A hair raising experience?

After going to the Date Festival in Yuma on Saturday, I had to get ready for three days of work in the VC.  At four in the morning on Sunday a front began to move through, and Holy Mackerel! did the winds ever kick up.  Woke me up out of a deep sleep.  I had to roll in the window awnings and pull in the slides.  Not much sleep after that.

Once there was a little daylight, I looked out the side window of the rig.  That’s not fog, it’s blowing dust.  Normally, I have a grand view of the Chocolate Mountains out my window.  We had two days of high winds and below normal temps.  You just felt kind of gritty when you came inside.

By Tuesday, the winds had abated some so the scheduled prescribed burn of pond #5 could happen.  Last week the pond was drained, and all native fish species were captured and removed for later reintroduction.  The burn was to remove invasive plant species and clear off the island in the pond for use by wintering waterfowl.

Rockets with fireballs for ammunition were used to launch fire onto the island.  Turned out that the burn wasn’t as good as hoped for.  I’ll be out there next Sunday to see what it accomplished.  Those mountains in the background are what I usually see out my window, so if you compare that to my first pic in this post you can get an idea of how dense the dust was on Sunday.

Today was my first day off this week so I took care of laundry and then headed for Yuma to take care of errands and grocery shopping.  My first stop was at the Verizon store to get my USB air card disconnected.  Last week I had purchased a Jetpack for internet reception on a trial basis to see if I could use not only my laptop, but my i-Pad.   After some initial glitches that were eating up my gigabytes, I think I’ll be happy with the Jetpack.  Of course, the ‘associate’ that I had today couldn’t produce what the guy I talked to last week had promised.  I sure wish these yahoos would get on the same page.  Ugh!

Anyway, after that unpleasant experience I decided to get a hair cut at a place close by that I had a one half off coupon for that came on the back of my last receipt from Fry’s grocery store.  The name of the place was SportClips.  Never heard of that chain before, and I was a bit taken aback as I entered the establishment.

As I walked in, there was a huge screen TV with sports guys talking about college football.  The waiting area chairs were actually three rows of football or baseball stadium seats.  Oddest looking beauty parlor I’d ever seen.  I waited by the desk to ask one of the hair stylists (barbers?) if this was a men’s only type of place.  She assured me it wasn’t.  Well, I have to tell you that I was the only woman that came in for a cut.  The stylists wore sports type uniforms with stripes, and their services included hot facial towels (around your beard area), neck massages, and a message shampoo!  Kind of made me chuckle as I waited for my turn.  This would be a new experience.

As I was led to my chair, the haircutting area was surrounded by four more TV’s with the sports mouths blabbing away.  Kind of felt like I was in a man cave or something.  There was even a tiled area in the back that said “Showers”.   In for a penny, in for a pound…

The hairstylist did a very nice job with my cut, but slopped on a bunch of goop on my head to start with.  She said it was conditioner.  Do you have any idea what conditioner does to a person with very fine hair?  It made my hair just flatten down on my head.  I told her I thought I’d need a shampoo to get it out.

We went through the ‘Shower’ opening for the shampoo.  Turns out there aren’t any showers, that’s just where the shampoo sinks are.  These chairs and sinks are obviously made for tall men.  The sink to lay my head back in was way too high for me.  No problem… the chair went up, a footrest came out, and the chair started vibrating like those long ago ‘magic fingers’!  I’ve never quite had an experience like this in a beauty salon.

With my coupon as a new customer, the cost for this cut was $8.50.  Can’t beat that.  I’m thinking I may just get the MVP full treatment the next time with the hot towels, massage, and all.  That would bump the price to $20, but I’ve paid more for a lot less before.  I’m just not sure about those beard towels though.  I’ve got a few more long hairs on my chin since menopause, but I surely don’t consider it a beard!

Thanks for stopping by… talk to you later,  Judy