While we “fell back” to standard time last month, Russia stayed on permanent daylight savings time. In my world, this means that Moscow (where most of our space station colleagues are located) suddenly became 10 hours ahead of us instead of 9. I participate in a 2-hour standing telecon on Tuesday mornings at 7:00, which was 4:00 Moscow time. We came in an hour early, they stayed an hour late, and all was well. But with the time change, the powers that be decided to split the difference and until March, the telecon now starts at 6:30 am. Fun! Or not.
Since my topics don’t usually come up until an hour or so into the telecon, I took Melissa’s excellent suggestion of just listening to the first part while I drive to work. Before November, I left the house at 6:30 to get to work in time for the 7:00 start. Now I still leave the house at 6:30, but listen to the first half hour while I drive. I don’t have to get up any earlier, but I still start my work day a half hour earlier — which means I get to leave a half hour earlier too. Win!
Leaving work at 2:30 leaves me with all sorts of time. Yesterday I got a haircut and she styled it straight. Of course it looked great. I can never reproduce what she does at home and at some point I gave up trying, but last night after my third hair-washing of the day (morning, haircut, and post-run, geez), I decided to give it another go and dragged out my rarely-used blow dryer. Just in case you can’t tell which is which (as if!!), the top left is my hairstylist’s work and the bottom right is my attempt. I was reasonably successful, and it even looked fine today after sleeping on it last night.
(No, I didn’t change on which side of my head I parted my hair. I even took both photos with the front-facing camera. Weird iPhone camera quirk, I guess.)
As I was leaving the salon, I spotted the sign for Rise Cupcakes in the strip mall across the street. I saw someone mention them on Facebook or Twitter recently but hadn’t looked up their exact location — but there they were. It was a sign! I stopped in and bought two cupcakes to try for dessert last night. I got the “Oh Joy” for me, a chocolate cupcake with almond buttercream topped with coconut flakes and a chocolate-covered almond. I got “Scary Spice” (or something like that; must have been a special because it’s not on their website) for Jose, a pumpkin spiced cupcake with a cream cheese filling and spiced buttercream.
I ate mine and was enjoying it immensely, but then I tasted Jose’s and dang — his was even better! The icing was nice and fluffy, and the cake was moist. My biggest complaint about cupcakes is that the cake itself is often dry, but these didn’t suffer from that particular problem. Both cupcakes were really tasty, so the only real downside was the price. At $3.25 per cupcake or $36 for a dozen, they are certainly not cheap, but for a special occasion it’d be a nice place to go.
Hair looks great! I have to say top left looks the greatest though – that was the stylist? It looks kind of shiny and sleek or something.
Oh yeah, she does it better than me for sure. She has a hair dryer attachment that I don’t have, plus she knows what she’s doing! But I was encouraged to find that I can at least somewhat replicate it.
so this is kind of unrelated. by i don’t get the hystematic photo fad. they just look like old 80s faded photos. let’s just say, if i could get my old faded 80s photos in modern print color I would. ok. end rant.
I’ve been having fun playing with Instagram lately, obviously. Since the phones still don’t take super great quality photos (though they keep getting better), it’s fun to mess with different filters. I go back and forth on how much I like it, but at the moment I do.
I love your hair and I think you did a good job of styling it! And those cupcakes looks awesome, I may have to try Rise if I am ever in your neck of the woods!