Hair Today

Before

 After

A couple of weeks ago, Shona wanted to go get her hair trimmed and have some layers put into it. It looked very pretty with her natural waves. Then this week she asked if I would lop her hair off even shorter. A month ago it was almost to her waist. Today it's shoulder-length. This is still wet. After it dried it was even cuter. More pictures another time. I don't know if she just wanted a change or if she was tired of taking care of all that hair, but I think I will be saving some serious money on shampoo.

 Last night was my company's holiday party. Good food and free alcohol for the first two hours, so that's a good start. The band on the bottom floor was really good. Plus I won a few trinkets playing Plinko. I did great at skee ball, but you don't get prizes for that. Dangit.

Instead of  a boring speech this year, we were treated to acrobats. Sadly, this is the only picture I got the entire evening. We did get a professional photo taken, but it's so bad I refuse to post it. Nope. Don't even ask.

I didn't win any of the drawings this year, but that's OK. We left shortly after 9 p.m. because after the acrobat act and the drawings, all that was left was the gaming room. Well, that and the chocolate fountain, but I don't do chocolate. We aren't gamblers, so it was a great time to leave. The party is quite the production, I'll give them that.

Oh yeah, and today is our 24th anniversary. I still haven't come up with anything as awesome as my treadmill to give to him. Maybe by our 25th.

The Long Road to Nowhere

Hello, old friend. A few years ago, I burned out my treadmill. At the time, my knee was giving me a lot of issues, so I thought it was a good time to switch to an elliptical for a lower impact workout. From the beginning I had problems with the bottoms of my feet burning. Silly me thought it was just a matter of adjusting, and that I would eventually get used to it or it would go away after a while. You should really listen to your body. When it tells you something is wrong, believe it. I, being the stubborn idiot that I can be, developed plantar fasciitis from not heeding the warnings my body was sending me about using the elliptical.

Know what's especially annoying? I never even got up to a good workout on the elliptical. Three weeks of no working out to heal my feet doesn't feel that much different than working out on the elliptical. There's a problem there.

Tonight I came home to a new treadmill assembled and set up in the basement, ready to go in front of my little screen. Our 24th anniversary is this weekend. I'm calling this my anniversary present, even if I did tell him to go out and buy me a treadmill, because I didn't expect him to actually listen. Plus...he assembled it. Dang. Does this mean I now have to go find him an awesome anniversary gift?

I'm just looking forward to getting back to walking. I can't believe how much I've missed it.

Look at this.. It's only a couple of weeks into the new year, and I've already failed to keep up with my blog. But in my defense, I've been busy. Katy and Matt came in for a few days and we were out running most of that time. Katy and I had a shopping day to get her hair cut and find a new pair of boots. We did manage to find the boots, but only after looking in every shoe and department store in the area. This is what she wound up with:

I found a new purse along the way, too.

I don't know how I am so abusive to my purses, but the poor things don't last very long. The one I had the most hope of lasting for longer than six months died a horrible death by syrup after a McDonald's breakfast run one morning.

Anyway, in addition to shoe and purse shopping, we took everyone to see "Into the Woods" after Katy said she really wanted to see it. Their comments? "There was too much singing." Hello! It's a musical! And yes, they knew it was a musical before they went in. So much for culture.

And in other news, I've had to give up my elliptical thanks to plantar fasciitis. It's excruciating. I had to buy some Dr. Scholl's inserts and tape up my feet with this stuff:

What a difference. Two weeks later and I can almost walk normally again. Almost. I'm planning to start walking again, but it's cold outside and I don't have a treadmill. Ugh. 

Is winter over yet?

 John and I went to see the Plains Indians exhibit at the Nelson-Atkins art museum since it was about to close out and move on. The outside had cool works, as did the inside, but my aging eyes have trouble seeing all the inside works thanks to that low museum lighting. Forget reading most of the captions. Getting old is so fun. Yeah, I guess it beats the alternative, but I can still whine about it.

And of course the giant shuttlecock. Doesn't everyone have to go visit that during their trip to the art museum? I would have enjoyed it more except it was cold out there. How cold?




It started doing this a few hours later. First snow of 2015.
I'm so not ready for this winter nonsense.

One of the first things we did in 2015 was head to IKEA. John couldn't give up the hat yet, which seemed to make people's day. I had to snap the picture to send to Teresa. How many trips has she made to KC to see her kids and she still hadn't made it to IKEA? Dude. I've been three three times already. Only once willingly, though. It tends to lose its appeal when the population of California tries to shop there within an hour. I managed to not punch anyone during any of my trips, so I'm calling them all a brilliant success.