Bandwagon

Seems I’ve been jumping on a few bandwagons lately. Have you noticed? Not that I’d know since none of you bastards comment anyway. (Kidding.)

So… I’ve hitched my fake horse up to a few new things, a little behind the times on some, oh so totally with it on others (ya right). Here’s a sad little list for you:

• Blogger beta – I was afraid, very afraid to make the jump. I thought I’d read somewhere about losing previously posted photos so I was horrified at the thought of a bunch of red X’s scattered throughout my poor blog. Turns out what I thought were a pack of lies & I’m loving the new setup. Plus I made a new banner. Clean & simple. Just like me. Shut up.
• Internet Explorer to the nth or whatever the latest version is. At first I thought all my favorites were lost but now they’re just under a fancy smancy + button. I still can’t find my Edit doohickey though which is unnerving. I'm also having trouble getting the Beta dashboard to show up (works in Firefox). Also, there’s something up with my Flash player. No matter how many times I download the new version, it still won’t work, hence the regular Flickr badge to the right. Hopefully Sugar Daddy will fix when he returns from the Great White North. Maybe with Vista – I’ll let you know what that’s like.
• BloggerChicks – I got the code for this about a thousand years ago & didn’t put it in my template what with all the moving & shite. Now it’s there but apparently the sign-up sheet is out of commission until the end of November. So I’m plugging it without being a part of it. We’ll see what happens. I may give up. Just like I did on the feeds. I never did figure out quite how they all work (I understand the basics, it’s the fine details that I don’t have the energy to sort my head around) & it’s not like anyone ever subscribed to them either.
• Library Thing. I love, love, love this. Why I didn’t do this when I first read about it is beyond me. I’ve signed up for 4 accounts. 1 for the stuff I’ve been reading lately (since I had Doodles, but I can’t remember all of them since my positronic matrix is fried.), 1 for my library of books (that I haven’t started cataloguing yet because I am afraid of the end number), 1 is for the baby’s books (61 so far) & another for the books I’ve taken out of the library to read to her. My hope is that we’ll keep it up so she can have a list of all the books she’s ever read. Totally cool.
• Flickr Pro account. Ya I was suckered in after I “lost” a whole bunch of my uploaded pictures. $25 bucks & a whole ton of newly uploaded pics later & I’ve barely used 1% of my monthly quota. Awesome.
• Gymboree. When I looked into this in Ottawa I thought it was insane to pay good money to go play somewhere when I could basically do the same at home. I had the drop-in coffee mom group, spinning class, friends to talk to, other babies nearby to shove mine at & what I thought were plenty of toys. Here, I aint got nobody (nobody nobody cares for me | I'm so sad and lonely | sad and lonely sad and lonely) & it’s been raining a hell of a lot so we went to a free drop-in class & it was awesome. Doodles loves loves loves it & I even met someone from Ottawa. How weird is that? So. Worth. It.
• Skinny jeans. Ya you heard me. I bought a pair of skinny jeans. I haven’t worn them yet. I’m too scared & might possibly need them in a size smaller. (Woo hoo!) I’m under my pre-pregnancy weight but things have shifted & I need new clothes. Last Saturday the dude took care of the monkey for a few hours (taking her outside sans sweater!!) so I could go to the shops. I ended up in Macy’s surprised to find myself thinking I looked not half bad in a pair of Calvin Klein skinny jeans, a long sweater & cute shoes. Then I thought, man I need to do something about the mop that is my hair.
• New hair. (Holy hell this is a post in itself. Be prepared for the longest bullet point in history!) Yes Trish I cut it again. Sheesh! You see moving to a new city brings with it so many dilemmas that one doesn’t necessarily think about prior to packing. The whole doctor thing for instance (see a couple of posts down (update: have called Pediatricians & made appointment with doc who I thought had the nicest smile on the website.)). There’s also the horror of finding a new hairdresser. I’ve had two, maybe three good hairdressers in my life. You know, the kind who just get your hair. For me this is rare. My hair is weird. It’s very fine, dry, curly, cowlicky, frizzy, there’s a lot of it & to top it off I now have resistant grey. I’ve had few grey hairs since I was 13 (how mortifying to find one at that age!) & now they come in so fast (& they are multiplying! The horror!) it’s like that whole Dorian Grey episode. At the end when all the hideousness of age & corruption transfers itself onto him? Ya that part. So… I’ve been to the hairdresser’s once since we moved & while the colour was fabulous, the cut left me feeling like a 1980’s heavy metal guitarist. Why must they (the hairdressers) insist on layering my hair? Some layering is good, otherwise my hair can look like ancient Egyptian statuary (wedge-shaped headdress). However, much layering = bad ‘80’s glam. Plus, it makes the bottom half looks stringy. The stringy-ness was getting to me & I was feeling a mess because I had done the stupid thing & dyed it myself again since I wasn’t sure when I’d get back to the salon. So there I was looking at myself in those stylin’ skinny jeans & I decided I needed a haircut, pronto. I’d been formulating this in my head since before the last cut & decided I wanted a bob. Like what I had in my high school pictures. Hey man, I was cool. Back off. Plus I had read somewhere (magazine, internet, who knows?) that it was totally bitchin back in style because of Jessica Simpson, Sandra Bullock & maybe Madonna. But I had thought of it way before them. Really I had. Anyway, the fancy salon couldn’t fit me in so I went to something called Regis. Way in the back of my mind I seemed to remember a Regis salon from my childhood in Winnipeg where my mother would take me for trims & perms but I wrote it off as silliness & not having had any lunch. Looking at the place, it appeared warm & inviting but I guess anything would’ve with the torrential rain that was beating down. The girl that I took to be a receptionist was sweet & said she could fit me in in about 45 minutes so after a quick bite I went back to find out that this sweet young thang would be my stylist. She was really unsure of herself & I was beginning to freak out in my head sitting complacently in the chair thinking that this was going to be a disaster. I just kept smiling though & making stupid chit chat. Why I never said anything is my fault as I’m totally intimidated by all hairdressers. I said bob but what I got was shag. After the first few cuts I thought it was going the way I dreamed it would & then I thought she was done because it was looking great. Bob-like. Then she kept going. I got more layers. All over. Everywhere. There was no semblance of the bob in my head anywhere on my head. Crap. In the end it has actually turned out ok & pretty cute when I put the right amount of products in it (don’t get me started on the money I’ve spent trying out product) but I am on the hunt for the next perfect stylist. You know, one that gets it.