until the last second to get it cut again, only when it gets unbearable for me...kind of like pulling rotten teeth.

Anne was very pleasant. She's from Kazakhstan in what used to be Russia in what used to be the Soviet Union but she moved here when she was a child.

We talked about the stabbing at the supermarket down the street a couple of weeks ago, about my bald spots, about what I do for a living...

And about how some people are incredibly organized and how some people, like me, do everything at the last minute.

My hair is short again. I gave her a $2 tip. I'm happy, she's happy.


But I still don't have my camera battery, otherwise I would have probably attached before and after pictures. Instead, I've used these other pix from years gone by.

---

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were within my grasp Friday night.

Actually, they were less than two hours away -- in Grand Forks, North Dakota, U.S. of A., both appearing at a Democratic Party something or other.

I had given some thought to actually going down there just to see them. But I had to work.

For my money, as I said months ago, Obama's the guy. I think he IS the saviour of the U.S. and the rest of the free world.

I thought for sure, initially, that Hillary would win. But I think she tried too much to be like a man, which clearly she is not.

Her popularity was at its highest when she was more vulnerable, open and sensitive like the woman she is.

---

My daughter finally got voicemail capability on her fancy-schmancy cellphone.

And right at the end of her new little recorded message to all who call her, she says, "and Dad, only leave a message if you really have to get a hold of me."

You see, I have a habit of calling her just to see how she's doing or what's new. And that is like slow, painful death to a teenager, coming from their father.

Sometimes, I actually pass on critical information that she absolutely MUST respond to, such as that I love her or I want to tell her a joke or something or to find out when she wants me to pick her up from work.

And all this time that she hasn't had voicemail, and I couldn't leave messages just to torture her or otherwise, she's had to phone me back just to find out why I called her in the first place.

So I called her Saturday, expecting to get her voicemail on a day she's usually working. Lo and behold, she answered.

Of course, I teased her about her voicemail message as she was trying to eat lunch with a girl she's going to Europe with for two months at the end of this month.

I bothered her for as long as I could before we said goodbye.

---

My son, who had been carrying on a long-distance phone/internet relationship with a girl who lives seven hours north of here, has abandoned that and now has a new girlfriend who actually attends his school.



I'm driving them, tonight, to a movie, and then picking them up.

There's hope for him yet.

Spring Snippets from Spaceship Orion

I'M DROWNIN' IN THE DREGS OF A DASTARDLY DIATRIBE OF DELIRIUM!!!

OK, I know that made no sense. But it sure is a shining example of alliteration gone wrong.

I got nothin'.

It's April 1, and I can't even come up with a good April Fool's Day Joke to play on you.

I'm too caught up in spring arriving chronologically, but not physically. There's still far too much snow on the ground, too much of a nip in the air. But that's what I get for living in Manitoba.

Yes, Manitoba.

I'm pining for the long shadows cast by a warm summer sun, concrete that's too hot to walk upon, the smell of love in the air and all of nature's flighty desires that go with it...

Instead, the message is take a spot at the end of the line and wait like all the rest of us, buddy!

Oh sure, the Canada Geese are starting to migrate back to poop all over our car windows. That is a sure sign of spring.

Oh sure, I saw a ladybug walking on the sidewalk at work last week. Must have died overnight during freeze-up.

Oh sure, my son has taken to wearing a hoodie outside instead of a jacket. But he's just a goofy teenager who knows nothing about anything. His brain, I think, has been cryonically frozen by all those hormones and pheremones.

Other occurrences that I'm blaming on the failure of spring to truly arrive:

1. My "Check engine" light has come on, a sure sign I'll have to spend more money fixing my car

2. My camera battery decided to go dead

3. Canada's (and Winnipeg's) team won the world women's hurling (the first letter of that word begins with a 'c', remember) championship over China

4. My daughter did NOT make her bed before she left this weekend (which she always does) and my son DID make his bed (which he never does)

5. I'm hardly visiting any other blogs at all and I haven't done a male brain vs. female brain post in some time

I'm not quite sure WHAT I will do if and when spring actually does arrive. Maybe all these things will change. Maybe they won't.

Until then, I decided to "push the envelope" and actually click on the stupid ad below, which appears on every frickin' single internet site that I ever visit. Have you?

And it actually WORKS! I never completed all the 1,328 steps required, but I did find, supposedly, that 464 graduates of my high school were actually registered with this website!

Then I stopped. Who wants to actually ever find their graduating class?

Really silly interludes from Canada (and possibly elsewhere)

THE GREAT BIRD POOP INCIDENT

ON A DAY WHEN I WAS OTHERWISE PREOCCUPIED WITH THE SLIGHT PROBLEM OF NOT BEING ABLE TO HEAR A DAMN THING OUT OF MY RIGHT EAR, I WAS ACCOSTED...BY A CROW.

Actually, the attack came on Wednesday. But I didn't have my camera with me, and the incident left me rather shaken.

So I armed myself with my camera, my missile rocket launcher, my B.B. gun from childhood and my Canadian army fatigues (ha ha ha!) and went to work this morning to catch the black fiend and blast him to smithereens.

The picture above is of one of the outside walls of the building where I work. And you will notice that there are no bird behinds sticking out over the edge, some three or four storeys above.

My prey had escaped.


It was making itself scarce, apparently hanging out on some telephone pole out of my range, where it was cawing or laughing or whatever crows do when they shit on someone's shoulder.
There I was, leaning against the building on Wednesday, my right ear plugged because of a buildup of ear wax and who knows what else, and I was just trying to smoke a cigarette in the warm almost-spring sun.

SPLAT!

Right on my left shoulder. Missed my head by an inch, maybe two. I knew, immediately, what had happened. Others had similarly been victimized.

I immediately looked up and saw the crow's ass and tail feathers. I swear, its butt was laughing.

Linda, the artist/illustrator who was the only other person out there, saw it all. She immediately burst out in laughter herself. I can't say that was my initial reaction.

My black winter jacket was now polluted with a giant grey/white, oozing stain on my left shoulder. My first thought was "EWWWWW!!!" and to take the jacket off to get the poop off, but it was too cold.

Linda helped me clean off most of it as she tried to contain her guffaws, recommending I needed to wash it off with soap and water inside the building. So we went up the escalator to the third floor, and that is what I did.

But I instantly pledged to get my revenge on that crow. Unfortunately, he made himself scarce on Thursday. I could only take that one picture above, otherwise I might have been shot myself by our security weenies.

Still, this got me to thinking, in a bird-brain kind of way. I would have assumed that the dopey pigeons that fly aimlessly around our building year-round would have been responsible for such a dastardly, cowardly act.

I think they train for that, don't they?

(I think this pic above is Dubya, but I have no sympathy for him; he invites all the shit he gets)

And in a rather weak attempt at a suitable segue, I was finally able to attend to my doctor's office on Thursday.

There, he sprayed about 1,000 gallons of water into both my ears to dislodge about 10 pounds of ear wax that, eerily, similarly looks like shit.

Maybe there's a message in there somewhere.

(Eds note: This is not MY ear wax. My ear wax looks much worse. For pictures, which you do not want your children to see, contact Dr. MacLeod).

And while I'm at it, Happy Birthday, Gerry!