A Fish with a Bicycle

The Chili Fight

2011-12-02T11:21:00.001-08:00

BF and I

January will make 6 years with the BF. Which is officially longer than any other relationship either of us have had. I suppose we were due.

The BF is a hunter. As in rifles, mossy oak camouflage, blaze orange, and deer tags type hunter. My understanding is that he's been hunting since he was legal to do so, and he comes from a family that hunts. It's just part of his heritage.

Which works out fine for me. Despite my weird peace-mongering hippy-like nature, I am no vegetarian. I firmly stand with the people who say, "There's room for all God's creatures-- right next to the mashed potatoes." Especially if those mashed potatoes came from my own garden and were cooked in a Dutch oven over real wood coals from firewood that I gathered myself.

Nevertheless, in all his years, the BF has yet to actually shoot a deer. Maybe, somewhere in the back of his head he thinks they're really cute. Maybe he secretly just doesn't want to have to drag something with antlers back to the car. Maybe he lives (and therefore does most of his hunting) in California-- which is not a terribly hunter-friendly state and truly does its best to make catching your own meat as big a pain in the ass as possible... or maybe deer just run really fast. But thus far, in those 6 years that we've been together, our freezer stays stocked with wild blackberries and homegrown butternut squash far more so than venison.

Which works out fine for me, despite my weird peace-mongering hippy-like nature.

And it turns out that, considering that I am not from a hunting family, I am pretty fond of wild game. It probably goes well with my Pioneer Woman thing-- whatwith the sourdough bread and the cooking with fire and such.

But it isn't uncommon for us to find ourselves in the occasional possession of venison from those who have had successful deer seasons. So for the last year we've been hoarding two packages of venison stew meat.

The BF shows very little interest in doing anything with it. He showed little interest in doing anything with the last venison stew meat gift we received from a friend a few years back. I finally made chili with that and it was delicious.

But one rarely finds oneself dreaming of a hot, hearty bowl of chili in these parts, where we only enjoy about 3 months of reasonably cold weather.

But last week, the temperature finally dropped, the fog rolled in, we started burning our firewood and a big, steaming pot of chili sounded really good.

So while we were planning our weekly menu, I suggested we make a pot of venison chili.

So the BF told me I should go (right then) and take one of the packs of stew meat out of the freezer and let it thaw.

And then it was Thanksgiving. And our Thanksgiving is a two day extravaganza that prevented us from bothering with more mundane dinner preparation until Saturday. Saturday came and, although we now had thawed venison, we did not have a big pot of beans to add it to.

Ok-- I admit. Cooking dry beans has not yet made it to my personal list of "talents." I've tried a number of different methods and I've never experienced results that ended in total, inedible, disaster, but the beans always end up splitting.

Big deal, right? It's not like the BF's "57 Bean Soup Plan" where he insisted on purchasing a bag of EVERY SINGLE TYPE OF DRY BEAN (and general legume such as split peas and lentils) that the store had in stock last year, then carefully measured them out and mixed them together with total disregard of differences in cooking times.

And that should give you enough information to understand that we are currently in possession of approximately 16 different types of dry beans and general legumes left over from his Bean Soup Plan... not to mention a gallon pitcher of mixed dry beans that I have no idea what we will do with because the Bean Soup Plan did--indeed-- prove to end in aforementioned disastrous results.

So, it was Saturday evening when we realized we had not planned appropriately for the chili project by getting a pot of dry beans soaking throughout the day... so I went to the pantry and fetched a collection of reasonably like-minded beans (black, red, and kidney) and started soaking them with intentions of then draining them in the morning and then starting them in the crock pot on Sunday morning.

However... come Sunday morning, the BF had had enough of the long weekend at home and insisted on getting outside and doing something.

Me: Doing Something

I'm not opposed to "doing something." In fact, before the BF, I used to "do somethings" on a much more frequent basis. But I like to sleep till 11 a.m. (I also like to stay up till 2 a.m.)-- the BF is a morning person. He voluntarily gets out of bed at the crack of dawn... and sings. He thinks 9 a.m. is the absolute last possible time that you can start "doing something" and still get it done. Because, apparently, he's afraid of the dark. That's the only reasonable explanation I can think of for people who feel compelled to be safely back inside before the sun sets.

I have a whole theory about peoples' hunter/gatherer/caveman ancestry: My people definitely were the ones on night watch... the BF's did not like being left outside in the dark when the things they'd been hunting all day suddenly started hunting them. That's my theory.

So, Sunday morning came and the BF and I were on our way up to the foothills for a hike about 2 hours before my brain could even warm up to operating temperature. So the beans were left soaking.

Monday was the day of the local Christmas Parade, and my business neighbors and I open up our offices on the fourth floor of the building where we work for a big Parade-viewing party, so I left the house in a flurry of crockpots and apple cider on Monday morning, giving nary a thought to the beans. And so it was Tuesday morning before I remembered to rinse the beans and get them in the crock pot.

The BF gets home from work an average of 3 to 4 hours ahead of me. The plan was for him to sear the venison, chop some onions and peppers and throw it all into the pot.

The BF does not have a cell phone. But he had been IM'ing me upon his arrival at home in order to keep me apprised of his chili-related plans. He mentioned that there were a lot of beans. So I told him to just put what he didn't need into a bowl and I would repackage them for freezing when I got home.

And then I got home.

I got home around 9 p.m. to find my dear BF standing in front of a 6 quart stock pot on the stove top, still wearing his work uniform (he's a mechanic, he gets filthy everyday, so he takes a shower when he gets home,) and looking lost.

He looked up at me and said, "I don't really know what I'm doing."

And that would have made a great story. It was cute. I would have fixed the chili and come to work and told the story of how it was so cute that he didn't know what he was doing, even though he was the one who kept telling me how the chili plan was going to unfold, and life would have gone on.

But noooooooo.....

I walked over the pot to find a very full stock pot of chili. He said that there was a lot of chili and he thought we needed to add liquid.

Oh, This? I've always had this.

I asked what he'd done with the extra beans. He looked at me like he'd never noticed the ear in the center of my forehead before and said, "what extra beans?"

I reminded him that we'd just had this conversation about putting half the beans away for another use. He said, "oh yeah, I forgot to do that."
This befuddled me slightly-- we'd just discussed it about an hour ago.

I also see that the venison is in rather large chunks, and I asked why he hadn't chopped it up into smaller pieces before he seared it.

He informed me that "I guess I kinda thought the venison was going to be for the dogs." And, "it turns out maybe I don't really like venison that much."

This was news to me. In a similar way that it would have been news to me if he'd looked up at me and said-- after 6 years together-- that it turned out that he wasn't that into girls.

I had no response to this new revelation of his. Other than to wonder why he pays for deer tags every year if he doesn't actually want one.

Then he mentioned that he was not exactly impressed with the beans.

To which I also had no response.

Then he concluded that perhaps he was also "not that fond of beans."

At this point I begin to conclude that my BF has suffered some sort of head injury.

Then he did it. He went from adorable "It turns out I'm not that sure how to make chili after all" to "and it's all your fault."

This did not go over so well with me.

As near as I can tell, his argument came down along the lines of accusing me of having not just procrastinated on the project, but downright just not finishing something that I'd started. He claimed that he had never claimed to know anything about making chili, but he had gotten tired of waiting for it to get done so he felt it was time to force the issue.

This is very unusual for him. Usually everything is "we" and "us" and here he was, basically handing me the blame for him not knowing what to do with the chili-- and I don't even know how it's my fault that he'd just realized he didn't even like venison and beans "all that much."

Apparently, I took the venison out of the freezer too soon and I soaked the beans too long.

Except-- where had he been? How had he managed to miss the whole last week? The part where we decided to make chili. The part where he told me to take the meat out of the freezer to thaw. The part where he told me that we needed to use the dry beans (I could easily have opened a couple of cans of beans and we'd have had chili that same night.) The part where he confidently announced that he was going to sear the meat, that he was going to add the meat and the veggies and the tomato sauce? You know, the part where he had the plan on how to make this into chili?

It's not that I can't make chili. But had I been aware that the entire project was resting on my shoulders, I may have opted for a different plan.

For one thing, I wouldn't have started thawing the meat the day before Thanksgiving. I also wouldn't have opted to have Thanksgiving dinner (the traditional one that we did on Friday) at noon. I don't believe in Thanksgiving lunch. I have never understood why so many people insist on having Thanksgiving dinner in the middle of the afternoon already, but 3:30 is about my limit of tolerance for an early "dinner." I swear I never got the memo about noon... which meant that we were out of the house for two meals that day, because, as all who do a traditional TG with family know, once you arrive at a relative's home, you cannot leave. Sometimes your grandparents simply hold you hostage, sometimes you find yourself sucked into some sort of hypnotic, fun-with-family-around-the-fire, Christmas movie-induced stupor... either way, if the whole day hadn't ended up coming as such a surprise to me, I could most likely have predicted that we would not be home for dinner-- real dinner, at real dinner time.

So it should not have come as any sort of shock that there was no way we were going to start the chili project until at least Saturday anyway.

But I wasn't the only one who totally forgot about soaking beans on Saturday morning! And I wasn't the only one who totally forgot about putting them in the crock pot on Sunday.

And then he looks at me with total sincerity and tells me that he's "worried" about me because I keep insisting that nobody cc'd me on that whole "Thanksgiving at noon" thing. He says that "it was discussed several times" that Thanksgiving would be "at lunchtime."

And I am utterly convinced that he is doing that thing that men do where they assume that their significant other just magically knows everything they know--or are supposed to know. I think they do this because we are the ones who know when their niece's birthday is or why we're feeding their parents' dogs one weekend. So it stands to reason that if he was in on a conversation, he would assume that I was also listening.

So this is how the scene unfolds from my point of view:

First of all, he realizes he doesn't know how to make the chili.
Then, he decides that he doesn't like beans or venison anyway.
Then, somehow the chili didn't work out the way he had planned because I didn't start making chili on Thanksgiving Day when we were busy doing other stuff and mostly not being at home anyway.
Then, somehow the chili didn't work out the way he had planned because I let the beans soak too long before cooking them because of all the other things we had to get done that weekend.
Then, I've apparently developed dementia because I can't remember a conversation that I wasn't part of and somehow this is why the chili isn't right.

I was, shall we say, less than impressed with the way this conversation was turning out.

Ultimately the BF decided that fighting over chili was a stupid idea, we now have 6 quarts of perfectly edible venison chili, and I get a story to tell to other women who nod and laugh and assure me that they totally understand my pain.

And the BF admits that the chili turned out "pretty good" afterall.

Jerusalum Artichoke

2011-11-15T14:42:00.001-08:00

The BF has this book called "Back to Basics."

This is not where it all started, I think it all started with growing up on stories of when my parents moved to Canada-- before I was born. Where they rented a small house that I imagine as being off the beaten path at the end of a long, unpaved road-- sort of prime real estate for a horror movie. They had to go to town to buy propane for the generator, which was housed in the generator shed, down a small path away from the house. And Mom had to heat the house and cook with a wood-burning stove.

Since propane was expensive and far away, Mom only started the generator for a few hours each night, so Dad could watch tv when he got home from working on a ranch. So she spent most of her day living Pioneer-style with out electricity, cooking with the wood stove, and washing clothes in the bath tub with water that she heated on the stove.

I've never seen photos of this house and, as I mentioned, this was before I was born, so I only have the images in my head from years of listening to Mom's stories about the brief time they lived there... but for some reason, these stories really appeal to me.

And then PBS came along with their twist on reality tv and I was absolutely HOOKED on Frontierhouse (and if anyone knows where I can get it on DVD please tell me!)

It's true: Someday, if I ever retired from doing nails, I hope to go live in a one-room cabin with out electricity, on a piece of land at least 5 miles from the nearest neighbor. My cell phone is going in the ocean-- or the bottom of a very deep lake-- I'm even trying to imagine a life without the internet! That'll be the real challenge. And, with luck, I'll get snowed-in every year by October with no human interaction (except probably the BF) until the following April. Awwwwwwww. Now that is what I'm talkin' about!

So the BF comes along with this "Back to Basics" book which is essentially all about living "off the grid" and being self-sufficient. Which I am all about.

So, when last spring, while we were planting our annual vegetable garden, I came across a little Hmong lady at the farmer's market who was selling "Jerusalem Artichoke," I bought a bag of the things.

What, exactly, is "Jerusalem Artichoke," you ask? Well-- it's mentioned in the Back to Basics book as being an excellent option for growing in one's garden. But it's not something I've ever seen in a grocery store. So I bought it from the little Hmong lady and decided to take it home and try it out.

Except, I had no clue what to do with it.

It's a rhizome, kinda looks like ginger root. Supposedly you can just crunch on it raw, or cook it up like pretty much any veggie. It kinda tastes like a very mild carrot, but is very crunchy with a texture like water chestnuts or jicama.

The BF eyed it suspiciously and wasn't very eager to have me experiment with using it in any of our usual dishes. So I wrapped it in a paper towel, put it in a plastic bag and set it on a shelf in the garage-- as per the "storage" directions that I'd come across online.

And forgot about it.

And then one day, we came across it again, only now it had two 6 inch green sprouts jutting out of it.

Being that it was early spring when we're all excited about the garden and growing whatever we can, the BF insisted on planting it. So I opted to bury it in a 10 gallon pot as everything I'd read about it said that it is very prolific and will take over any area where it is planted.

I will say-- if you are the type of person who has a "black thumb" and kills every plant you've ever had, try growing this stuff! You will feel awesome with your new-found gardening skills because it is impossible to not get this stuff to grow! And grow it did!

Jerusalem Artichoke is neither from Jerusalem nor is it related in any way to artichokes. It's a sunflower plant native to North America's eastern seaboard, growing from Georgia to Nova Scotia. It was originally cultivated by Native Americans and introduced to the settlers along with all those traditional Thanksgiving foods that kept us from starving.

From what I've gathered, the stuff was cultivated in European nations and here in the States and was fairly common in our diet until around World War 2. It was one of the few vegetables that didn't get rationed during the war (probably because it's so freakin easy to grow) so it appears that an entire generation pretty much got its fill during those years and, after the war rationing ended, refused to every eat it again. Which is how a few more generations managed to grow up without ever hearing of the stuff.

It seems to be undergoing a resurgence in popularity now.

Of course, I learned all this after the fact.

And so it grew in my garden. And grew...and grew.

The damn thing grew about 12 feet tall! And it looked exactly like all the wild sunflower plants that grow along the side of the road or the river around here. It was huge. Much too big for a plant that was growing out of 10 gallon pot!

The BF kept asking me what we were going to do with it and what it was supposed to do. I kept telling him "*!&@ if I know!" But the information I was able to find about it said that it would eventually flower and then die and then we could dig up the rhizomes and eat them. Which didn't seem like a very good idea seeing as how we hadn't been interested in eating the 5 or 6 pieces that I'd initially purchased at the Farmer's Market-- why were we interested in digging up a whole pot of them?

The plant flowered in September. It was kinda pretty in a very tall weed sorta way. But sure enough, as summer waned to fall, the foliage started to die back, the flowers wilted and dropped and last weekend we decided to cut the whole thing down and pull it up...

O... M...G! What are we going to do with this stuff?!

The pot was beyond root-bound. There wasn't even room left for dirt, the rhizomes had grown up against the sides of the pot so densely that they were just squished into little flat disks! We had to hand pick it out of the pot because it was so packed that it wouldn't come out.

We keep joking that we pulled 25 gallons of rhizome out of that 10 gallon pot!

If you decide to grow this stuff yourself, DEFINITELY put it in a pot! I can see how this stuff would entirely take over your garden..or yard. In fact, I'm now terrified of what will sprout next spring from the flowers dropping seeds into our yard.

I really wish we were that poor and hungry to be grateful for a bounty like this. But honestly, I'm looking at it wondering what I'll do with it.

It's not bad raw. I've managed to find several recipes for it. Rumor has it that it boils down and mashes very well-- great substitute for potatoes, and good in soups. Or stir fry.

What I wish I'd known before we dug it all up though, is that it doesn't store well once dug up. We should have left it in the ground and dug it up as we needed it. So I fear that 10 gallons of Jerusalem Artichoke is going to go to waste.

The BF is absolutely adamant that we will grow it again next spring.

But I don't know what we're going to do with it next year either.

Uphill-both-ways Bread

2011-11-03T16:16:00.000-07:00

My mother bought a bread maker. One of those fancy new-fangled contraptions that saves her the trouble of actually having to knead her dough, shape her loaves, or preheat her oven.

In all fairness, my mother is not in the best of health these days, walks with a cane now, and can't stand for long periods of time to work in the kitchen-- so when she purchased her bread maker, I didn't give her too much flack for cheating.

A few weeks after her purchase, we were sitting here in the salon (the art of nailz) chit chatting with one of my clients about her new toy. My client hadn't heard of these amazing devices that will provide you with the joy of a freshly baked loaf of bread without all the hassle of actually baking bread, and so I was explaining how they work and that many models will actually mix the dough as well...

Which, of course, Mom's does.

So I had to look at her sideways and say, "Really? You can't even mix everything up yourself?"

Folks, let me tell ya: I make bread.

And when I say, "I make bread" I mean really make bread, the old fashioned way. I make sourdough bread, from a starter that lives (literally, "lives") in my refrigerator that I started myself from water and flour (it makes more than paste!)

I have to feed my starter periodically-- because it's a living colony of symbiotic organisms and they need to eat to stay alive.

When I make bread I get the starter out. I measure the ingredients and mix them into dough with my hands.

Then I knead the dough with my hands. Then I let it rise, then I punch it down, then I shape my loaves and let them rise again...

Then I bake them... in a Dutch oven...with coals from a fire that I made with wood that I personally went to the mountains and gathered, cut, and split with my hands.

This is about the time I started to realize I was sounding a lot like my grandfather telling me about growing up... and I never thought I'd have an opportunity to say it myself but,

I WALKED UPHILL BOTH WAYS to make that bread!

It took awhile for Mom and my client to stop laughing... but I have a whole new appreciation for baking bread.

It's Not "Fungus"

2011-09-27T20:38:00.000-07:00

Let's discuss those green spots underneath your nails...

First and foremost: it is NOT "fungus." That yellow/green/brownish discoloration is a sign of a bacterial infection caused by a little cootie called "psuedomonas aeruginosa." The bacteria lives in water and soil and is very very common in our environment.

Secondly: I can't guarantee that you won't get it. But I DO take special precautions and do everything in my personal power to make sure you won't get it from me.

When you arrive in the salon, I require you to wash your hands using soap and water. This is the first, and most basic, step in making sure that we get started with a clean work surface (ie, your nails) and even if you don't dry your hands thoroughly I will make sure that they are dry before I begin my prep routine.

I know many (I feel safe in actually saying "most") people have never been asked, let alone required, to wash their hands prior to a nail service. In fact, I once had a client who insisted that I didn't know what I was doing because she had not only never been required to wash her hands prior to service, but had actually been refused service because she once arrived at the salon after gardening and voluntarily washed her hands when she arrived! The technician told her that since she got her hands wet, the tech could not do her nails.

Allow me to assure you that this is not the case. Many states have regulations requiring both parties to wash their hands prior to service. And trust me, simply washing your hands will not do anything to negatively impact any product's ability to adhere to your nails. Especially not when followed by proper preparation of the nail plate.

I simply cannot believe that in our germophobic culture where people refuse to push a grocery cart without first wiping it down with a Clorox wipe, that these same people are offended by having to wash their hands before having their nails done.

After you wash your hands I begin services by carefully prepping the natural nail to receive whatever product you choose. This procedure includes a thorough scrubbing with a 99% isoproply alcohol (rubbing alcohol) solution-- and I mean "scrub." I use a nylon brush that has been disinfected in a hospital-grade, EPA-register disinfectant and stored in a dry, dust-free cabinet. This allows me to be sure to thoroughly saturate the nail plate with the solution, making sure to get into any nooks and crannies that could be missed by merely wiping with a cotton pad.

This solution acts to further sanitize the nail plate, remove dust, and dehydrate it to make it more compatible with further prep products that we'll be applying.

Then I apply a nail plate "dehydrator" or "pH balancing" solution. (Different product manufacturers have different products and different labeling.) These prep products dry out the nail plate and make it easier for primers to get a good grip on the surface of the nail plate.

Then we apply primer.

"Primer" used to mean a methacrylic acid solution with a very low pH factor. These primers are still around, widely used, and perfectly fine when used with caution by a conscientious professional. They are highly acidic and should NEVER touch the skin! Contact with skin tissue can (and will) lead to chemical burns.

But many products today are used in conjunction with "protein bonder" or "non-acid" primers...

They are still technically "primers." Technical lingo often gets quite confusing and as specific words and terms develop negative connotations, their usage becomes heavily debated and their true definitions often get confused: A "primer" is anything that is used to "prime"-- or prepare-- a surface for another product to adhere to it.

Nevertheless, whether I apply a traditional acid primer or a protein bonder, that goes on after the dehydrator.

Then I apply the enhancement product.

Acrylic, gel, silk wrap, powder glaze, UV polish-- whatever enhancement service you have chosen.

Once the product is applied and set, then you can relax some. At this point, we have done pretty much all we can to ensure that the application process has been completed with complete attention your health and safety to preserve the integrity of both your natural nail and the enhancement that we have applied.

I never re-use my files, buffers, or those little sandpaper arbor bands on my drill. In fact, in the state of California, it's not even legal for me to reuse those items-- not even on the same person! It's like reusing q-tips or toilet paper-- it doesn't matter if it's on the same person, some things are just meant to only be used once. These items are made of porous materials and even if I put them in the disinfectant, it doesn't guarantee that all the cooties can be killed, so we just throw them out.

All my metal and nylon implements get disinfected according to the state regulations.

I don't even re-use the terry cloth towel that I keep over my lap to keep the dust off my pants (like that even works anyway!)

I work very hard to make sure that I do not contribute to any possible infection!

During the preparation and application process I can get quite snippy with my clients. This is not personal and I have been fortunate that most people seem to understand where I'm coming from, and I'm always happy to explain myself: You need to sit still, facing the nail table (and your nail technician) straight forward. You need to keep both hands on the table. I am working on both hands, not just one, even if I'm only holding one at a time.

It is imperative that you not lean on your hand, brush your hand through your hair, stick your hand inside your purse or your pocket for any reason, or try to eat with your "free" hand. Anything-- and everything-- you touch between washing your hands and the end of the application process is a potential source of infection. Oils, makeup, hair products, and miscellaneous cooties can contaminate the nail plate and lead to service break down.

"Service breakdown" equals "broken heart" to your nail lady. It means that all my hard work to build beautiful enhancements and all my diligence to ensure that those enhancements are built on a clean, properly prepared foundation-- has gone to $&*! It means that there is now an increased potential that those enhancements will begin to lift from the nail plate and that moisture will build up in that space where that nasty bacteria can colonize; leading, of course, to those green spots on your nail.

And that's just speaking of what I can have any hope of controlling while you're here in the salon!

Aside from this, there is the added concern of what the heck you do with those beautiful enhancements when you're out of my sight.

In a perfect world, clients would wear their enhancements in perfect balance with their nail bed (free edge not longer than 1/2 the length of the nail bed;) they wouldn't wear flared or "duck feet" tips that not only mean extra weight at the free edge, but also mean more area of the free edge to get caught or hit on things; and they wouldn't insist on so many embedded embellishments (glitter, confetti, jewels, etc) that the free edges are so thick that, again, they are too heavy for the nail bed to provide anchorage for them, and that they lift from the cuticle area or sidewalls under impact, instead of breaking clean.

Also-- in a nail tech's perfect world-- you would never flail wildly, drum your fingers, tap your nails, add or subtract keys from your key chain, slip when opening your car door or setting your parking brake, put fitted sheets on your bed, take clothes out of the washer or dryer, play fetch or Frisbee with your dog or children, text message on any phone that doesn't have a capacitive keyboard, type, get in fights, or get blind, stinking drunk and simply not have a clue what you did... basically-- your nails would never come in contact with anything.

But it's not a perfect world. Fashion-- not just nail fashions-- aren't always practical, and right now those flared tips are in. And it isn't realistic to expect all my clients to stop working, texting, driving, or essentially going on about their lives-- just because they got their nails done.

So, with all this in mind, here's some advice:

Acrylic takes approximately 48 hours to fully cure. That means that even though I can file on it after about 3 minutes, it's still not entirely "hard." Most cracks and breaks actually get started within the first day of getting your nails done. People walk out of the salon and start banging their nails against all sorts of surfaces. Most people aren't even aware of how often they hit their nails against things. Not being aware of this makes it much harder to avoid it, but try to pay attention to the tips of your fingers! You paid good money to have your nails done, now treat them with some respect and go easy on them.

Cracks usually start inside the nail and work their way out. We've all hit a nail and not broken it, right? But that doesn't mean that the impact didn't cause a fissure in the product-- deep inside, especially during that all-important first 48 hours of application. Once a fissure has started, it will eventually develop into a visible crack. With luck, your nails will grow out and that compromised portion will be filed off before it becomes an issue-- but when you see a crack in the nail, or your nail suddenly "pops off" even though you "didn't even hit it," remember all those times you hit your nails against the table top while you were talking with your hands!

Even invisible, microscopic cracks can let moisture and bacteria in.

If you begin to see green spots (or yellow or brown or black) under your nail-- it's lifting. No exceptions. Something went wrong somewhere along the way and the product has let go of the natural nail and there's a point of entry that has allowed bacteria to get into that space.

While this is not a cause for panic, it does need to be taken care of. You need to kill that bacteria! And the first step to doing that is to make sure that space is dry.

I personally recommend getting the product off the nail as soon as possible if you see any discoloration. And I don't mean by sticking it in your mouth and ripping it off! That just jacks up your nail. Not to mention, this is a bacterial infection we're dealing with, and while a little green spot on your nail isn't something to freak out about-- that same bacteria can lead to some pretty serious consequences if you get an infection elsewhere in your body. So keep it out of your mouth.

Once you get the product off your nail, wash it with soap and water, douse it in Bactine or Peroxide, take your hair dryer to it and make sure it's dry.

Now, here's the hard part: the green spots won't go away. The discoloration is a stain in the keratin of your nail that's caused by a by-product of the bacteria. It is not the bacteria itself. So even after you kill the infection, the discoloration will remain until the nail grows out.

Yeah, you could file it off. But you're just filing down your natural nail, which isn't really doing your nail any good.

And you'll need a doctor to clear you before you can get your nails done again. Because nail techs aren't allowed to treat infections and we're not allowed to work on anything that shows signs of infection or open wounds.

The best thing you can do is help me take care of your nails. I only see your nails once every couple of weeks, you see them everyday. So first off-- pay attention to them. Treat your fingertips delicately and avoid excessive pressure against your nails and fingertips to help prevent stress fractures in the product.

Keep your nails clean, and make sure you take the time to dry your hands and nails thoroughly when you wash your hands.

Use cuticle oil every day: the only time oil makes your nails lift is if it's left on the nail plate when product is applied. When product is applied over a properly prepared nail plate, there is no point of entry for oil or cooties to get between your nail and your nail enhancement. But cuticle oil every bit as important in maintaining the integrity of your nails and cuticles as moisturizer is to preventing wrinkles around your eyes.

A high-quality cuticle oil is made entirely of botanical oils-- contains no mineral oil-- and will keep both your natural nail plate and the surrounding skin tissue properly hydrated. This prevents the skin and nail from drying out, causing those tissues to shrink and pull away from the enhancement product. Dry skin is the number one cause of lifting and cuticle oil is your best defense against it. You don't need to get all greased up, just a tiny drop on each cuticle and then massaged in will do the trick!

Get your nails done! There's a reason that 2 to 3 weeks is what we recommend between fills. It's not just a way of making more money. In fact, I'd love it if all my clients came in once every 4 weeks, that would allow me to see more clients! But 4 weeks is too long to wait. You nails grow about 1/4 inch every month, and as they grow out, they change shape slightly. Nails bend and flex as they grow, some curl up, some flatten out, but the product isn't as flexible as the natural nail and it can't bend and flex very much.

Modern products have made great improvements, but 3 weeks is still about the limit of any product's ability to grow out with the nail before it starts to give.

Getting a fill (or rebalance) is like having the oil changed in your car: you're supposed to do it on a regular schedule in order to prevent things from going catastrophically wrong down the line! It's preventative maintenance, so don't wait until your nails are lifting or broken to have them done, by that time it might be too late.

If you do happen to break a nail or one starts lifting or you see a crack-- treat it with an antiseptic, just like it was a skinned knee or a broken blister. Take precautions to prevent an infection from occurring. Use your hair dryer to make sure the area is totally dry and then seal it with a tiny drop of nail glue-- or remove the product entirely-- until you can get to the salon for a professional repair. And by "until you can get to the salon" I don't mean until your next appointment in two more weeks. I mean ASAP. And if you can't get into your regular nail tech for a proper repair, then either go to another salon for that repair, or take the product off the nail and just wait it out till you can see your regular tech.

Glue is not your friend. It's a last resort sort of thing. And it'll do more harm than good if you don't make sure the nail has been sanitized first; you'll just end up sealing that bacteria in.

Remember: Psuedamonas A. is in most soil and water and other moist environments. And by the time you see a green spot, it's already too late. So make sure you're taking care of those nails, and treat cracks, lifts and breaks like they were open wounds. Clean them, dry them, and sanitize them and I'll never have to tell you that I can't put product back on that nail until the spot is gone or a doctor tells me it's ok.

And once again: I can't guarantee you won't get it, but I do my best to make damn sure you won't get it here.

A Day Late and a Matchstick Short

2011-09-23T15:27:00.000-07:00

About our backpacking trip...

We were originally scheduled to leave our house on... well. Hmmmm. I think our first plan was to grab our packs and head up to the Big Meadows campground as soon as we were off work on Friday night.

Then we realized that our local county fair was in the way. We traditionally go to the fair on Friday night with the BF's family. We just couldn't bring ourselves to miss out on an opportunity to pay 8 bucks a piece for the additional opportunity to drink $5.00 beers and eat equally over-priced, deep-fried foods that are not only not healthy for us, but present an excellent chance of making us too sick to move for the next 24 hours... so we modified our hiking plans to allow us to attend the fair on Friday night and leave for the trail first thing on Saturday morning.

Which didn't happen either. Pretty much by the time we realized that we'd just returned home from the fair at the tender hour of 1:30 in the morning and had absolutely nothing packed for the hike... we decided to, once again, modify our plans.

Afterall, we'd taken 2 days off of work to allow us a leisurely 4 day/3 night backcountry vacation. We could take our time packing up on Saturday, play with the dogs (who didn't get to go,) and head up the mountain on Saturday night, spend the night at the trailhead and start hiking on Sunday morning.

Of course, between the 1:30 a.m. bedtime and the fair food of questionable quality-- I didn't exactly wake up early. And "early" to me is 9 a.m. to begin with!

But we had a lovely Saturday at home and I put my heart into packing our packs.

Somehow we got distracted along the way and in my frustration at the discovery that all our gear wasn't where I thought it should be, we ended up doing some major rearranging of the garage.

Well, at some point, we realized we weren't going to leave the house on Saturday night. So we called our dog sitters-- again-- to give them the updated plan.

It's hard for me to pack for both of us. Especially while taking into account that the BF is not the gram-weenie, ultra-lite, minimalist gear-goon that I am. So I had to remind myself to take the non-stick mess kit, not any of the ultra-light titanium cookware sets that I've collected (yes, I think I have 4 sets-- I love gear.) I packed the bulky, rectangular sleeping bags that zip together. I packed the extra-wide, full length, self-inflating Thermarest for him. And the 5 lb, free standing Coleman tent (which is not my 2 lb Tarptent, but holds it's own quite respectably in its class, nontheless.) I chose the Primus canister stove over my tiny UL version or any of the various alcohol or esbit stoves that I would choose for a solo trip, in order to be sure that we would have enough fuel for bigger, more complicated meals and a sturdier base for the larger, heavier pots of the mess kit.

I rarely have a campfire on my backpacking trips. Mostly because by the time I hike my weary butt up a mountain, get my camp set up, and eat something, I'm just done and ready for bed. So all I really need is a small, disposable lighter with my cookset to get the stove lit.

Once all was packed, checked and double-checked, we finally did manage to make our way to the trailhead at a not-exactly-early and only-marginally-morning start on Sunday and actually managed to be heading off on the actual hiking portion of the trip around 12:30 p.m.

Mind you, we are both out of practice. I can't even remember the last time I was above 4500 feet in elevation, and even when I'm in "good shape" I climb hills excrutiatingly slowly. I was pleasantly surprised by the BF's non-chalance at my hike 20 feet and rest/hike 20 feet and rest method. But we were not making good time.

So when we reached the fork in the trail where we needed to make the decision between another 1.5 miles to Weaver Lake or another 4 miles to Jennie Lake, we assessed our rate of progress thus far and considered how many hours of daylight we realistically had left... and opted for Weaver Lake.

We arrived at the lake around 5 p.m.-- an absolutely embarassing time for a mere 3.5 mile hike, but I already told you we are out of practice!-- to find it deserted and beautiful. We scouted out the best place to call home for the next two nights and set about gathering up some firewood for a campfire...

....because the BF considers camping without a fire to be a tortuous ordeal.

I set up the tent, inflated his Thermarest, zipped sleeping bags together and prepared quite a cozy nest to call home.

At which point the BF asked me, "Uhhhh... did either of us think to bring anything to start a fire with?"

Well, I don't know why he bothered to say "us" when the mere fact that he was asking clearly revealed that by "us" he meant me. And naturally, I said, "duh" as I handed him the small, green, plastic, disposable Bic lighter from the cookset. I'd even tested it at home before we left to make sure it worked properly.

As the lighter passed from my hand to his, it occurred to me that I should light the camp stove before he used the lighter to light the fire. A small voice reasoned that at least that way if the lighter suffered catrostrophic failure in the fire process, we'd have the stove lit and that would provide us with an open flame from which we could get the campfire going.

Nah. The BF is an expert fire-starter. A genuine master at the art of flame. And he's not exactly stupid-- he knows that lighter is delicate and won't handle being left "on" for long periods. He'll do fine.

And so it was that what seemed to be mere seconds later, the BF's voice wafted upward from the firepit to my ears on the increasingly chilly and darkening evening breeze, "well, that's about it for the lighter."

I turned to find him on his hands and knees, blowing gently into his little pile of tender, trying to coax the faint hint of a spark into a steady flame.

And then, there we stood, staring down at the cold, dark, emptyness that failed to be a roaring fire.

We spent an hour taking the lighter apart and attempting to get it back in working order. To no avail.

We ate peanut butter and jelly bagels for dinner and agreed that perhaps this would end up being a one night trip.

Naturally, I blame the BF. For one thing, I brought all the fire I needed. But at this point, one must also realize that the BF has a slightly compulsive need to collect Strike Anywhere matches. We literaly have 8 boxes of them in our garage. He cannot pass them by in a store without buying yet another box of them.

AND his parents are from the same town in Pennsylvania where Zippo lighters are manufactured! You KNOW the man has a Zippo! Not only does he have a Zippo lighter, he has the adorable little leather pouch that goes on his belt to hold his Zippo.

Now you tell me how it is that this man hiked into the Sierra Nevada wilderness with a hatchet, a handgun, and a Leatherman multi-tool all strapped to his belt but not the Zippo? He brought a 2 D-cell Mag lite for crying out loud! But not the Zippo! Not even one of his precious Strike Anywhere matches.

And that's the irony-- that this man should find himself nearly 9,000 feet above sea level in the back country of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, with darkness falling on a night that promised to dip to near freezing temperatures, staring at a fire pit with a stash of carefully selected firewood beside it-- unable to manage even a spark.

So we enjoyed one very quiet night and had more peanut butter and jelly bagels for breakfast-- a devastating departure from my eagerly awaited fried Spam and coffee breakfast that I'd been looking forward to; the BF considers not having to eat Spam as sweet mercy from the gods-- and then we packed it all back up and descended the 3.5 miles back to the car in record time... and stopped for lunch at Bear Mountain Pizza in Squaw Valley on the way home. (No. Not that Squaw Valley.)

We arrived home and called the dog sitters-- again-- to let them know that the plans had changed-- again.

We spent Tuesday unpacking, and I even made my fried Spam for lunch-- the dogs loved it.

Sharing Hobbies

2011-09-21T15:14:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, I was an avid ultra-light backpacking babe, averaging one weekend a month on the hiking trail and one weekend a month on the 4X4 trail... that's a lot of bag nights! (nights in a sleeping bag.)

Naturally, just when everything was going great and I was really getting the hang of this whole "Life" thing-- Love came along and smacked me upside the head and next thing I know I'm all shacked up with a couple of dogs and a man who completely changed my lifestyle.

Ok. Not "completely," but much much more than I'd anticipated.

Which really threw me for a loop, seeing as how the man I'm shacked up with had been a good friend for many many years before he decided that his life was empty and meaningless without me by his side (oh! It's such a long story.) and he's always been quite the outdoorsy type himself.

I didn't exactly expect him to switch out his Wranglers for Omni-weave convertible cargo pants, or leave his full-grain leather calf-high waterproof hunting boots at home in favor of some lightweight gortex trail runners, and I sure as heck never even asked him to hike without his full Batman-utility belt full of hatchets, firearms, zippo lighters and Leatherman multi-tools... he is who he is and while we might look like Mutt and Jeff with in the backcountry with our hippy and the hunter personas-- well... trust me, somehow it just works-- mostly.

Nevertheless, somewhere along the way, our personal routines of his hunting and my hiking on a regular basis came to a near screeching halt when we started dating.

A lot of variables contributed to that, but I like to blame him anyway.

The first year we were a couple, we went on a little jaunt up to Lower Paradise Valley in Kings Canyon Nat'l Park along with my BFF and backpacking partner, Amz, and her hubby and 2 out of 3 of their kids.

I agreed to make some concessions for the new SO in an attempt to convince him that backpacking with me was something he would want to do on a regular basis; so I got him an external frame pack and begrudgingly closeted my most prize possession-- my Western Mountaineering Versalite down sleeping bag: rated to 10 degrees Faranheit, weighing in at just shy of 2 pounds, and oh-so-squishable that it takes up very little room in my 54 oz Mountainsmith Chimera pack-- and purchased new Campmor down rectangular sleeping bags that mate together for "snuggying" together.

The things we do for love.

That was May of 2006... and it was the last time the BF backpacked with me for the next 5 years despite claims that he enjoyed it and "looks forward" to more hikes together.

BFF Amz and I still manage to get outside for a few nights at least once a year, and last summer I was thrilled to break the 15 lb mark for my total pack weight-- that's really light, btw.

Of course, Matt and I got the canoe last year, and we certainly cannot be accused of having bought it just to look at it! But backpacking hasn't exaclty been our number one priority for far too long... but recently we decided we were going to do something about that.

So we both wrangled some time off and set about making plans for an early fall hike in the nearby Sequoia Nat'l Forest. Fully aware that we are out of practice and that this will be our only chance to get on the trail before it's covered in snow.

Now all I have to is learn to pack for 2.

Side-Channel of DOOOOM

2011-07-13T17:01:00.000-07:00

You may recall, we bought a canoe last summer, right? Well, we managed to make it through our first year of canoeing coupledom not only without a particular boyfriend's body being washed up downstream after suffering any severe head injuries from "accidental" paddle attacks... but also without managing to capsize the little boat.

It should be noted that both the BF and myself have dreamt of owning a canoe for many years-- many years prior to beginning out relationship as a couple, in fact.

Just imagine-- two lost souls wistfully dreaming of one day owning their own canoe, casually drifting toward each other and Destiny. Each one coddling their own little canoe-dream close to their heart. Until, one day, they end up together to pursue their canoe fantasies as one.

It makes a lovely story line for a romance movie, doesn't it?

And so it seemed this was our story-- until we actually bought the canoe.

Even while we were pouring over canoe brochures for the 4 years prior to actually settling on our 17 foot Wenonah Spirit II, it was apparent that we might not have been entirely on the same page (sometimes literally) in our individual visions of our canoe future.

I-- for instance-- wanted a long, steady, touring canoe. Big enough to hold both the BF and myself, all our gear for at least a week's camping trip, and two medium/large dogs. I saw us strapping our canoe to the roof of the car and setting off for places seldom seen.

We would load up our family and gear and set off across calm, pristine mountain lakes in the early morning while a lite mist still hovered above the water as the sun rose above high alpine peaks.

We would glide peacefully across the water as the woods awoke around us. Little birds would sing from the trees, eagles would dip majestically on the air currents, dolphins would jump playfully as they followed us across the lake, bunnies and squirrels and baby deer would emerge from the forest along the shore to admire our sleek, quiet, journey as we glided across the water to the far side of the lake where we would put up our camp and live in perfect harmony with nature.

The dogs would lie by the fire, the BF would strum the guitar, and I would prepare delicious stews and fruit cobblers in the dutch oven.

(The BF doesn't play the guitar. The dogs would only lie by the fire after they'd eaten the bunnies. And Dolphins are rarely found in fresh-water mountain lakes... but bear with me, I'm setting a scene here.)

In my version of canoe-ownership, canoing would be quiet, peaceful, and require very little work. Like a scene from Snow White-- with little singing blue birds and adoring bunny rabbits-- I would make my way across the water with a gentle stroke, stroke, glide-- switch sides I'm paddling on and then-- stroke, stroke, glide....

You really miss out here by not getting the full, verbal rendition of the story. In person it comes complete with soundtrack-- so you'll have to add the lilting Snow White singing to my vision yourself.

However, it turned out that the BF's version of canoe-ownership was more like a MegaDeath song playing on amps turned up to the full "11" while we paddled frantically for our lives up-river in class 9 rapids.

It works out fairly well for us-- and our relationship-- that we live in an area that sports neither glassy mountain lakes nor MegaDeath-worthy rapids. What we do have, is the St. John's River.

The St. John's is not always much to speak of. They "turn the river off" during much of the winter, leaving a dry, sandy riverbed winding down from the foothills to the mostly non-existent Tule Lake bed. And many summers, the water in the part of the river that winds along the outskirts of our hometown isn't deep enough to skip rocks in.

But the year we bought our first canoe was the summer of a high-water year for California's central valley and a high-snow year for the high Sierra, whose snowmelt feeds our waterways throughout the summer.

The St. John's River was flowing high and fast and we cut our canoeing teeth on the 2 mile stretch between Lover's Lane and Cutler Park.

On our maiden voyage, we carried the canoe over the Levy and set it in the water. This is when I came to the conclusion that a 60 pound canoe is still a heavy sonuvabitch, which was only slightly after coming to the conclusion that the BF's idea of "an easy first trip" was to start out by paddling UP-stream for what would turn out to be close to 2 miles before we would be able to turn around and commence my "stroke, stroke, glide" plan on the downstream stretch.

As I recall, it was about 110 degrees in the middle of the afternoon and we were starting out only yards upstream of one of the concrete weirs that litter the riverbed. Which really freaked me out-- what if we couldn't paddle upstream fast enough to avoid being swept downstream and over that dam? I mean, sure, it's only about a 4 foot drop, but it'd still hurt! Not to mention, it was a brand new fiberglass canoe! The BF was all crazy about it touching the sand for crying out loud! If we went over a concrete dam, I was pretty sure I wasn't going to have a place to live anymore.

Well, that first trip went well. And by "well," I mean that we did not damage the canoe, lose a paddle, tip over, or get mauled by bears. (No. There aren't actually any bears where we live.)

I did seriously consider never getting in the canoe with the BF again. In fact, it crossed my mind to not be in the same room with the BF ever again.

I get to sit in the front of the canoe. For those of you-- like the BF-- who give a crap about proper nautical terms, this is apparently the "bow" of the boat. The BF sits in the "stern," what most people would refer to as "the back."

He thinks he's responsible for steering. And if he wants to set the record straight and explain how I'm wrong, then he should start his own blog so he can tell his stories his way.

He also thinks he cannot steer unless we are traveling at approximately Warp 2.

He is also a good 12 feet behind me. --Remember, I cannot reach him with my paddle to whack him upside the head, I've tried.

On that first trip, which seems so long ago now, we managed to maintain steady upstream progress despite his tendency to play drill sergeant and bark out orders that make no sense to me. Including his insistence that I was not allowed to switch sides with the paddle.

Nay. Indeed, I was expected to pick one side, dig in, and apparently end up looking like John Leguizamo from M. Nnight Shyamalan's "Lady in the Water." Which was not ok with me on a couple of levels, not the least of which was that my arm just plain hurt after awhile.

Also, I was not allowed to stop paddling. Absolutely no resting. Even if we had enough momentum that dropping a stroke now and then wouldn't impede our upstream progress.

Which is probably how I got talked into attempting the Side Channel of Doom on multiple occasions.

In the beginning, the BF was all excited because it was a high-water year for the St. John's AND we had a canoe. Just down river from Cutler Park (which is an actual county park, for you non-locals,) on the other side of the river from the park, there is a little channel where-- when it's high enough-- the water will divert from the main river and flow through the little side channel, making an island of a small hill on the river bank.

The BF thought it would be very exciting to see this side channel completely filled with water-- and even more exciting to take the canoe through it.

Who am I to squash his fantasies?

The side channel had nearly no current, it reached a maximum depth of about a foot. For being only a feet away from the main river, it was eerily quiet and overgrown with weeds. It made me feel like we'd taken a wrong turn and ended up in an Indiana Jones movie. I was pretty sure angry, poison-dart-bearing natives would emerge over the river bank any moment and we would be tasked with narrowly escaping an ancient curse.

Naturally, the side-channel expedition started out well enough. We moved stealthily off the main river and out of sight and sound of civilization. It was kinda cool. The water was too shallow to paddle the canoe through, so we used the paddles to pole ourselves along the narrow channel.

And, naturally, half way through the channel, we simply hit bottom.

We determined that we needed to get out of the canoe and walk it.

Once I convinced the BF that both of us had to get out of the canoe, he wandered off over the hill to take a look at our options for getting back to the main river while I coined the term "swamp tromping" as I led the canoe through the shallow water by the bow rope-- like I was taking it for a walk on a leash.

Splosh ,Splosh, Splosh, through the ankle deep water. Mucky, muddy, mossy, ankle deep water. Full of tree frogs and tadpoles and tiny minnow-like fishes. Splosh, Splosh, Splosh. Using my paddle like a machete to whack at weeds that hung over the banks across the creek-like side channel.

Naturally, the other end of the channel deepens-- last summer the upper end of the channel was up to my thighs. Which made it difficult to climb out of the water, up the slippery, muddy banks of the channel so that we could carry the canoe over the hill and put it back in the river...

Oh no. The upper end of the channel is not accessible. There's no way we can actually paddle the canoe all the way through the side-channel and rejoin the river without getting out of the canoe! Even if the water WAS deep enough to keep the loaded canoe afloat the whole way-- there's a tree that grows across the upper channel opening.

Is this what Johnny Horton meant by "where a rabbit wouldn't go?"

All last summer, over and over again, even as we got stronger and more comfortable with the paddling-- and with paddling with each other-- every weekend we had to do the St. John's and try to negotiate the "Side Channel of Doom" again.

I'd come home from work and he'd be standing there with a creepy, obsessive gleam in his eyes as he explained to me that he'd crossed the river on a test drive that day and "it's higher than it was last week, we could probably do it this time!"

And each time I acquiesced to another expedition only to find myself swamp-tromping through the bug and tadpole infested muck again, I swore I was never going into that side channel again.

After the attempt one evening at sunset when the BF's Warp-2-steering-theory (why do we need to go fast OR steer in the side channel?!) nearly resulted in my face being eaten off by a giant spider hanging in the middle of its 8 foot diameter web directly in our path, I finally had enough.

I'd had enough of the side channel. I'd had enough of the doom. I'd have enough of the BF being completely oblivious to the horrible dangers I was subject to because anything in our path was going to hit ME first! 3 inch cross spiders, that made me think of the Hobbit, for instance!

NO...
MORE....
SIDE...
CHANNEL...
...of DOOOOOOOM!...

Even the BF admitted defeat. The side channel's cursed, other-worldly nature meant that no matter how high the water in the river got, the side channel would never be navigable from end to end.

Jury Duty

2011-05-26T11:50:00.000-07:00

[NOTE: This I've been going through all the posts that have been saved to draft but never published.

This was written long before it was published. Go figure.]

Sorry, I have long since given up trying to find just the right photo to go with each entry.

I do nails. I have LOTS of pictures of nails. These are pretty snazzy nails, and this is the design that recently snared me a second place win in the Nailpro Cyber competitions. The nails took me 9 hours to do, most of that was spent trying to get the design out of my head and onto the nails, but I owe a big Thanks to my model, Michelle, for her patience and use of her hands!

So about 2 weeks ago I got a jury duty summons. This is only the second jury duty notice I have even received, the first one I got was right after I'd moved out of the county and I had to call up and explain that I didn't actually live there anymore.

But that was over 10 years ago. Some people get called every year and some people don't. So far, I've been in that "don't" category.

So last night I dutifully called the number to listen to the automated message to see if it was worth rescheduling all my clients for today. Sure enough, I had to report to the courthouse at 9 a.m.

Mind you, I am not, nor have I ever been, a morning person. 9 a.m. remains about an hour earlier than I'm generally willing to committ to being anywhere. But I was just so thrilled I didn't have to be there at 8 I didn't even pout.

Since I've never actually had to GO to jury duty, I admit to being a tad bit nervous. But, heck, I've been to our county courthouse-- just not for court. So I knew where I was headed. I just wish I'd known it would have been ok to arrive with a venti pumpkin spice latte in my hand.

See, the thing is, I WANT to do jury duty. Yeah, that's right, I would LOVE to sit on a jury.

I read 12 Angry Men when I was 16. It remains one of my favorite plays. I really prefer to listen to it as a radio play, but it's also a pretty kickass movie. You should definately check it out.

So I have spent the last 23 years thinking that sitting on a jury would be pretty cool.

The only problem is, I do nails. I'm self employed. There's no one to cover for me while I'm out. And sure, jury duty is inconvenient for lots of people, and most businesses don't pay their employees while they serve-- but I don't even have the option of drawing on vacation pay. If I get picked, I don't get paid. I mean-- other than their generous $15 a day, which isn't going to go far.

Sure, the BF would kick in and make sure the electricity stayed on at the house and that I didn't go hungry while I was out of work-- but who's going to pay my booth rent? Who's going to cover my health insurance? My business insurance? My car payment?

Scheduling time off in the salon biz takes a virtual act of God. In the 18 years that I have been doing nails, I have scheduled 2 weeks off in a row ONCE. It was back in 2005 and I had 9 month's notice to make it happen!

I've long since figured out how to clear the schedule for a few days at a time without panicking, and I like to think my clients would be sympathetic if I were called to serve on a jury, but I still live in fear of ending up on the next O.J. Simpson jury.

Really, a couple of days? I'll make that happen. A couple of weeks? Sorry, Your Honor, I can't do it.

I hear all kinds of stories from people about going to jury duty. The law is set up to allow me to NOT face financial ruin at the hands of my "civic duty" but there are a few judges out there who don't give a crap. Which, btw, is really crummy for the defendant. You don't want a jury who's so distracted by the fact that being tasked with deciding your fate is costing her 2 weeks pay and possibly her entire business that she's not paying attention to the evidence being presented at your trial.

Seriously, all I can imagine is how sick to my stomach I would be if I found myself serving on a jury in a trial that lasted more than a week. I guess that's what alternates are for though, cuz I'd end up in the hospital with an anxiety-induced heart attack for sure!

At any rate, I showed up this morning at the courthouse. Finding parking was the first challenge, with many cars having chosen to take up more than one space. I really think that if there's anywhere in town where you should get ticketed for parking like an asshat, it should be at the courthouse. I'd have the sheriff out there putting parking tickets on everyone's windows-- with notes that say, "You juror's parking permit entitles you to ONE parking space."

Thankfully, the new car is a subcompact-- so it fit in nicely next to the convertible red mustang that SCREAMED "Middle aged man who doesn't want to talk about his e.d."

The only other challenges I faced through the day were related to maintaining my self control and NOT going on a murderous rampage. I'm not sure how I would have perpetrated one anyway, I guess I could have stabbed them all with the stylus from my PDA.

Yeesh. There's about a hundred chairs in the room and they're all those stackable chairs you find in hotel conference rooms. They're all hooked together on the sides with those little hook-and-eye type things-- easier to keep the rows neat that way. Problem is, when all the chairs are connected like that, it's easier to drive someone insane by kicking a chair too.

How is it that GROWN MEN can't sit still for more than 5 minutes? And, fine, don't sit still, I don't care-- but don't KICK SOMEONE ELSE'S FREAKIN CHAIR! Don't kick the chair in front of you if it's attached to someone else's chair!

Ok. So with some manuevering, I managed to unhook my chair from all the others. Kick away, boys.

But WHY did I have to be there at 9 a.m. if no one is even going to acknowledge us until 10:30?

Next time I'll come armed with both coffee and more reading material.

Things finally got underway and I made my way to the courtroom with the rest of my group, where the judge explained the case to us and started asking people why they thought they needed to be excused.

He let some go, he made some stay. Then he simply picked 19 people and told the rest of us thanks for our time and have a nice day.

That's it. I handed in my badge and found myself at a loss for what I was going to do with the ret of my day. I went to the bank and then got some lunch and came home to my dogs. Who were happy to see me until they decided I wasn't sharing my lunch with them and then they just went back to sleep.

I'm bummed. I was totally willing to clear my schedule for the 2 to 3 days the trial was estimated to last.

Oh well. Maybe it won't take another 10+ years before I get another summons.

Some day I'm going to be retired, and when I am, I'm going to be one of those crazy people who volunteer for jury duty.

Capitalism 101

2011-05-26T11:44:00.000-07:00

no. this photo has NOTHING to do with the post.

Businesses raise prices for their goods and services periodically.

Really, that shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, especially someone who already owns and operates a business.

But it does. Which always comes as a surprise to me.

Businesses like mine-- a small nail studio-- grocery stores, restaurants, travel agencies, shipping services, and Disneyland. We raise prices periodically for plenty of reasons. Usually to offset the costs of actually staying in business, and sometimes just because we can. Because being in business is about making a profit-- so we'll have money left over to go to Disneyland after all the overhead costs of running our businesses are paid, and the money that the IRS calls "personal adjusted gross income" has been divvied up into personal income taxes, and what's left after that gets doled out to rent or mortgages, utilities, car payments, insurance, vet bills, and braces for the kids.

It doesn't matter what the Economy is doing. Just because you can't afford to go to Disneyland, or even get your kid braces, doesn't mean that Disneyland and the orthodontist don't still have bills to pay. And since you aren't going to Disneyland, that's one-- or usually several, since not many people go to Disneyland alone-- ticket less in revenue that the park gets to apply toward its bills.

If enough people can't afford to go to Disneyland, then Disneyland will raise its prices to compensate for the lost revenue. That way, they can still pay all their bills-- and you're CRAZY if you don't think Disneyland's bills are outrageous!-- and still have enough money left over for Mickey and Minnie's kids' braces.

Ok. Last I checked, Mickey and Minnies didn't have kids-- in fact, I don't even think they're married. And they don't need to save money up for a trip to Disneyland. I think they live there. At the very least, you'd think they'd get in free. But I'm sure that after the bills are paid, Mickey and Minnie have something that they're saving up for.

Now, hopefully it's painfully obvious that I'm using Disneyland as an example. But a lot of people think of major corporate entities such as Disney as being outrageously profitable. They make SO much money! Why do they have to charge so much for their goods and services?

Well, I don't really know how profitable the Disney empire is. You'll have to get ahold of an official Disney spokesperson for that, and you might have to wrestle Mickey himself to get the answers.

I do know several smaller business owners, myself included, that I have a better understanding of.

It doesn't matter how the Economy is doing. It still costs money to run a business. Even in times of economic downturn, our rent continues to go up, electricity and phone rates increase, gas to get to work, shipping rates go up, insurance rates-- you name it, if you need it, it costs money, and it'll cost more money this year than it did last year.

When the Economy is sputtering, things actually get more expensive. Because business slows down. Fewer people go out to eat, fewer people get their nails done, fewer people buy new cars, fewer people travel, fewer people go to Disneyland. Get it?

So if, for example, I need a minimum of 50 clients to keep all my bills paid before it makes more sense to go work at Taco Bell. And when things are good, I might be able to juggle 90 clients, but when things are super tight and I suddenly realize that I only have 48 clients-- OUCH! Then I have to raise prices across the board so that I can make ends meet with those 48 clients.

BUT! When things are good and I'm juggling those 90 clients? Well, there are only so many hours in the week and I can only accomadate so many clients. If I'm already juggling 90 of them and I have to turn down new business, then I need to thin the herd.

The most non-discriminatory way to do this in business is to raise prices and let the customers decide who stays and who moves on.

Believe me, there is an entire industry devoted to doing the math for this situation. But when you do it just right, now I'm juggling 75 clients without a loss of revenue-- while openning space for new business.

This is what UPS does too. And the grocery store. And Taco Bell. And Disneyland.

Which means that prices go up. Always. And you never know why. You never know if it's because they need to stay in the black, or if it's because they're too far in the black.

Yeah. I know, "too far in the black" seems like a crazy statement, but that's business for ya.

That Time We Lost Taylor

2011-05-25T21:06:00.000-07:00

So I noticed some comments on the post regarding Wilbur... mostly what you'll notice is that "Clay" wants me to talk about him. Well, "Clay," the reason I didn't mention you in the story about Wilbur, was primarily, that it was a story about Wilbur. And, seeing as how you don't seem to have caught on yet, I had NO FREAKIN CLUE what you were doing while I was busy trying to prevent your brother's head from exploding!

However... for the rest of you who love listening to my tales of Why I Am Nobody's Mother-- I happen to have one about "Clay" too. And btw, "Clay" is better known as "Taylor" in my tales:

Back when Taylor was 10 (2008)-- BF-Matt and I went on a 4 wheel drive trail scouting adventure with Taylor, his brother Wilbur, and Wilbur's dad Phil. The plan was to scout out a trail in the Dinkey Creek area above Shaver Lake for an upcoming 4WD outing that we had planned.

No big deal. The BF's rig is competently equipped and both the Xterra and the BF (and me, for that matter) are experienced at a good many of the off-road trails in the area. Phil's Jeep Wrangler is also perfectly suitable for the day we had planned. But it was early June and the trail we were checking on is one that is closed during the winter, we didn't know if it was open yet or what condition it was in. Which is the whole reason we decided to go check it out before we invited a bunch of out-of-towners to try it.

It seemed simple enough. Not just simple enough...but downright mundane enough. We do this sort of thing regularly and are familiar with the area. So Phil and the boys met up with us and we made the hour and a half drive to the trailhead, where we found the gate still locked, and the trail still closed.

So we all took a moment to reconsider our plans.

Despite Taylor's insistence that we should simply continue driving forward on the road we were on and "circling around" to the closed trail from "the other side" -- he didn't quite understand at that point that that wasn't where the road went-- the rest of us came to the conclusion that we didn't drive an hour and half up the mountain to just turn around and go home. No. We came to wheel, we would at least do the trail we are most familiar with: Bald Mountain.

We are actually all very familiar with the Bald Mountain fire lookout trail. We've done it a million times, and I have a million pictures from a million trips. It's a fine trail that ends up on top of Bald Mountain, presumably, at an abandoned fire look out high above Shaver Lake. It's pretty cool.

So we hopped in our vehicles and prepared to head off for the trail. Only to discover the battery in BF-Matt's Xterra had died a sudden and unexpected death.

Now. The BF is a mechanic by both nature and trade. He admittedly relates better to machinery than people. And he is an anal-retentive mechanic. And, of course, I say that with love and respect. But seriously, the SNL skit about the "anal retentive carpenter?" Just switch up carpenter for mechanic.

So it should come as no surprise that when the BF's battery has us stopped cold on an isolated dirt road in the back country of the Sierra Nevada mountains, holding up the group-- the BF wigged out.

The BF will insist that he does not "wig out." In fact, he claims that he does not understand the meaning of the term "frustrated." But anyone who has spent a significant amount of time in his presence will testify that I know what I speak of when I say he "wigged out."

I do not mean to imply that he burst into tears, kicked anything, ran around flailing as though he were on fire, or even yelled or cursed. He simply goes into what I've come to term as "mission mode." He gets very serious, very focused, and very short of patience for anyone who isn't on the same mission as he is, ie, "anal-retentive."

This is contrary to my laid-back, peacenik, Zen-ness. And it really harshes my mellow. And it frustrates me.

I know the meaning of the word "frustrated."

So we spent some extra time out there on the dirt road by the locked gate at the closed trailhead. I took the boys for a walk while the BF started tearing vehicles apart.

Naturally, the mechanic whose rig is always in impeccable shape, properly equipped with spare tire, tool kit, tow-strap, high-lift jack, shovel, saw, etc etc... does not carry jumper cables. So it was necessary to discombobulate one battery and connect it via the battery cables to.... well, I'm not sure. I am not a mechanic. I went for a walk to keep the boys from getting snapped at and left Phil to deal with the BF.

The BF has a very accurate description of Phil's personality: He says he's known Jell-O that was more uptight than Phil. If you were to point out to Phil that his hair was on fire, he would casually shrug and say, "oh yeah, it's nothing. It'll stop." He is not like the BF... this can frustrate the BF. Or, it would I suppose, if the BF got frustrated.

The battery got jumped, the Xterra got started, we drove into Shaver Lake and the BF opted to buy a new, gel-cell battery which, I believe, is still working up to expectations to this day. You'll have to ask the BF, he's the one who has expectations of his battery beyond "does the car start? yes? check!"

And once again, we were headed to the Bald Mtn trailhead... where we chose a different route up the mountain than usual. Which did not make riding shot-gun with the BF any more enjoyable as this route seemed determined to be just exactly put together wrong for the Xterra.

Now, I know there are Jeepers out there who are perpetuating the Off-road Elitist stereotype who would snicker at the thought that an Xterra should be truly offroad capable at all-- but the X is pretty darn capable. So it was a surprise that we were having so much trouble. And a source of great frustrat-- oh that's right, he doesn't get frustrated. Well, at any rate, the BF was not very happy about being the one holding up our progress. And that made him not much fun to hang out with.

Taylor and I were not amused. Every time the X got held up by a poorly spaced rock or tree stump that required careful spotting, Taylor and I were out of the vehicles and on foot, agreeing that this was not the best trip we'd ever been on.

Eventually, the trail mellowed out and the BF was just starting to breathe normally again, feeling better that we'd be making up for the hold up and standing on the mountain top looking down on Shaver Lake soon enough, when Taylor runs up alongside the Xterra and proudly announces that he is running as fast as we are driving.

The BF is tired and not entirely amused by this. He tells Taylor is his best grown-up voice that Taylor needs to get back in the Jeep with Phil because we are on the road again and won't be going so slow anymore.

We rather assumed that's what happened. Just a little farther up the trail, the BF stops the Xterra in the middle of the trail. I wonder why. I notice he is inspecting the rear view mirror with rapt intent. So I look behind us-- did he see a bear? No.

It wasn't what he was looking at, it was what he was looking for: Phil's Jeep is nowhere to be seen.

We waited a while. Still no Jeep. The BF put it in reverse and backed slowly down the trail we had just worked so hard to come up. Still no Jeep.

The BF turned it around and backtracked till we came to Phil's Jeep pulled to the side of the trail. Phil was out on foot looking rather irritated and impatient. Wilbur was lounging unaffected in his car seat in the back of the Jeep. (He was only 4 at that point-- and much more laid back back then.)

Matt gets Phil's attention. He wants to know what the *#@! Phil is doing? Phil says, "I can't find Taylor."

Matt responds with "What the *#@! do you mean, you can't find Taylor?!"

And so it unfolds that at nearly 5 o'clock in the evening at something like 8 thousand feet above sea level, we have lost a 10 year old boy. A 10-year-old boy who also happens to not actually be related by blood nor marriage to anyone except the 4 year old that is hanging out in the back of the Jeep, completely at ease with the notion that he might suddenly become an only child.

The adults spread out, we hollar, we call, we curse, we yell. There is no Taylor.

Phil is utterly convinced that Taylor is being a brat. Apparently, since Taylor kept jumping out of the Jeep (it's a Jeep, it's not like it has a roof or doors, you know,) and Phil was getting tired of it, Phil decided to play a little prank on Taylor.

[NOTE: Yes, in the numerous tellings of this story over the last few years, I understand that many people think Phil is a terrible monster who should never be left alone with children for doing this. On the other hand, I grew up with 4 uncles-- men tease kids.]

So Phil drove up ahead on the trail, leaving Taylor walking along the trail. He stopped just over a hill and out of sight. He waited. He figured Taylor would have a sudden epiphany that the grown ups were serious about getting underway and that the kid would run up the trail after the Jeep crying and begging for forgiveness.

This is not what happened. So when Phil relented and returned to the spot where he'd left Taylor only to find Taylor missing, Phil naturally assumed that Taylor felt that turn-about was fair play and was hiding behind a rock or a tree nearby, pouting and waiting for Phil to feel bad.

Turns out, this is not what happened either.

It took about 20 minutes of calling, searching, driving ahead on the trail, driving back down the trail, and generally worrying about Taylor's whereabouts, wellbeing, and the wrath of his mother once she found out before BF-Matt went back into "mission mode." See? This is where it's beneficial: He suddenly shifted gears, assumed authority, asserted that it would be dark soon and that we needed to find Taylor before it got dark. He told Phil that since he had the more capable vehicle for getting back the way we'd come up, that he needed to get down the hill and into the small town of Shaver Lake and alert authorities pronto.

No one believes us, but Phil was worried. Visibly shaken. Downright concerned. Matt's words echoed through the deserted landscape and clearly hit Phil like a cast iron skillet upside the head. It was real now. We'd lost a kid.

I stood beside the Jeep with Wilbur-- still unconcerned about his brother-- and watched the menfolk behave very much the way we (women) think menfolk behave in these situations: slapstick. They made a plan for Phil getting to Shaver Lake while we stayed put at the last location where Taylor had been seen. That went well enough. But when they attempted to come up with a description of the boy I thought all was surely lost. They couldn't agree on how tall the kid was. They didn't know what he was wearing-- Phil was pretty sure he'd been wearing a red windbreaker. I picked it up from the backseat of the Jeep and asked him if he meant "this one?"

I calmly let them know that Taylor was wearing a gray t-shirt, brown shorts, and sport sandals. Yes, my friends, the boy was in the wilderness dressed like a rock. I started sifting through the photos I'd taken throughout the day so Phil could simply show the rangers-- at which point Phil realized he also had a camera and had taken photos that day. He and Wilbur were off.

And Matt and I stayed put in the waning afternoon sun.

That is a very difficult thing to do in the face of certain doom. Just stay put and wait. No cell phone service. Very little range on the 2-way radios... well. Sort of anyway. After what seemed like 3 hours but was probably more like 2 minutes Matt started sifting through channels on the 2-way radios looking for anyone within range to let them know we were on the lookout for a 10 year old stray.

We ended up talking to some girls who reported they were in Squaw Valley. No. Not that Squaw Valley. Squaw Valley near Dunlap on road 180 on the way to Kings Canyon Nat'l Park. Later, when the BF mapped it out, I believe he said it was something like 20 miles as the crow flies. But they listened to our story and went to get an adult, who listened to our story and called the sheriff. We were only somewhat relieved when he let us know that by the time he'd gotten ahold of the sheriff, they'd already been alerted.

Good. Phil had made it to the ranger station. Now all we had to do was wait.

The wind was kicking up and I was wishing I had a jacket. I suspected Taylor was wishing he had a jacket too. I was hoping Taylor was wishing he had a jacket. I was hoping Taylor was wasn't wishing that we'd find his twisted, mangle body where it lay slowly bleeding out at the bottom of a ravine; or wishing that someone would hear him screaming for help as he slowly succumbed to rattlesnake venom, or that he was at least alive and conscious and wishing for anything! And I was wondering if we would get the chance to tell his mother before she heard it on the news.

At some point, it occurred to me to try to think like Taylor. Who is an unusual child in many respects and increasingly reminds me of myself at that age-- I believe the favorite word of my peers was "weird." So I mentioned to Matt that one of us should stay put exactly where we were as planned while the other one should take the Xterra to the top of the trail to the fire lookout.

My theory was that Taylor probably figured that Phil had lost his patience and had left him behind to meet up with us under his own power. Taylor knew we were headed to the lookout tower, and he knew the trail. He probably just took off walking.

Matt poo-poo'd my theory. He figured that if that had been the case, we would have passed Taylor on one of our search attempts when we drove up the trail.

Finally, we received a crackly hail on the radio from Phil. We were able to make out that Taylor had been found and the rangers were en route to meet up with Phil and hand the boy over. We learned Phil's whereabouts and started off to meet him.

We opted to continue up the trail to the top of the mountain and then take the more familiar trail back to the main road rather than risk being stuck on the trail that had given us such grief hours before. We made it to the fire lookout without incident. Sat for a moment as the sun sank below the distant horizon. Took a moment to toast our day's adventure with a short short of Jack Daniels. Took deep breaths, brought our pulse rates back down, and made our way to our rendezvous point.

Where, immediately upon stepping out of our vehicle, Taylor announced that he was never lost-- we were. He "stuck to the plan."

Sure enough. He figured we expected him to meet us at the fire lookout. So he sucked it up and took off uphill, cross-country.

He waited for us at the fire lookout for awhile until the sun started setting and the usual traffic at the top of the trail (it's a popular trail-- just not the way we decided to go up) started to thin. At which point, he walked up to a nice couple and explained to them that he might be lost. He told them his story about thinking he was supposed to meet up with us there, but now that we never came to pick him up, he figured maybe we were looking for him.

The couple offered to give him a ride to the ranger station and met the up-trail-bound rangers on their way down the trail. The rangers stopped them to tell them they had a missing child report and the people told the rangers that was a real coincidence seeing as how they'd found a child.

Wilbur was excited because he got to "drive" the firetruck-- and somewhere there's a photo of Wilbur standing on the driver's seat at the wheel of a Forest Service fire engine that I'd really like a copy of.

It was a long trip home and Matt and I decided to stop at Applebee's for dinner. It was 10 o'clock on a Saturday night. Phil offered to buy us dinner, he said he owed it to us-- we agreed.

We were tired, filthy, and dressed for the mountains as we sat in a booth listening to Taylor retell his adventure in detail while Wilbur colored in his childrens' menu pictures as Visalia's 20-something culture hovered at the bar drinking colorful beverages, dressed in their finest pre-clubbing attire...

...and just as Taylor triumphantly finished his tale and once again admonished us for not "sticking to the plan," Wilbur's head appeared from under the table (where he'd been foraging for dropped crayons)-- with his missing front tooth, his "I cut my own hair" hacked-at bangs, and the back-of-the-hand swipe of dirt across his face and asked BF-Matt and I with all the innocent sincerity of a 4 year-old cuter than any you've ever seen on tv, "How come you guys don't have any kids?"

Cash or Chickens Only

2011-05-25T17:13:00.000-07:00

I want you all to take note, in case I need to call you as witnesses later, that I closed my account at Bank of the West today.

That would be my business account, under "The Laughing Lady" (by which I did business for several years) that I originally opened in 1998 shortly after returning to my home town here in Central CA.

I have had that account for 13 years-- well, just shy of 13 years, September would have been our anniversary.

Let it be known just for the record, that I stand firmly with all those grumpy, suspicious old men who feel the best way to keep my money is in a coffee can buried in the back yard. However, running a business has a way of convincing you that maybe you should get a bank account. Sure... I could insist on cash only. But that's really inconvenient for an increasingly cash-less society and if there's one thing you don't want to be in business-- it's inconvenient to people who want to give you money.

For many years I was really fond of my banking relationship with BOTW. I have had some very bad relationships with banks in my past-- like, if they had been boyfriends, I would have had them arrested, gotten a restraining order and gone to a shelter, bad. Whereas, over the years, I have known dozens of people who insist that they love the bank they have been banking with for 10, 20, 30 years.

These tales seemed too idealistic to hope for. But then I opened that account at BOTW. For years, the staff at the bank knew my name without looking at my ID or account #, they recognized me at the store, they chit chatted with me during my transactions as though I actually mattered to them as a regular customer.

It should also be noted that I am the reason banks invented overdraft protection. I once had a client who boasted to never once, in the 15 years that she had had a bank account, bounced a check or overdrafted her account for any reason.

I find that to be almost as amazing a feat as winning the lottery or being chosen to represent the human race in some sort of intergalactic beauty pageant.

At any rate, the fact that the bank was probably able to cover annual Christmas bonuses just with what I paid them in overdraft fees each year could only have added to the staff's love of me, right?

But, as all fairy tales seem to go eventually, Bank of the West and I started to grow apart. Fees increased, staff turned over, the bank grew, and grew, and grew until Bank of the West isn't just in the west anymore.

We had a couple of really big issues that I just couldn't forgive and forget and soon enough I realized that I just wasn't feeling the love anymore.

When my business moved across town, I opened a new business account at a much more local bank with a branch near my new location.

It just made sense. The new bank (Visalia Community) offered me a free business checking account (BOTW cost me $12 a month) and not only promised my overdraft protection, but told me HOW MUCH they would cover-- BOTW was always so moody about it; one day they might pay my overdrafts and happily charge me the fees, one day they might turn a cold shoulder to my oversights.. and charge me fees anyway. And VCB's fees were lower. Don't get me wrong, they're bank fees-- they're still high. AND, VCB gave me information UP FRONT about their credit line option that would allow me to overdraft from a line of credit without racking up all those individual fees. BOTW told me that at about year 11.

Just sayin.

Well, I did the bank switch a year ago. And it took me quite some time to switch all the bills that automatically deduct from my account. I have been procrastinating on one insurance bill. Mostly because I would have to call them personally and within their time zone to update the information.

But it's all done. Today I made sure to walk in to my estranged bank and personally close my account.

On my way to the bank, I rehearsed several possible lines to give them when they asked me why I was leaving them. But I've been around more than one block and broken up more than one relationship in my time-- I knew the best answer was to simply let them down easy and tell them that it was simply time for Bank of the West and I to go our separate ways.

It was almost hard. The problem is-- I'm not angry or unhappy with the staff that works at my branch. They've been good to me and I'll be sad to not see them anymore. Like breaking up with a boyfriend whose friends you really like. But the Corporate Mother Ship has made "advances" in the business that leave me feeling unappreciated; tagged, numbered, and considered superfluous to its workings.

Heck... I hadn't been inside the bank in so long, I don't even know when they put out those outrageously annoying little pin-pads and started requiring you to swipe your debit card to get access to your own money.

And this is what it all boils down to today: The people who work there, looking at me like I'm a crackpot lunatic because I'm telling them that this is not how I want to do business with the establishment that holds on to my money.

First, I say I'm closing the account. So the teller asks for my account number-- actually asks-- and then proceeds to start writing out a check to "Cash" for the whopping $12.11 that is left in the account. So I ask him why he is writing a check instead of just giving me cash... it took me a moment to catch on that what he was actually doing was using the check as a withdrawl slip and that it would actually be a check from fmyself to myself. It's not that that really seems all that weird to me, it's just not the way I'm used to them doing it. But when I asked, he asked me if I had my debit card with me, because that's the only way he could give me cash...like I said, It took a minute to figure out the whole process, so we had a wee discussion about how irritating it is that banks think debit cards are IDs. And what about people who cut up their debit cards? People who don't want to use debit cards because it'll just get them in as much trouble as using a credit card? Or just don't believe in plastic?

They are out there. Don't pretend you work at a bank and haven't met at least 12 customers who feel this way.

But the poor boy just stared at me like he wasn't quite sure that I was talking to him anymore.

Then I asked about my savings account. Which the teller had no record of in the computer. As in, he's looking at my information in the computer and literally cannot find any sign that I have ever had a savings account at that bank.

Well, I've always wondered how they would know the difference between the accounts, seeing as how they have the exact same account number and all. Sure, when you look in the computer, one says (or used to say) "checking" and one said "savings" but if they have the same number, it seems pretty cocky to assume that no one will ever mistake one for the other (yes... it has been done.) But he had no record of a savings account ever having existed.

This was worrisome. I was pretty sure there was a balance in it.

Another staff member got involved. She pulled some sort of original document. Whew. At least we've established that I did, in fact, at one point have a savings account. She looked in the computer herself, she went back to her desk and got on the phone... (insert music from Final Jeopardy here)... see? This is why I'm leaving your bank.

You-- the people who physically work in the branch-- no longer have access to the information that is vital to assisting you in the role of providing adequate customer service. This has happened before. If the bank does something sketchy and I come in to the branch to sort it out, the people who work in the bank should be able to sort it out with me. They should not have to call the Mother Ship.

She gets off the phone and announces that yes, I have a savings account and it has $25.91 in it... so why does the computer insist that I have no savings account?

(More Final Jeopardy music)... eventually it is settled. At some point, several months ago, the balance was transferred from the savings to the checking and the savings account was eventually closed for inactivity.

Fine. I am willing to accept that... and by the way; stop continuously saying, "I don't think they would escheat the money to the state if there was a checking account that was still open..." You aren't impressing me. You aren't confusing me. You don't sound important or knowledgeable. You know I own a business, I am closing a business account. I know what "escheat" means.

So I sign the check, he gives me my $12.11 and then they look at me and wish me luck with my new bank... ummmm...? So I asked, "don't I get some sort of receipt? Or some kind of document saying that the account is closed?"

Nope.

"Do I get a final statement that is marked 'account closed?'"

Nope.

Ummmmm. Guys? I know I already sound like a crack pot whatwith all my concerns and distrust of your computers and debit card systems... but I've been through a bad break up a bank in the past. What's to keep you from telling me that the account is closed and then hitting me with fees later because there's a zero balance?

Apparently, they insist that the account is closed. I am just supposed to accept that this has been done and done correctly. They simply "don't do it that way."

I have my concerns. But I was not able to procure any documentation to show that I did, in fact, close my account.

I feel a little dizzy. I think the process is crap. Banks are constantly enacting stricter controls and higher fees under the auspices that they are required to meet higher and higher regulation-- but they think I'm the weirdo for wanting proof that we have terminated our relationship? on good terms?

I am seriously considering no longer accepting checks or credit cards-- cash or chickens only... maybe small shiny beads. Anything that I don't need to put in a bank!

Why Don't You Have Kids, Maggie?

2011-05-23T16:50:00.000-07:00

This is my version of how it all happened. I maintain that MY version is the ONLY version with any merit whatsoever, seeing as how it has since come to my attention that the rest of my party was being entertained by SHADOW PUPPETS and Wilbur was-- obviously-- not in possession of his senses.

Wilbur would really appreciate it if I just forgot the whole ordeal. And Wilbur's mom would appreciate it if we all stopped calling him Wilbur.

But Life is full of opportunities to learn to laugh at yourself-- and others. Even others you love.

It all started innocently enough: Back in October 2010, we managed to convince the BF's entire family and company to take the youngest niece to Disneyland for the first time, seeing as how she'd be turning 3 and this would be their last chance to get her in for free.

For some reason that has become quite murky to me, they all agreed that this would be a swell idea.

Naturally, there's a whole other post or 20 worth of stories from THAT trip! BUT-- this isn't about THAT trip, this post is about Indiana Jones and the Ride of Doom.

Suffice it to say that several members of the original party obtained ticket packs from Costco-- which, btw-- really is the best deal on Disneyland tix if they're available in your area. The packs consist of 4 1-day hopper passes which expire approximately 6 months after purchase.

Without getting all nitpicky on the details-- several people (mostly the older kids) ended up with unused tickets from that trip and so BF-Matt and I got together with the boys' mom (Nikki) and planned a weekend in May to use up left over tickets before they expired. Along for the adventure were myself (Our heroine,) BF-Matt, Nikki; mother of Taylor (the elder boy) and Wilbur (our villain-- or comic relief, depending on where you were sitting in the Jeep) and BF-Matt's oldest niece Savannah.

We opted to share one hotel room and one vehicle.

Have I mentioned that I don't have children of my own?

Nevermind that the 13 year old boy and the nearly 13 year old girl are NOT related to eachother, are both in junior high school, and HATE eachother-- in the way that 13 year old boys and girls "hate" eachother: They can't be in the same place for long without fighting, but to anyone over 30 "fighting" looks a lot like an excuse to touch eachother.

Yes. They would both be HORRIFIED to hear me say that.

Nikki-- like many women, many people, in fact-- had no desire to actually drive to Anaheim from Central California (approximately 3 1/2 hours) but she does have a mini-van. So BF-Matt was nominated Captain of the ship with myself sitting shotgun with 2 teenagers in the middle row seating. Nikki climbed into the back seat with Wilbur and promptly fell asleep... I think she had this planned.

The drive to Disneyland went smoothly enough considering the elder kids spent most of it hitting eachother.

Arrival at the hotel, check-in, and dinner in Downtown Disney on Friday night all went well. We were off to a splendid trip.

Have I ever mentioned that I don't have kids? Oh yeah-- and I'm not a morning person.

So getting hauled out of bed in order to arrive at the gates of Disneyland at 7 a.m. was not my idea. Nevertheless, we had decided that we needed to make the most of the trip seeing as how Disneyland was opening 1 hour early-- which somehow was supposed to make up for closing 7 hours early. That's what the website had said. It just so happened that the only weekend we could all make the trip also happened to fall on the day of star-studded premiere of Pirates of the Caribbean 4.

Upon arrival, we were told that Adventure & Frontierlands would close at 2 in the afternoon, but Fantasy & Tomorrowlands would stay open till 8. The GATES would close at 5, with "the Stars" beginning their parade down the black carpet on Main Street at 6. But if we were already in the park when the gates closed, we could stay until 8.

This information is entirely gratuitous and has nothing to do with my story.

We started at Space Mountain. Apparently the only other people who had any interest in being in the park this early were the ones who were sitting on Main Street, determined to see Johnny Depp. This worked out great for us! There were hardly any lines for the rides.

We had a plan: start in Tomorrowland and work out way to Adventureland for breakfast at Riverbelle Terrace and then ride everything on that side of the park before our lunch reservation at the Blue Bayou at 1; which would pretty much herald the end of our stay on the west side of the park for the rest of the day.

It started with the goat. As Savannah and I followed the rest of the group around the backside of Big Thunder Mtn Railroad toward breakfast-- I spied a goat. I mean, it wasn't some feral Disney goat-- it was clearly being wrangled by two girls who clearly worked at Disneyland. So we stopped to pet the goat-- which turned out to be dressed like Captain Jack Sparrow. A pirate goat? Go figure.

We stopped to pet the Capt. Jack goat, snap a photo of Savannah with it, and joke with the cast members who could not talk the goat into turning around and facing the crowd, but rather insisted on attempting to eat their table.

When we caught up to the BF and co. I realized that the little ziplock pouch that holds my pass (and fast passes) was no longer hanging at the end of my lanyard.

This is not the first time I have lost my passport. I was feeling pretty stupid. I'd been in Disneyland for all of an hour and a half and I'd already lost my pass AGAIN!

I appreciate the BF's insistence that the pirate goat probably ate it.

So that's the set up for this story: Up too early, pirate goat, you see how my day was going.

And shortly thereafter, we decided to take our turn on the Indiana Jones ride. (Insert ominous music-- or possibly thunder crash-- here.)

As we headed toward the queue, Nikki begs out with a casual, "You know, I'm not really big on this ride, so I'm just going to sit this one out."

So BF-Matt, myself, and 3 children that are not our own, proceeded toward Disaster.

Taylor wanted to "drive" the Jeep-- which consists of 4 rows that seat 4 across-- so our vehicle was set up with Taylor, Savannah, me, then Wilbur. BF-Matt was directly behind Wilbur in the next row with two college-age girls in the row with him. The back 2 rows were full as well.

The ride was going as anticipated: somebody apparently looked in the cursed idol's eye and instead of emerging from the temple with wealth, knowledge, or eternal youth, we were subjected to a rowdy ride plagued by giant snakes, skulls and spiders while attempting to follow Dr. Jones' directions to the exit... and then, just as we narrowly escaped a corridor of dart-blowing skeletons, but before we nearly meet our crushing doom under a giant spherical rock... the whole thing came to a rather anti-climatic stop.

The lights came on. Which did little to brighten the corridor we were stopped in, seeing as how the whole thing was painted black. But the lights came on-- I considered that we might be getting walked off the ride. I've never been walked off a ride at Disneyland, and I admit I'd rather see Space Mtn with the lights on than Indiana Jones-- and if I'm getting walked off Indy-- or just have to hang out broken down-- I'd have rather done it in a more interesting point in the ride.

As it was, however, I had about 30 seconds to contemplate all of this before my own personal adventure began.

It turns out that young Wilbur-- despite all his cuteness and brilliant comedic timing-- is a weensy bit claustrophobic.

Shortly-- very shortly-- after our Jeep came to a cold stop, my young companion attempted to unbuckle his seatbelt. He then casually observed that he could not get his seatbelt undone.

I looked at him rather blandly and -- with no trace of panic or worry in my voice whatsoever-- remarked that of course he couldn't take it off, we were still on the ride.

He stayed perfectly calm for T minus 4, 3, 2, 1....

And then the screaming started. Not terror. Just screaming. Mostly just a big tantrum that everyone has agreed he's too old for. Wilbur is accustomed to being cute. He had no idea who he was sitting next to.

So he proceeded to scream very loudly that he needed "someone to come save [him]" -- apparently the rest of us could sit there and rot, he really just needed someone to save him.

In the beginning of this fit, I just casually stared at him and remained perfectly calm. I made several attempts to assure him that we were all perfectly fine. When he demanded to know why wasn't anyone coming to same him, I told him it was because he didn't need saving.

My theory in this sort of situation is that people feed off of the people around them. If I'm not panicking, then he should realize he doesn't need to panic either. Right?

Ok... maybe not. It took very little time applying this theory to realize Wilbur might be smarter than that. And-- in the midst of his screaming and hollering-- it took me another handful of nanoseconds to take into account that-- even though I thought he was being a little sissy-lala and was WAY over-reacting mostly for the sake of attempting to manipulate the situation to his satisfaction and that he needs to learn to suck it up... well. On the other hand, this is probably the first time he's ever been on a ride of this nature that has broken down for any length of time. And yeah-- that's kinda freaky the first time it happens.

There's that whole disillusionment thing that happens-- like, "WTF? This is DISNEYLAND for crying out loud!" Stuff just isn't supposed to go wrong there, y'know?

So I did a 180 and decided I would give consolation a try. I put my arm around him in an attempt to draw him close and give him a hug... this resulted in much thrashing and flailing on his part and more howling.

If you have kids-- or have ever spent any significant amount of time with one-- you are familiar with that fake crying thing they do? Louder than real crying, no tears, just blatant caterwauling designed to get their way?

Yeah.

So I was done. Fine kid. Whatever.

So Wilbur was sitting there, tugging at the locked seatbelt, yowling like a coyote on a cactus and I'm sitting next to him telling him to calm down. At that moment he zapped me with one of his classic lines: He throws his head back and yells even louder than he had been," YOU'RE NOT HELPING ME! YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE MAKING ME FEEL BETTER!!"

So I leaned down to his level and gave him the scoop: "I tried making you feel better. I told you that there wasn't anything wrong but you wanted to yell and scream like a baby. I tried hugging you, but you hit me. I tried petting you (patting his head) but you hit me. No matter what I say or do all you want to do is act like a little sissy-lala and embarrass yourself. So I'm done trying to make you feel better. You don't want me to make you feel better. So I'm done. I'm just going to make fun of you now."

So I took a picture of him.

And all I hear from behind me is the calmest tone from the BF saying very matter-of-factly, "the flash going off in his face probably isn't helping."

At which point I think I spun around like Linda Blair's head and hissed at the BF that if he wanted to fix the situation then he should get involved but since he hadn't exactly been helping up to this point I didn't really care about the *#@&! flash."

And then Wilbur went for the all-time classic: he throws his head back and screams this deafening Tarzan-like yell (really, no Disney employees came at all) and all in the same breath he let's fly with a cliche "I WANT MY MOMMY!"

The kid is 7 1/2.

I laughed my ass off.

But then the lights went out in his eyes. Like someone threw a switch. The Wilbur who had up to this point been perfectly lucid and in control of his tantrum went bye-bye and left me sitting next to-- and presumably responsible for-- a mindless lunatic bent on freeing himself from his restraints.

He reached down and started irrationally pulling off his shoes and socks.

I knew he'd gone around the bend.

I stopped laughing at him.

I bent over and tried to gather up his shoes and socks as he tore them off before he could mindlessly hurl them into the abyss of the ride. Visions raced through my brain: I had to save his shoes and socks. Otherwise, when this was all over and we joined up with his mother again she'd just be looking at me and demanding to know why I let him throw his shoes and socks off the ride?

And in the 20 years that those few seconds took while I was bent over trying to catch flying footwear all I could do was try to impart some direction to this kid.

We were stopped directly in front of an emergency exit. In my vision of the immediate future I saw Wilbur stripping naked and wiggling out of the seatbelt and running down the track into the void that was whatever the ride does just ahead of where we were broken down.

So while I was catching his shoes and socks all I could do was repeat that if he managed to get out of the seatbelt before I could stop him, he needed to go through the emergency exit NOT run down the track!

As much as I wanted to make sure he stayed safe-- and not trip in the darkness of the ride up ahead, or get mauled under machinery of the ride that might come back to life at any moment-- I quite enjoyed the notion of a naked 7 year old running mindlessly into the loading/unloading dock of the ride amongst all those waiting riders and unsuspecting Cast Members. That'd teach them for not paying attention to the panicking riders who'd been stuck on the track for the last 20 minutes! Not to mention what a GREAT story it would make!

But when push came to shove, as the boy made his final great attempt to escape, as he managed to get the seatbelt nearly down to his knees-- I snapped.

I had one of those out-of-body experiences you hear so much about. I reached up and grabbed his shoulder and shoved him back down in his seat. I was up (down, actually, he's shorter than me) in his face and I heard a voice that sounded a lot like my mother right before she started counting. I told him he needed to stop, shut up, and sit still. The words, "If you get out of this seatbelt and go running down the track you're going to be in trouble. The Disney security is going to get you and put you in Disney jail and you'll never see your 'mommy' again!"

Ouch. Did I really just say that? I hope not. That's pretty harsh, even for me. Although, let's face it-- frankly if Security did get ahold of him, they'd take care of him and be happy to hand him over to his mom. So it was really a pretty empty threat.

I considered apologizing... then decided that it was fair payback for that whole "you're not helping me" BS.

The ride came back to life and delivered us safely to the landing dock where we were given the option of going again. It took Wilbur about 10 seconds to realize no one was getting off the ride at which point he threw off his seatbelt and went crashing past our knees to safety; hand flailing as he screamed "GET ME OFF THIS CRAZY THING!"

LOL-- yeah, that's really what he said. If he'd been a cartoon, there'd have been a Wilbur-shaped cutout in the wall.

I personally think 7 1/2 is plenty old enough to sit by the side of a ride at Disneyland and wait for your party to rejoin you-- but the BF was concerned that no one else seemed to be getting off the ride to stay with Wilbur. The BF opted to stay with him-- I felt that I had done my time. Afterall, the kid made it back alive and with his shoes.

A New Post

2011-05-20T13:19:00.000-07:00

I've heard some people tell me they'd really like me to update this blog more often. I'd love to keep it updated on a regular basis, but without an official "Maggie Wrangler" to keep me on a deadline and within a word-budget, it turns out that it takes me forever to write a whole post! Mostly because I tend to blather.

So, just a little update:

Business is good. Very good. Maybe the Valley Voice ad was a great idea, maybe the move to Downtown Visalia was a great idea, maybe the Internet has finally become the #1 go-to source for people in Visalia who are looking for a great nail tech, or maybe 18 years is the magic number for being in the biz before being fully-- and I mean fully-- booked? Who knows what combination of variables have coalesed to bring it about, but I spend most of my time actually doing nails these days. This is great seeing as how nails is what I do. But it leaves very little time for updating blogs.

It also leaves very little time for other projects that have had to simmer on the proverbial back burner for far too long now. Namely: an Etsy shop that I have had in the works for 2 years now and actually, officially "openned" last August...

Well. I guess "openned" is a stretch, seeing as how there are no items listed for sale on it.

But August is when I created my Etsy account, so August is when Etsy says I "openned" my shop.

My greatest hestition about listing items has been worrying over my photos. But I also had to figure out shop policies and shipping charges and such before haphazardly posting stuff for sale. I promise-- it's in the works.

As is the new blog. Yes. I said it. ANOTHER blog. For the Etsy shop. Nothing fancy, just a place to talk about the crafts.

The Etsy shop is called "MiscellaneousMagpie" and the corresponding blog is simply "MiscMagpie" and is tied to this blog here on blogger.

Now, the problem with the new blog is that it's tied to this one. Which means it wants to show the same profile for that blog that I have for this one.

It's not that I want to pretend to be two different people or lead some sort of double life-- it's just that THIS blog has a distinctive Nail-centric slant to it. Maybe, if I'm going to have more than one blog-- it would stand to reason that the blogs would focus on different things, no? So wouldn't it make sense that I might want to present my profile slightly differently for any other blogs I might have?

Well... so that turns out to be one more thing I have to work on.

So that's some of the stuff that has been keeping me pre-occupied. These things, plus my "real life" and the stupid smart phone...and I totally skipped writing about my quest to replace my beloved Palm Pilot.

Ok. You're right. I should update this blog more. You're totally behind!

TAG! You're IT!

2011-01-18T15:47:00.000-08:00

I am an only child of a single mother. My father has not had a part in my daily life since before I was 2. No hard feelings about that-- just explaining that it's been me and Mom for as long as I can remember.

My mother went to work all day, and I stayed with my grandmother. My nearest cousins lived 200 miles away from us. I never went to daycare. I did not go to preschool. I was not in any sports or dance or gymnastics groups...

I didn't get a lot of social interaction with other children until I started kindergarten.

My grandmother lived (and continues to live) in a one bedroom apartment in a tiny rural town 2 block from the elementary school that I attended. Up until I started school there myself in 1975, my mornings consisted largely of being dropped off with the grandparents, sitting on my grandfather's lap while we ate breakfast (poached eggs on toast with strawberry jam-- every morning,) seeing my grandfather off to work, and then sitting in the big picture window in the living room watching all the neighborhood kids walk to school.
I was really looking forward to starting school.

See... in my sheltered, delusional state I thought that when I started school I would suddenly meet all these kids and-- ergo-- have all these friends.

What actually happened when the big day arrived was that I didn't meet anyone new until the first recess. That time before school started was filled with me trying to convince my mother that it was ok to leave me there and go to work, while other children clung like burrs to their mothers' legs and cried. So there wasn't much time for making friends.

So, the first recess comes along and there I am, standing all alone on the sidewalk realizing I have no idea how to go about making these new friends. When Robin comes bopping up to me. She was so perky and confident-- and she immediately introduced herself to me and asked me bluntly, "Would you like to be my best friend?"

Well. I had to think about that. It seemed like a strange way to go about making new friends. And, frankly, I did already have a best friend. But then I reasoned that this school thing was new for all of us (I had no concept of daycare and preschool, can you tell?) so I thought maybe that's the way her parents advised her to go about it. So I said, "Ok."

My brand new BFF then asked me if I owned any makeup. Which seemed odd. I mean, we're five, who needs makeup? But, as a matter of fact, I did have quite a collection of makeup for playing dress-up so I let my new besty know that I had an impressive collection of Avon lipstick samples at my disposal.

At this point, the bell was ringing and we began filing back into the class, but Robin was sure to tell me to bring my lipstick to school the next day.

I was pretty excited when I got home, as you can imagine. My first day of kindergarten was a success.
My second day? Not so much.

First recess came and my perky new BFF bebopped up to me and immediately demanded, "Where is it?"

I was at a complete loss: "What?"

Perky tilted her head to one side, furrowed her eyebrows, dropped her voice an octave, and said in what I still remember as the most sarcastic tone I've ever heard a human voice accomplish, "The lipstick."

The lightbulb went on over my head and I remembered our previous conversation. I explained blithely that it resided in a drawer in my grandmother's bathroom and that I'd bring it the following day.

To which my new X-BFF tossed her head in disgust and uttered, "You probably don't have any makeup anyway" as she turned her back and walked away.

Robin never said another kind word to me again.

She went on to befriend Kathy, Theresa, and Debbie.

Kathy and Theresa continued through school with me until our senior year of high school. Theresa was our homecoming queen.

Honestly, both Kathy and Theresa eventually wandered off to their own lives and I don't have any particularly hard feelings toward either of them as they pretty much left me alone entirely after kindergarten.

Debbie went to school with me until about the 3rd grade and seemed particularly intent on making my life miserable.

I never saw Robin again after kindergarten.

But that group of girls comprised the "popular girls" during kindergarten-- and they did their share of teasing and verbally tormenting me.... I guess they all remembered their makeup.

Nevertheless-- I have never considered any of these girls to have been bullies. Not to me, and certainly not to anyone else by any stretch of the imagination.

I had bullies.

Roxy was a year older than me and for the life of me, I've never understood what I ever did to her. She used to punch me at recess. Pull my hair. Put gum in my hair. Throw rocks at me. Spit at me.

My grandmother said "she's just jealous" and "ignore her and she'll go away."

Aren't grandmother's precious?

But Roxy was ever-present for some 3 years of my life. She was every bit a bully. Just plain mean.

There've been lots of bullies-- real bullies-- throughout my life. Mostly other girls. The gum in the hair trick is a popular one.

I love the way these things can happen in classrooms, on playgrounds, on school buses-- right in front of the people who are supposed to be supervising you-- without being noticed.

I had to learn how to defend myself, and I had to learn how to pick out the merely obnoxious from the actual bullies.

Even as a child, I could tell that there was a distinct difference between the people who merely taunted me, teased me, or said hurtful-- and often unintentionally so-- things to me. It was one thing to have someone call me "ugly" or bark at me... quite another to outright threaten me or throw rocks at me.

I do think that these negative experiences with my peers had a lasting impression on me-- some tragic, some not so much. I never automatically assume people like me. I have some social anxiety and can be surprisingly shy.

On the other hand-- it isn't the end of my world when it turns out that someone actually doesn't like me.

And it doesn't crush my delicate self esteem to have someone disagree with me, or deride me, or roll their eyes at me, or call me names. And since I'm deeply convinced that I'm not going to win any popularity contests anyway-- when someone wants to rally their allies against me, I'm perfectly content to shrug and let them win. I long ago realized that popularity is not all it's cracked up to be anyway. If that's how you feed your self-esteem, have it, you need it more than I do.

The thing is-- self esteem doesn't develop on its own. If you live your whole life in a sterile bubble, the fact that you've never been sick doesn't mean you have a healthy immune system-- it means you've never been exposed to anything that could make you sick.

I'm pretty sure self esteem is the same way.

We have school districts in this country that are banning the game tag. Seriously. Because parents are concerned for their delicate snowflakes' self esteem. Apparently playing tag is going to traumatize our children.

So much debate all around us lately about the "wussification" of America. Kids can't play tag. We don't keep score at sports events so no one will lose. Everyone gets a trophy just for showing up.

Suddenly "bully" is the new buzz word and everyone is crying about "Internet bullying." Social networks like Myspace and Facebook-- if someone says something the least bit hurtful to you-- you're being "bullied."
Hogwash. Just because someone hurts your feelings doesn't make them a bully.

We still have freedom of speech in this country, and some of us still believe that's a freedom worth keeping-- if it means getting our feelings hurt now and then.

It's ok if someone disagrees with you. It's ok if they have an opinion of you that is less than complimentary.

The Internet comes with all kinds of "block address," "block user, " and "delete friend" options-- use them if your self esteem is really so delicate that it can't take a little opposition. But just because the Internet has made it easier to find out what people are saying about you, doesn't mean they haven't always been saying stuff about you. And it sure as heck doesn't equate to "bullying."

If playing tag is hurting your feelings-- stop chasing people. Because once tagged, they are going to chase back.

I Can Vouch for Him

2011-01-16T16:24:00.001-08:00

So, only 2 weeks left till I will find myself lost among the booths of the ISSE Long Beach professional beauty industry trade show.

No. I don't recall off the top of my head what "ISSE" stands for-- my guess is "international salon and spa expo." If it's that terribly important to know for sure, Google it.

Truth of the matter is that, as I write this, I am sitting in front of my home computer wearing two sweatshirts, wool socks, and a double-thick fleece blanket (thanks Nikki)-- freezing my @$$ off even though the house is a balmy 68 degrees. I don't feel good. I can only breath out of one nostril, my throat isn't quite sore but it itches, and there's only so much orange juice a person can drink. Tomorrow I have to get out of bed and go to work. All day. Because most of my clients have tomorrow off as a holiday (Martin Luther King, Jr's birthday) so they can come in during the day-- while I am self employed and absolutely live for the holidays that my clients have but I don't. It allows me to make the absolute best use of the day's time.

There is no way I am calling 13 people to reschedule them just because my nose is stuffed up.

None of that has anything to do with the ISSE Long Beach tradeshow-- or any other professional beauty industry tradeshow for that matter. I'm just explaining why I'm too lazy and grumpy to bother openning another window on my computer just to look up "ISSE" for you. Besides-- have I mentioned that our home computer is nearly 5 years old and still running Windows XP? Don't get me wrong-- Windows XP was a good OS and it's served us well, which is probably why we still have the old computer. But the laptop at the salon is running Windows 7 and has a dual core processor and 8 gigs of RAM-- by comparison, working on this computer is painful... and our modem is on it's last legs here at home too. Internet access is unpredictable. But, like I said, all this is totally irrevelant to my post.

ISSE LB marks the beginning of the US nail competition season-- the race for the Nailpro Cup. And yes, there IS such a thing as a nail competition, and it's much more complicated than most people think it is.

Every year the schedule changes a little bit. This year the schedule consists of the ISSE LB show, ISSE Midwest, Premiere Orlando, and IBS Las Vegas. Each show will have around 5 or 6 individual competitons: nail art, 3d nail art, sculptured nail... etc. And this year they are ending the season and awarding the Nailpro Cup at IBS Vegas. Which is on June 18-20. Which means the 2011 US season is pretty short.

But again-- I wasn't going to rant about the US competition circuit. Although I can. I can a lot.

Instead, I have every intention of bitching about professional tradeshows. At least, professional BEAUTY INDUSTRY tradeshows-- since those are primarily the ones I attend.

They aren't open to the public, see.

The vendors sell products at professional discount prices-- so it goes to reason that they want to make sure that they are selling to professionals.

The exhibit halls look like the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, so it would be difficult for the people working the vendor booths to check proper id and creditials before making each sale.

So the people in charge of putting on these shows have become increasingly nit-picky about ticket sales. They make a big fuss about how you have to have show your professional license, or time card proving you are currently enrolled in beauty schoool, or have an official letter on company letterhead from your boss that says you are employed at a salon-- or whatever.

Mind you-- ANYone can buy a ticket. But once you get to the actual show with your ticket-- that's when the harrassment begins.

The venue's rental security outfit has been briefed to ask for certain types of documentation proving the guest's worthiness of attendance and if they don't present it-- it can really ruin your day.

I think it's gotten insane. Right over the top. Folks-- it's a BEAUTY show, it isn't this hard to get into a gun show. I'm not a big fan of the idea of Betty Jane Doe going in and buying 2 gallons of fancy salon shampoo at professional prices either... but it's not going to kill anyone if it happens.

When I compete in a nail competition that requires a live model, my entry fee covers MY ticket to the show for the day of the competition and a ticket for my model. My model is not required to be an active, licensed member of the professional beauty industry. She does not need to show her papers at the door for admittance. She can buy 2 gallons of shampoo at the discount price if she'd like, and nobody will question her.

A few years ago, at the Las Vegas show, my model opted to bring a friend to the show. Well, she opted to bring a friend to Vegas with her. She thought, seeing as how her friend worked at a makeup counter at a local departmant store and was on the fence about enrolling in beauty school, that her friend would really enjoy the show and so she was going to purchase her friend a ticket.

But she was met with so much scrutiny at the ticket booth that she gave up. Fortunately, I found a competitor who needed a model and the friend got to go to the show afterall for the small price of 2 1/2 hours and a mediocre set of nails.

I intend to take the BF with me to the ISSE LB show in two weeks. But the tickets are $50 for one day.
I've gone to concerts that cost less than that. $50 a day is preposterous and I'd keep my money if it weren't for the fact that one of my product distributors has offered me a deal I can't refuse if I stop by her booth.... although, she did also say she'd just send me a call tag and I could ship those bottles back to her....
But I want to go to the show. Even if it's only for one day and even if it cost me $50 for both me and the BF to go.

No. I won't be competing on Monday. Which is the day of the competition awards ceremony. Which means if I do compete on any of the other days, I will have to pay the cost of admission just to attend the awards ceremony. Which probably wouldn't make the cut of things I consider worth the money either, seeing as how my competition skills still leave much to be desired, so the odds of walking away from the awards ceremony with any actual awards is pretty hit and miss.

But, since the 2 competitions that I am most likely to enter are turn-in only nail art competitions, I need to attend the awards ceremony so that I can claim my entries. I am NOT investing the kind of time required to put together a good nail art competition entry and NOT getting those nails back!

So I have sent a little email inquiry to the ISSE LB people asking if they are going to make my life miserable if I try to take the BF through the front doors, even if he does have a ticket. Since their website sure makes it seem like they will.

I think I should be able to bring a guest to any tradeshow. I should be able to bring my spouse, my mom, my BFF, my salon assistant, my salon receptionist, my bookkeeper... I should get to bring a guest without risking losing the money for their ticket or getting harassed.

Some Nail Art

2010-12-20T16:26:00.001-08:00

Hope your 2010 didn't totally suck-- and even if did, at least it's almost over now!

Bring on the New Year!

Little Rituals

2010-12-15T16:20:00.001-08:00

One more year has slipped by before I managed to quite get ahold of it, and here I am preparing to make a grab for 2011.

This time of year I try-- really try-- to at least get cards in the mail to everyone who has made a postivie contribution to my life over the year. If I find myself with the time, the cards, and the postage left over-- I try to include as many people as I can who have left an endearing impression on me, even if I haven't seen them in several years.

This process of choosing my cards each year, hand addressing each envelope, and carefully writing a short message to each recipient is one of very few rituals that I partake in on a regular basis.

I take the whole process ridiculously seriously, actually. Taking a moment to seriously consider each person; who they are, how they have affected my life, how I feel about them and why I am sending them this card as I write out my message to them and sign my name.

Mostly, people in my life just sneer at me and accuse me of making them look bad because getting around to sending out cards each year has fallen by the wayside in the rush of modern life; one of those things that we all would like to do, but never get around to.

But I can't practically purchase gifts for everyone who deserves one. The least I can do is hope to dedicate a tiny moment to seriously think of each of these people and, hopefully, convey to them that I did take that moment just for them-- to think of them, to let them know that I think of them for more than just that one moment each year. I hope each person on my list understands that they really are important to me-- and worth putting aside the tedious demands of daily life and hectic holiday stress, to write something sincere.

Lacking Shellac?

2010-09-24T16:50:00.000-07:00

Have you been introduced to the new gel polish revolution that is sweeping the country? Fallen in love with CND's Shellac hybrid gel polish? Only to find that your regular nail tech hasn't been able to resupply her products?

It's a common tale all around the country. The company that make Shellac did a wonderful job of promoting their new gel polish line, only to discover they'd created a larger demand than they could supply initially.

Several nail techs and salons who have been die-hard CND fans have found themselves in a bind over the back orders. Many of these techs have tried substituting other basecoats, with disappointing results.

Well, here's the good news for the clients who are now wondering where they can find another 14 day manicure:

Shellac isn't the only product on the shelves.

In fact, the gel polish revolution is booming. Almost every manufacturer of professional nail products has introduced their own formula of gel polish and all of them are fabulous!

The deciding factor for most professionals is not in finding a gel polish that lasts for 2 weeks, it's finding one that soaks off in a reasonable amount of time.

The Art of Nailz has opted for Gelish by Hand and Nail Harmony. Gelish is packaged in a tradtional polish bottle, just like Shellac. Gelish soaks off in about 10 minutes and cures completely under UV light. You never have to wait for polish to dry again, and no more worrying about messing up a nail while buckling up your seatbelt!

The extra good news? Shellac is currently available in about 12 colors-- Gelish is currently available in 48 colors, with more on the way soon.

And the Art of Nailz has all 48 colors --AND the all-important base and top coats-- available for your manicure or pedicure right now.

We also have the full Eco Gel line from Star Nail, another excellent gel polish product.

If you're one of thousands of women who have been waiting for the day when they invent a polish that actually lasts on your natural nails-- it's HERE!

Call Maggie at the Art of Nailz at 300-8063 to make your appointment.

Goodbye T-Mobile

2010-09-07T12:58:00.000-07:00

I activated my first cell phone back in 1999. It was one of those Nokia handsets that everybody had-- I got a red faceplate for it. Looked cool. Called it my "bat-phone." Set the ringtone to Beethoven's 9th, a piece of music I like so much I often missed my chance to answer the phone because I was busy listening to it ring.
I was a happy happy AT&T wireless customer.

Then the day came when AT&T um-- merged?-- with Cingular. Such a silly thing to do. At the time, we had our choice of AT&T, Verizon (which may actually have still been GE, or GTE, or whatever it used to be,) Sprint, and Cingular-- and it was generally accepted around these parts that Cingular was the worst of the lot.

But suddenly, there I was along with what? Millions? of other formerly happy AT&T wireless customers who found themselves the hapless slaves to a new carrier that none of us had chosen of our own free will.
The switch was a mess.

Suddenly I lost signal where it had been strong in the past. Dropped calls in areas where my phone showed that I had excellent signal strength.

Customer service at the hands of Cingular was a nightmare. No one could help with the problems, and no one I talked with seemed to give a crap about me or my puny problems. The only solution offered was that I needed to switch to Cingular service on a Cingular phone with a brand new Cingular contract.

Ummmm... perhaps you don't understand the concept of taking over another company's customers?

Nevermind that migrating my AT&T service also meant going through a whole new application process, credit check, activation fee, and starting a new contract-- with a carrier that I DIDN'T CHOOSE TO BEGIN WITH.

And I was not the only unhappy one, my complaints were small compared to many of my friends who were much heavier cell users.

I never did migrate my service to Cingular. I stood quite steadfast and stubborn with my AT&T phone, my AT&T phone number and my AT&T attitude, waiting for my contract to expire so I could run like hell-- seeing as how Cingular insisted I was stuck with that contract.

And then I went to Denver.

Before embarking on my trip, I contacted Cingular to see where my new "home" calling area started and stopped so to be sure I wouldn't incur unintentional roaming fees. The customer service rep sweetly assured me that my "home" area extended well into the area I'd be touring and that my phone would say "roaming" on it pretty much as soon as I left my area code, but not to worry, it didn't really mean it.

Ok. I checked, right? I did my due diligence.

So imagine my delight when I received my $400+ bill at the end of the month. And imagine Cingular's delight when I finally stood my ground and told them to take my account and shove it.

Some argument ensued regarding early contract termination fees, the roaming fees, and my credit report. I think my argument back included my position that I hardly understood how they could hold me to a contract that I did not enter with them. I don't hardly bloody care if they "bought" my contract from my former carrier or not, Cingular was a viable option as a carrier at the last time I renewed my contract with AT&T, if I'd wanted Cingular service, I could easily have switched at that time. I did not. 'Nuff said. Chase me down if you want, and go ahead and keep my number if it means that much to you.

And so it was that I went to the local Target, bought a T-Mobile pay-as-you-go phone, activated it and proceeded to go through the rather painful process of making sure everyone knew I had a new phone number.

That was in 2005. I have been unspeakably thrilled with my T-Mobile account. My phone "bill" averages $25 a month-- when I started texting, it went up to $30-35 a month. I really hate being on the phone. T-Mobile's pay-as-you-go plan doesn't charge for roaming, which is why I chose T-Mobile.

No. I don't have the same coverage as Verizon-- or AT&T, which is back to AT&T now if you've noticed-- but I have plenty fine coverage in all the areas I would normally expect to be able to access a telephone.

I don't need to call ANYone from the middle of the John Muir Trail at 11,000 feet above sea level. And neither do you. And if either of us do need to call someone from there, then we're both in much bigger trouble than a simple call to Mom is going to fix. And if that's a probability, stay off the trail-- or carry something more reliable than a cell phone to begin with. 'Nuf said.

Point is: I have not contacted T-Mobile customer service since activating my phone back in 2005.

Recently, as a result of some other technically-related issues in my life, it came to my attention that Virgin Mobile offers a monthly plan that includes more voice minutes than I ever use with unlimited text and data-- for about what I've been paying for the T-Mobile phone.

And so, I decided to give it a whirl.

And this time, I'm keeping my phone number.

Oh my.

So I called the customer service number at Virgin Mobile to port my old number over. I gave them my phone number, all my information, including my "password" to my T-Mobile account.

And proceeded to wait the 72 hours that it could take.

Nothing.

So I called back. The kind folks at Virgin politely explained that I seem to have given them the incorrect "password." So I scrunched up my forehead and thought about it, and gave them the only other set of numbers that I associate with my T-Mobile account... and proceeded to wait another 24 hours.

Hmmmmm. Apparently I am missing something here.

So I got online with a rep from T-Mobile, and explained that I was trying to have my number ported over to a new carrier but apparently didn't know my own password.

It's probably a good thing I contacted them via live chat-- they were probably howling with laughter at what a dumbass I am. But, after a phone call from my T-Mobile phone, and answering a slew of questions designed to assure my identity, I was given my password.

What the hell does that spell? Apparently this sequence of numbers meant something to me 5 years ago when I activated my account-- and I've never needed them since!

So, the very patient folks at Virgin Mobile are pretty sure everything will be fine now that I have finally provided my actual password. And in 24 to 72 hours, I should get a text message from Virgin Mobile saying my account is active.

I hope that A. I will contact Virgin Mobile's customer service as often as I have needed T-Mobile's and B. That I remember my Virgin Mobile password.

I just have to say-- I have loved my T-Mobile account. The rates have been reasonable. The payment system convenient. My service hasn't been any worse or unreliable than any other carrier seems to be.

I will miss you T-Mobile; and the ONLY reason I'm moving on is because you absolutely do not have a comparable plan. I appreciate that your no-contract unlimited plans are still more reasonably priced than any of the other major carriers, but it would still have more than doubled my monthly average-- just for the dubious "convenience" of being tethered to the internet 24/7.

I don't need to be online all the time, I sure as hell aren't going to pay extra for it. But you can't get a "smart" phone from anyone without paying for the data plan to go with it.

I realize I'm a throwback-- but why can't I just get a phone with wifi and only connect to the internet using wifi? And if I have to pay for the data plan no matter what, why would I bother connecting via wifi anyway?
Well, I know I'm a minority. In my search to replace my beloved Palm Pilot, I've heard a lot of people telling me to "get with the times" and to "suck it up" and "get used to it" because "that's the way it is."

Ok. So go find my high school counselor, deans, and vice principal, and ask any one of them how "that's the way it is" EVER went with me.

But that maunders off to at least two other stories I could post at a later date. For now, I just wanted to bid my fond farewell to a cell service that did right by me.

Branding: "Solar nails" vs Pink and White Acrylic

2010-09-03T10:39:00.001-07:00

If you are a regular reader of my occassional random-ness here, you may already be familiar with one my older posts on the subject of "solar nails."

It's really an irritating burr in the butt of the professional nail care industry, this issue of "solar nails."

Basically, Solarnail is a registered trademark of CND (Creative Nail Design) who manufactured a line of acrylic products under that name for many years. But a significant portion of the nail industry has re-coined the term "solar nails" to refer to any set of enhancements done in pink and white product.

In some areas, "solar nails" are pink and white acrylic, in some areas "solar nails" can be acrylic or gel, in some places "solar nails" are scultped on forms, and in other areas "solar nails" might be done with a white tip and a clear overlay... but essentially, the term "solar nails" has been used as a catchall marketing phrase long enough to have taken root in the minds of most American (and other countries too) consumers as meaning pink and white nails.

Unfortunately, many people erroneously believe that "solar nails" aren't acrylic, even when they are.
Folks: if you ever learn anything about getting your nails done, learn this: acrylic comes in a lot of different colors. If they dip a brush in a liquid and then dip that brush in powder-- it's acrylic. Gel is never a powder-- that's why it's called "gel"-- I don't care what's printed on the label. "Powder gel" is an oxymoron.

But nevermind all this technical information. I'm here to discuss a notion that I find interesting: branding.

There's currently a thread on one of the major nail industry networking forums that was at 4 pages long last time I looked, and it's all about "solar nails."

The person who started the thread just wanted to know what they were. The people who have extended the thread to 4 pages and counting are arguing about the usage of the term and whether it's legit or not.

One person has brought up some interesting points-- which are not going over so well, but that's why I'm blogging it here instead of bothering to butt in there-- and what he/she (I don't know who this person is so I can't say) is saying is that the term "solar nails" has taken on the same generic usage as Kleenex, or Coke.
The opposition insists that calling all pink and whites "solar nails" is misleading to the public because it insinuates that the nails will be done using CND's trademarked product Solarnail.

Which made me think: one of the things the marketing experts will tell you is that it is desirable to have your product become the go-to name.

The Kleenex people aren't offended when you refer to tissues from another company as "Kleenex." The Band-Aid people aren't offended when you refer to all bandages as "Band-Aids." The Vaseline people aren't upset when you refer to any brand of petroleum jelly as "Vaseline." And the Q-Tip folks don't mind if you call all the other brands of cotton swabs "Q-Tips."

This phenomenon in the consumer mentality is called "branding" in marketing. And the people who make billions on the research will tell you that it's something you want people to do with your product name.
So, according to the marketing industry, the fact that the average nail client now considers any set of nails done in pink and white to be "solar nails" should be nothing but good for the folks at CND who actually, legally, own the name "Solarnail."

Well, if that's the case-- why are there so many people who are upset about it?

I mean-- I got over the terminology a long time ago. I don't care what you call them, I care that the consumer knows enough about them to get what they want without getting ripped off. And it's important to me that my potential customer base understands that it is just a marketing term so they aren't confused when they find a nail tech who's holding out on semantics and doesn't offer "solar nails."

But after reading through 2 1/2 pages of arguing on the forums, I'm gonna have to stand with the unpopular kid : he/she is right-- the current common usage of the term "solar nails" is an example of branding. It isn't a scam. It's not intended to defraud.

Maybe that's how it started. Maybe some people are trying to mislead the public into thinking they're getting a particular brand of product-- but for the most part, I think most salons doing "solar nails" are just doing their jobs, performing a service that's on the menu.

And another point that I'll have to agree with: People don't care what they have on their nails.

I do think that's a damn shame. I can't tell you how many clients I know who have their hair colored and they know exactly what line of color their hairstylist uses and what the specific colors are. But it has never occurred to those same people to ask their nail tech what product is being applied to their nails.

Which is one reason why chemical abuse and service fraud is so rampant in the industry; people not only don't know about nail product chemistry-- they don't care. Until something goes wrong.

This is why so many sub-standard salons are still getting away with using MMA in their acrylics. This is why so many people are paying for gel nails and getting acrylic.

It's a buyer beware world out there-- and no one is going to look out for your best interests better than you.
There are a lot of companies making nail products. Some have been around for a long time and have built solid reputations in the industry. Some manufacturers make very high quality products...some don't. And in many, many cases, it's a matter of preference on the side of the technician. I mean, there are some awesome products on the market that I, personally, cannot stand to work with. Just because I don't like them doesn't mean they aren't great. Just like the products I use are great and I have tremendous results with them-- but that doesn't mean everyone else out there likes them too.

A lot of people like Honda, but that doesn't mean Nissan doesn't offer some fine products.

But the average consumer isn't exposed to nearly as many products as we in the professional industry are. And even if you put a giant list of all the products that exist in front of the average person, they would not only be overwhelmed at how many there are, but they'd also only recognize a few of the names. That doesn't mean that some of the lesser known brands aren't of high quality-- it just means they aren't as well known.

What if I developed a product line and called it "Pink & White?" Would that then mean that everyone who offers "pink and white" nails would be defrauding their customers if they aren't using my product?

There are plenty of regions in the US where a "Coke" means soda, or pop, or cola. Just because someone offers you a "Coke" doesn't necessarily mean you won't get a Pepsi, and if you happen to live in an area where this is common, just because someone offers you a Coke and gives you a Pepsi doesn't mean you weren't expecting a Pepsi anyway. If I ask you for a "Kleenex" I mean a tissue-- I don't really care which brand, I just need to blow my nose.

And so it seems that it is now with "solar nails," it's no longer specifically a brand name so much as it's come to refer to any set of nails done in pink and white product.

And let's face it-- outside the professional nail industry, I don't really know anyone who even knows that "Solarnail" was ever the name of a specific product anyway.

As long you know what's acrylic and what's gel and you're getting your nails done in a salon that exhibits some professional integrity-- with licensed workers practicing proper sanitation protocols, and using safe products (no MMA) and making sure you get the service you pay for (liquid and powder are not gel-- even if you put a gel topcoat over it) and as long as you are happy with your services-- call the dang nails whatever you want.

"Polymer nails," "Poly-crylic," Polly-wanna-cracker

2010-08-19T19:40:00.000-07:00

FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT YOU HOLD DEAR!

I about sick and more than a little crazy at the unspeakable amount of ignorance regarding the use of the prefix "poly" that runs rampant through out the so-called "professional" nail industry.

Y'all are killin me here! Seriously!

Since it seems, after a good 10 years already, that a significant number of my colleagues largely refuse to educate themselves on the subject; the best I guess I can do is try to put something out there that reaches the masses.

Before you buy into any manicurist's rant regarding "polymer" or "poly-crylic" nails and nail products-- PLEASE, take a moment to look up the definition of "Polymer."

Did you click on that link? It takes you to the Wikipedia entry for "polymer." Now, I know a lot of teachers and college professors won't let you use Wikipedia as a reference source if you're writing a paper-- but, trust me, it's an accurate enough article to give you a real understanding of what the word "polymer" really means. And, if you read it, you now know that "polymers" are types of molecules that make up a lot of different types of materials-- including ALL, that's right! ALL-- artificial nail enhancement products. Even polish. Or "lacquer," or "enamel," or whatever you prefer to call your favorite pigmented, brush-on nail paint.
The word "gel" gets thrown around rather haphazardly in and out of the professional industry.

The primary problem with the word "gel" as it pertains to nail enhancement products is that it doesn't really refer to any specific type of polymer. The word "gel" just refers to any-- that's right, any-- nail enhancement product that is a gel.

You know. Gel. As in gelatinous. Jelly-like.

The majority of the pros concur that real gel nails are created by coating the nails with multiple layers of viscous liquid (viscous= thick. For our purposes here, that's close enough) that must be cured by being exposed to ultra violet light. Which means that the product is already in a jelly-like state when it leaves the factory. No components must be mixed to create the "gel." UV gels can come in all kinds of containers, from pots or jars to squeezy tubes to polish-type bottles, but if they are UV gels, the container will be opaque. (Opaque means that light cannot pass through it-- as in, you can't see through it.) The containers have to be opaque because sunlight and even regular lightbulbs (especially fluorescent light bulbs) emit ultra violet light-- so if light can get through the container that the gel is in, it will thicken and eventually harden in the container.

I hear ALL THE TIME from people who have been duped by unscrupulous salons that claimed to do "gel" nails, but really just slapped on old-fashioned acrylic (liquid and powder) and sealed it with a gel topcoat.
REAL GEL NAILS are done with EVERY layer in gel. Gel is never a powder. It can't be-- since the whole reason gel is called gel is because it's a gel. Remember?

BUT sometimes you hear the term "no light gel."

"No light" gels are really just nail glue. Usually a thick nail glue, but still nail glue. Which isn't even really "glue" since true glue is made of processed protein and nail glue is made of cyanoacrylate resin-- same as Crazy Glue.

Most pros don't consider these "resin" based products to be true gels, but since the term gel only refers to the physical properties of the product, it's fair to call it "no light gel."

But the thing that makes me CRAZY is how many techs are out there selling their preferred UV Gel product as NOT BEING GEL! And go on and on about how their product is a "poly-"something-or-other.

Folks. I'm here to testify. Their "polymer" or "polycrylic" products ARE gels. Why? Because it's in a gelatinous state.

And what's more-- other gels ARE TOO "polymers!" In fact: traditional liquid and powder acrylics ARE POLYMERS! and "no light gels" ARE POLYMERS! and all uv gels ARE POLYMERS! and nail varnish/lacquer/enamel/polish-- all polymers. and nail glue-- also a polymer.

At least, the resulting, cured products are polymers.

Oh yeah. ALL ARTIFICIAL NAIL ENHANCEMENT PRODUCTS are also acrylates, and all acrylates are types of plastic.

Yes. There are some differences in the chemistry of certain types of gels. That's the problem with such broad usage of the word "gel," since it only refers to the physical properties of the products, there a lot of different chemical formulas that qualify.

And part of the problem is that the companies that manufacture nail products market their products in misleading ways-- they tell the manicurists who use their products that the product "isn't a gel because...blah blah blah" or that their product is different/better/new because it's different/better/made with magical unicorn pee...

Sorry. Did my disdain for companies that intentionally use misleading information to convince licensed professionals of their outright LIES start to slip through there?

Yeah. I am going to have to take a stand and claim that some of these companies are intentionally lying to us-- they have chemists making their products. I cannot, for the life of me, wrap my brain around the concept that a PROFESSIONAL CHEMIST who has GONE TO COLLEGE and OBTAINED A DEGREE IN CHEMISTRY could possibly develop a gelatinous polymer designed to use as a fingernail product and honestly NOT KNOW that it's an acrylate, let alone a gel.

Unless there's something I'm REALLY SERIOUSLY missing in the MSDS. (Material Safety Data Sheet-- very cool piece of paper that list ingredients and lets you know what to do in case someone drinks the product.)

Ok.

So. I'm not sayin' that there aren't different chemical formulas for all the different types of polymer nail products out there. And there ARE many different formulas for gels. In fact, UV gels are booming in the industry right now and they keep introducing more and more new formulas to the market!

We now have "traditional" or "hard" UV gels that will not soak off the natural nail with solvents-- but have to be filed off the nail. We have "soak-off" or "soft" UV gels that can be soaked off with solvents-- and even then! Some "soak-off" gels soak off very easily and quickly, while some take a really long time. We have gel polishes now-- and there's even different formulas of gel polishes!

It really does boggle the mind to try to keep track of them all.

If your nailcare professional chooses to use a particular formula of gel product with claims that it's not an acrylate, or tries to tell you that it's not a gel or that other gels aren't polymers-- well. These are buzz words and marketing terms that indicate that your nail tech probably doesn't quite grasp the concept of polymers in general. But that doesn't mean her product isn't good. In fact, many of these products are great and I know a lot of people who love them...but then again, I know a lot of people who love other types of gels too.

In the end, it's going to be up to you whether or not you decide to stay with that tech and her product. And that comes down to whether or not you like that tech and feel safe with her, and whether or not you like the way your nails look when she's done with them and whether or not you like the way product wears for you.
I just want everyone to know the true meaning of the word "polymer." That way, you can make up your mind about how much you like a product without thinking it's better or worse for your nails based on erroneous marketing.

Remember-- there are some VERY smart folks doing nails out there! And there are some of us who are very knowledgeable about the products we use. Then again-- there are also a lot of people who only repeat what they get told by their sales rep.

It's up to you to educate yourself in order to protect yourself and get what you really want. And education starts with listening to more than one side of the story and then making an informed decision about what you believe.

CRAZY CAT LADY RETIRES!

2010-08-06T13:50:00.001-07:00

My mother has been a Crazy Cat Lady for the past 2 decades. More by circumstance than choice, reluctantly adopting the strays that refuse to leave her garage and the kittens that are born there, and whatever sad case her daughter finds huddled in the middle of the road. At one point her cat count was up to 17.

Mom would give the kitties stupid names-- for the mere sake of telling one from the other-- and keep them safe, usually in the house, until they were old enough to have spayed or neutered. Then she would try to send them back to live as respectable outside cats.

Over the years, some cats became outside cats, while others became fat, spoiled house cats.

Over the last 4 years, all of Mom's most beloved pets have crossed the proverbial Rainbow Bridge, leaving her with 2 outside cats, 2 inside cats that were supposed to be outside cats, and one small dog which we think is a "pomweenie."

Fox (the dog) was about a year old when we adopted her from the local SPCA. Mom's last dog had passed away the year before and it was strange for Mom's house not to have a dog on duty. So when I found the pup that we now call "Fox" in her crate at the adoption center at the mall, I knew she was Mom's next dog.
Unfortunately, Mom's 2 remaining inside cats do NOT LIKE the new dog.

Mom is disabled now, due to diabetes that has caused permanent nerve damage in several of her toes-- causing Mom to lose balance and take more than her fair share of unexpected tumbles. And, diabetes also means taking extra care to avoid cuts and scrapes because of increased risk of infection...

Which is how my mother finds herself in the local hospital today.

2 days ago the cats ganged up and picked a fight with the little dog. The little dog decided to show them what she's made of and was busy giving as good as she was getting when Mom got in the middle. She spent all day yesterday at the doctor's office having her hand lanced and drained, getting all manor of shots, antibiotics perscriptions and xrays.

Finally, they decided to send her home with instructions to soak her finger every hour in an attempt to keep the wound open so it would drain.

This moring she woke up with her entire hand extremely swollen and headed for the ER.

At 1:20 p.m. I discovered I had missed a call from a number I didn't recognize-- it was Mom calling from the hospital to say she was headed into surgery at 1:30 to have her hand openned up and drained. She's expected to be stuck in the hospital until Monday.

She's very worried about her little dog, and wanted to make sure I would go out to her house to let Fox out periodically.

The cats need a new home, my mother is done being a crazy cat lady.

The cats are fat, fixed, spoiled indoor cats. They are brothers from the same litter. They are about 5 years old. They were part of a litter of kittens that a stray cat had in Mom's garage. The mother cat moved the kittens when they were about 4 weeks old-- I don't think she appreciated us knowing about them.

I found Louis with his head stuck between two of the fence boards in my mother's gate. Mama cat apparently dropped him while moving the kittens and left him there. I was able to disengage his delicate little kitten neck from the fence and named him "Louis" after King Louis the XVI-- the one that got guillotined.
The same day I rescued Louis, I found his brother in the backyard. His brother quickly earned the name "Ninja" because, despite his adorable 4 week old kitten-ness, he made his best attempt to defeat me with his fearless Kun-fu moves when I picked him up.

Mom kept them indoors to avoid contributing to any more kittens in her garage until they were old enough to be neutered, with every intention of them becoming independent, outside cats afterward. But once they had recovered from the minor surgery, they both flatly refused to live outside and promptly set about making a life of lounging around the house.

Mom says the little dog wins. The cats are the instigators of the trouble and they weren't supposed to be house pets to begin with-- unlike Foxxy, who was specifically adopted for the purpose.

So kitties need a new home. We'd love to see them stay together and be given a sunny room with a good scratching post.

The Great Sofa Caper

2010-07-19T16:00:00.000-07:00

The new living room is a big rectangle with a fireplace on one end. The BF insists on dividing the room into two smaller "rooms" by creating a "tv nook" on one end. His intention is to do this by creating some sort of "L" shape with the sofas on the TV end. I have no idea what he envisions for the fireplace side of our living room.

After much standing around the empty living room shortly after we moved in, debating the sanity of such a notion and trying to explain to him how his "vision" violates both of my X chromosomes to the very core of my being-- and every woman's innate ability to decorate a living room-- we agreed that IF we got a sectional sofa, it wouldn't look hideous and I wouldn't be entirely embarrassed to invite people into my home.

The BF has also declared that he is a big boy now and is ready to buy a higher quality of furniture than he has traditionally been able to afford. Unfortunately, my BF is the epitome of "macho sexual." He has no little interest in furniture with even less experience or knowledge of furniture buying practices. So, in our quest to find the right sofa he has been absolutely unwilling to accept the simple fact that living room furniture typically costs a lot of money.

Consequently, the notion of spending $2,000+ on a sectional sofa that fits the space we want to put it in, made to order in the fabric our of choice was absolutely unacceptable. And every time we walk into a furniture store with a sign about financing options, the BF stoically scoffs at the very notion. He can't believe anyone actually finances furniture and he sure as hell isn't going to!

Never mind that you and I both know that most people finance their furniture. That's why every furniture store in the world offers "no interest or payments till 2015!" Furniture is incredibly expensive-- especially if you want a whole room (or house) at once and even more especially if the manufacturer's name means something to you.

But the BF is the BF and I like him fine the way he is, so I sort of roll my eyes just a little and snicker when he goes on these rants. For all I care, we could leave the lawn chairs in front of the TV forever.

Yes-- I realize that sounds totally contradictory to my statement about his "TV nook" violating my womanly decorating sensibilities-- but there' s a big difference between enjoying the whimsical "bachelor pad chic" lawn chairs in the living room, vs the "why do you have all your furniture shoved to one side of the room" chaos of shoving all the furniture to one side of the room.

A few weeks ago we saw a sectional sofa at Costco. From the moment I saw it, I knew it was what we were looking for. It even included an ottoman-- I really like ottomans, ottomen? Anyway, I like them.
It took a few weeks, but the BF finally came to the same conclusion I did about the Costco sectional. (It takes a lot longer before his light bulb goes on-- sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes not-so-much.) And so, this last weekend, we borrowed the "ranch truck" from his parents and made our way to Costco on Saturday afternoon during a heatwave; I think it was about 150 degrees Fahrenheit.

Alas. The Costco sectional was "on order." We had to hunt down a Costco employee to inquire as to just what that meant to us. The Saturday Costco Employee was pleasant and willing to be helpful. She went to check on the status of the order and returned to cheerfully tell us that more sectionals were in transit and would be in the store the following day.

So. We decided to come back the next day.

Sunday morning we agreed that the world was probably not lined up outside of Costco in the 175 degree heat to make a run on the newly arrived sofas. So we went ahead with our new Sunday morning routine: We took the dogs on a "donut walk" to our favorite local donut shop-- Tasty Donut in Mary's Vineyard-- only to find a note posted on their door that they were closed for the day due to a severe lack of air conditioning.
Did I mention it was 175 degrees by the time the sun came up? Who could blame them?

So we settled for some sodas and croissants from the neighboring grocery store and then headed back home.

By 11:30 in the morning we decided we'd better get on with it if we were going to buy the Costco sectional.
Only to arrive at Costco to find that we were wrong. The world HAD lined up that morning to make a run on the sofa shipment!

Once again, we had to hunt down a Costco employee to inquire about future shipments. However, our Sunday Costco Employee was not nearly as helpful or as pleasant as our Saturday Costco Employee. In fact, her attitude was the epitome of crappy customer service and left us both feeling less than desirous of spending $700 on a couch from Costco -- in fact, less than desirous of spending any money at Costco.
So we cut her blathering short to let her know that she didn't need to waste any more of her time with us, we were taking our business elsewhere. And we walked out.

Now, this presented a slight quandary as we sat in the truck in the parking lot while I rather impatiently quizzed the BF on just what the heck his plan was now?

With some more discussion we drove down the road and embarked on a sofa quest. We visited two furniture stores with not much luck in finding a sofa that we both agreed on, let alone a furniture store that had air conditioning.

A note to furniture stores everywhere: when people come into your store they are looking for furniture to put in their homes. They want to sit in your showroom and feel like they are at home. If sitting in your showroom makes them feel miserable-- they will not buy furniture from you. Just a thought.

So there we were, back in the truck in the miserable hot, sweatier and grumpier than ever, arguing about what to do next.

In the back of my mind I'm thinking, "Oh great. We're going to have to go back to Costco all humbled and apologetic and admit that we want their stupid sectional after all." But what I'm saying out loud is, "Look, all I'm saying is that I've had a lot of people telling me that they've been really happy with furniture they've found at Big Lots lately-- we should at least take a look."

The BF has heard similar stories of Big Lots success so he grumbled a little in the heat and turned the truck toward Big Lots.

At Big Lots we found several sofa options. Sat on them all. Found a sofa and love seat set that we both considered acceptable. So we took a walk through the store to discuss it.

It's not a sectional. But I was thinking a separate sofa and love seat would allow for more furniture re-arranging options in the future. So, with the utmost confidence that the BF would get home and admit that his "TV nook" furniture placement was less than ideal with a sofa and love seat-- I agreed that this set met all my requirements of living room furniture.

It also cost less than the infamous Costco sectional.

The BF was still on the fence about it. He was leaning toward the Big Lots sofa set, but mentioned that if the price of the two pieces combined was just a little less, it'd be a no-brainer for him.

About this time, the store manager made an announcement over the intercom-- we really only half listened, but we definitely caught the part where that day was "friends and family" appreciation day and members received 20% off their entire purchase that day. So we looked at each other-- the light going on at the same time this time-- and proceeded to the front of the store to look into this "friends and family" thing further.

The lady we spoke with at the front of the store answered our questions with all the bubbly enthusiasm of Flo the Progressive Insurance Lady-- she was just great. The total antithesis of the Sunday Costco Employee. She also assured us that yes, that 20% off applied to couches too.

Another Big Lots employee with a friendly and helpful attitude went to check on the availability of our choice. YAY! One of each left in stock! So we proceeded to the furniture department where we met the manager, Larry.

Larry is our hero.

Since we saved so much money over what we were expecting to pay that day, I also tacked on a full size mattress set for the bed frame in the spare bedroom-- so yes, it's official, we have a place for overnight visitors-- or dogs. Mostly dogs.

And we got the whole kit and kaboodle in the back of the Ranch Truck! With help from Our Hero Larry the Manager and store associate Jody-- who came outside and helped load up our new furniture in the 175 degree heat with smiles and helpful attitudes.

Might I take this moment to point out that we are very happy with our furniture buying experience from BIG LOTS of all places?

Canoeing Coupledom

2010-06-21T12:54:00.000-07:00

BF Matt has wanted a canoe for a long time. I've wanted a canoe since long before Matt was my BF. We've been together for 4 1/2 years now and FINALLY, between the two of us, we own one canoe!

For the last 4 1/2 years we have poured over brochure after brochure and website after website from various canoe manufacturers from around the country, debating over our needs and arguing over how each of us intend to use the canoe.

Matt finally convinced me that he doesn't actually want to take on white-water, so much as he wanted a canoe that could handle occassional rocks and strong current, and I finally convinced him that we needed one big enough for dogs AND gear...ok, he had to work harder to convince me than I did him.

My canoe vision involves a lot of calm, flat water with scenic vistas where it won't result in catastrophe if I stop paddling. The BF's vision involves rivers. With current and obstacles that will require focus, physical strength and endurance, and the ability to communicate clearly, quickly, and agreeably.

Maybe we should have each purchased a solo canoe?

Instead, we took the time and spent the money and eventually agreed upon a Wenonah Spirit II, 17 foot, tadem canoe. It's HUGE.

Seriously! I had no idea 17 feet was so freakin long! Our 2 car garage is destined to be a one car/one canoe garage. We had planned to hang the canoe from the rafters, allowing one vehicle to be parked underneath it. But the length of the canoe prohibits hanging, seeing as how the garage door requires some space in order to open.

So far, we have gotten pretty good at putting the canoe on top of the Xterra, tying it down, untying, taking it off the roof rack, etc etc. The BF has even conceded that I tie better knots that he does.

We have had the canoe for only a few weeks now, and it has been in the water twice. Our nearest lake is half an hour away and full of motorized water craft during these hot summer days, so our most convenient option for canoeing is the St. John's River. So our canoeing plan thus far has been more consistant with the BF's vision than mine.

For the last two weekends we have loaded up the canoe and driven to the end of Lover's Lane where there is a small parking lot designed specifically for people who plan on drowing in the river-- err, wait-- for people to use the bike/running trail that runs along the river. That's where we carry the canoe to the river, just upstream of one of the many little "dams" along the river-- I don't know what they really are, not sure what purporse they serve, I just know we don't want to go over one in the canoe.

Then we take off and paddle like hell upstream for up to 2 miles, which is how far we have till we reach the next "whoop-de-doo" (common local name for those little dams.)

Now this is the part where we have the most trouble. I get to sit in the front, Matt sits in the back.

Apparently it's my job to steer the canoe, which is much harder to do when paddling upstream as you have to keep the "nose" of the boat pointed straight into the current or the river tries to grab you and send you into a flat spin-- and paddling upstream is all the more difficult when your canoe is sideways.

The BF insists that the best way for me to "steer" is to just paddle on one side. Which may end up being true enough, but I do NOT have the strength and/or stamina to just paddle on one side!

Our first outing resulted in success in reaching our destination despite the bickering. It also resulted in my learning that the dang canoe is so long that I cannot reach the BF with my paddle to whack him upside the head from my seat.

Thus my advice to other couples seeking canoeing bliss in their relationship-- get a shorter canoe. Having your partner within whacking distance can prove essential when he insists that you have not properly communicated your intention to switch the side you are paddling on after you have repeatedly forewarned him that your arm is VERY tired and that you canNOT continue to paddle on the one side and that you HAVE to switch sides or take a break...only to be admonished that you must keep paddling on the same side.

This is exactly the way I remember our first canoe trip. I told him several times that I was going to have to switch! But he kept telling me that I couldn't switch. So when I switched sides, he insists that I didn't tell him I was going to switch.

Our second outing went much smoother with better communication, more cooperation, and more switching of sides. Leading me to believe that tandem canoeing might work out for us afterall.

Sit Up Straight and Be Still!

2010-06-17T15:00:00.000-07:00

In nearly 18 years of doing nails, it still never ceases to amaze me that other nail techs don't advise their clients on how to be good clients.

I know it doesn't come naturally, you have no idea what we need from you in order to work comfortably. So here's a little primer on what makes your nail-lady's job easier, and helps to ensure that she'll be able to keep doing your nails for a long time without being forced into early retirement with multiple repetitive stress injuries, arthritis, back problems-- or just leaves to find a job that doesn't hurt as bad:

First of all, sit down and pull your chair ALL THE WAY up to the table. So that your hands naturally rest on her side of the table-- just past that middle point. Don't leave your chair pushed back so that you're sitting 3 feet away from your nail tech. Don't make her have to climb over her desk to reach your hands. Don't lean over the desk so that your hands are in her lap. Just keep them there, on the table, in the middle.

Make sure your hands are actually on the table. Not in your lap. Not in your pocket. Not in your purse. Not on your phone. Not in your hair. Not waving about in the air!

Believe it or not-- and whether a nail tech has ever mentioned it to you-- we need your hands. YES! Your nails are located on your hands! So it's really helpful if you keep your hands where we can reach them.

Also, nail enhancement products are designed to work best when applied on clean, sanitary surface. That means your professional nail service should always start with washing your hands with soap and water.

If your nail tech asks you to wash your hands before getting started, don't get offended. She is not suggesting that you are dirty. She's not germaphobic (probably not, anyway.) And she DOES know what she's talking about. Washing your hands will not negatively affect the way your product works, and will not cause service breakdown. You aren't soaking your nails in water for an hour, you're simply washing your hands. It's the right way to start your professional nail service. It ensures that the products that are about to be applied to your nails are going over a clean, sanitary surface so you don't trap dirt, oils, and "cooties" under the product and allows the product to get a good, firm grasp on the natural nail plate.

Washing your hands is also the most effective-- and simplest-- way of avoiding transfer of germs. Which is just a nice thing to do when you are about to hold hands with someone for an hour or so who probably has to pay for her own health insurance-- and doesn't get sick leave even if she does have health insurance! It's also the law in many states for both technicians and clients to wash their hands before a service begins.

So if a nail tech has ever told you that you can't wash your hands before getting your nails done, that's a really good indicator that your nail tech has not only not continued her education in the industry since getting her license, but probably doesn't even remember what she was taught in beauty school! And that's a good indicator that you may want to think seriously about whether or not that's the person you want in charge of applying chemical products to your body! just sayin'.

Once you've washed your hands and pulled your chair up to the table-- relax!

I remember the first nail tech who ever told me this. I was always trying to "help" her by holding my hands up, fingers straight out, and anticipate her needs by moving my hands as she worked. Then she told me to "relax" and just let my hands "go limp."

Well that just did not make sense to me! "Go limp?!" How was that going to help?

Of course, a few years late when I got my license and joined the professional nail care industry myself I found out EXACTLY how that would help! And I wish I had kept in touch with her because I'd sure like to apologize for keeping my hands so stiff all that time!

Truth is, yes. It really is MUCH easier to do our job if your hands are relaxed. Let us pick them up and move them as we need to. "Helping" does the exact opposite!

*****
Well, looks like I will have to finish my rant in a later post. I had this all finished up and set to publish, but instead, Blogger decided to log me out and failed to save my final draft before publication. Great. Thanks Blogger.com, way to go.

Time's Up

2010-06-03T15:17:00.000-07:00

Well, I was going to post a new blog. This poor blog gets so neglected and there's just no reason for it!

I keep telling myself that even if I just type up a simple little paragraph here and there, it's better than ignoring it altogether! So here I am, typing up a simple paragraph that is basically just going to be long enough to explain that I meant to update with news of the new house and the recent vacation... but instead, I have spent my time today trying to clean the new house and unpack, and now it's time to go back to work.

So, stay tuned. Believe it or not, I will be doing more blogging!

Lacking Motivation

2010-04-28T15:29:00.000-07:00

Oh my! This having two computers (one at work and one at home) is really throwing a wrench in my routine. Most of my computering is done from the salon during down time now-- and down time is getting scarce-- and it turns out my photo folders are far from up-to-date here at home! That means I don't have any cool photos to show you right now.

Sorry.

Meanwhile, we (the BF and I) are in the process of becoming home owners. Well, technically, the BF is in the process of becoming a homeowner. He swears "we're in this together" and that he and I are "a thing" but, truthfully, there a thousand tiny tiny reasons that I don't feel much like this will be my home. Nevetheless, I'm moving when he moves-- seeing as how, yes, we are "a thing" and all.

Moving means packing. Packing is what we've been working on for a couple of weeks now. I hate packing.

Firstly, it's just a pain in the patooty. I'd much prefer to just junk everything and buy all new stuff later. Except, of course, for all the irreplaceable treasures that I've collected over the last 40 (gasp! yes I'm 40 now) years. Which means I'd better just suck it up and put more stuff in boxes.

So I pack a box, then I work on a computer project: Pack, Facebook, Pack, networking forums, Pack, blog, Pack, design print materials, Pack, order product, Pack, etc.

At the end of the day I'm sure to have absolutely nothing officially crossed off today's "to-do" list.

I need a Pepsi.

More Nail Art

2010-03-22T12:08:00.001-07:00

Visit the professional website for the Art of Nailz for a full gallery and more information about nails by Maggie: http://www.artofnailz.com/

Here are some pictures of what I've been up to lately. Lots of hand painted nail art still, and of course Rockstar is still popular.

1. This is a really blingy set of rockstars, with chunky silver foil on the tips and a purple and green glitter that I mixed up for Mardi Gras at the smile line. I love this picture! The way the light reflects off the tips of the nails and the ornament just really shows off how much sparkle these nails have considering how simple the glitter combination is. This set also shows off the popular "fish tail" cut out in the tip, where we cut a concave shape into the edge.

Thanks to model, Julia.

2. Brenda always makes a great model for my work! Partially because she has beautiful hands, and partially because she always lets me do some great work on her.

This set was done for Mardi Gras, with pink and purple glitter laid out on a diagonal across the tips and that great fish tail tip again.

3. Thanks to model; Brandi.

Several of my clients still prefer to show off some hand painted art work on their fingertips and I'm honored that they think I have the skillz worth wearing! These nails were all handpainted and embellished with some rhinestones.

4. Thanks to model; Alicia.

We hand painted this design on her natural nails to match the pattern on her bridal shower invites (which we used as the background in this pic.) I think they came out pretty swell.

5. Thanks to model; Alexis.

Traditional pink and white acrylics dressed up with some super fun hand painted paislies.

6. Thanks to model Alexis again! Traditional pink and white acrylic dressed up with hand painted nail art, swirles and stars. Just a fun design that came out pretty cool.

Stickin to Nails

2010-03-16T13:57:00.000-07:00

Every Friday evening, the BF's family gets together for "pizza and beer" at a local pizza parlor. A couple of Fridays ago, upon arrival to our regular pizza joint (All Pro on Ben Maddox, btw) we discovered a little girl having a birthday party on one side of the restaurant.

Mostly the BF's 2 1/2 year old niece noticed the birthday party, specifically the cake. It was a princess castle cake. Very alluring to a 2 1/2 year old girl, y'know!

But I was disappointed with the cake because it wasn't really a castle. It was a square cake with plastic pieces that were placed around and on the cake to make it look like a castle.

I hate that. If you're going to make a cake into something, it needs to be cake. So I spent about a week recreating the cake in my head, trying to figure out how to make the entire castle edible.

Well isn't it just convenient that the BF's mom had a birthday just one week later? Giving me an opportunity to see if I could really pull off this castle cake plan?

So there it is, that's my cake. It took 4 boxes of cake mix and 2 full days-- and I'd have like at least 2 more hours to work on it.

The towers are crooked, the base layer of icing is filled with cake crumbs, and it made the car trip across town by the will of God alone-- but it turned out sufficient to impress a 2 1/2 year old. And the entire thing is edible!

But those cake guys on tv have nothing to fear from me. When my first client of the week asked if this meant that I also do cakes, the answer was an emphatic "NO!"

I may try a few other cakes out for fun, but I'm sticking to nails.

Spring in the Salon

2010-03-08T14:22:00.000-08:00

Anyone who has spent a year in the San Joaquin Valley can attest to the disappointing fact that we just don't get "weather" around these parts.

For the majority of the year it's just plan hot. Then we get a minute of what passes for fall, and then all of a sudden we're socked in with fog. Which is what passes for a "white Christmas" in these parts. And then, just before Valentine's Day-- it's Spring.

Spring arrives early, as if to spite any shadow-shy groundhogs, it shows up suddenly and without calling ahead-- one day the trees are nothing but stark, naked sticks in the orchards, and the next, they are covered in bright blossoms-- like popcorn that has popped right on the branches.

And since we have a lot of orchards in the Valley, there is absolutely no denying the onslaught of spring. If you try to get all technical and insist that spring does not start until mid-March, you will miss it.

There's no arguing with Ma Nature! And she scoffs at your calendar.

Considering that Spring is really the only season-- other than hot-- that we get around here, and it's far too shortlived, it also has a dizzying effect on the local inhabitants...

You ain't seen Spring Fever till you've tried to navigate a central California town in March.

For one thing, there's the allergies. Many many many people suffer from spring allergies. All those plants! And they're ALL blooming! Fruit trees, nuts trees, citrus trees, grasses, molds, wild flowers!

And March is our wettest month of the year-- everyone forgets this every year. It starts a "will it or won't it" pattern of rainy weather that we just aren't used to, and since every other day is warm and sunny, we start saying, "I sure wish it'd stop raining already! It's supposed to be spring!" Because we're so unaccustomed to rain around here, it's hard to grasp that spring is actually when it rains.

Since we're not used to rain, we can't drive in it. Seriously-- a little water falls from the sky and we FREAK OUT! And it's not even like we get real rain here! We almost never get thunder and lightening, high winds only kick up once or twice a year and only briefly as a "storm" passes through town. You can seriously live here without owning an umbrela. There are lot of people who wouldn't agree, but it's entirely possible to run-- or just walk briskly-- from your office to your car without getting more than a tad damp. Even when it's "really coming down."

And then add old-fashioned spring fever. That inexplicable energy that causes you to completely lose your mind as soon as the sun is out each day, forcing you to do ridiculous things that you would never normally do in your typically sane state; take up jogging, eat nothing but salad for dinner, completely empty everything out of your garage, clean the whole place and then rearrange your precious treasures in a neatly organized and labeled manner. And decide that you really don't need half of it-- so you have a yard sale...that starts at 5 a.m.

Every March my entire home town is filled with people who are crazy, can't drive, and on drugs.

What? You think all those antihistimines aren't making you an even WORSE driver?

Believe me. It's a dangerous time of year to live in the middle of California.

Not that I think it'd be better anywhere else!

So I'm enjoying the fact that I now work on the 4th floor, and that work is less than 1 mile from my doorstep. It means that I don't even have to get in the car most days, and when I drive to work (which is still most days-- since you can never be too sure when it'll rain or not, and a mile is still a long walk in even lite rain) I just park my car a couple of blocks away from most of madness of downtown-in-spring and then I get to watch the world from the safety of my windows.

Next Thursday will be the opening of the downtown Farmer's Market-- right under my salon window. I'm looking forward to the next 7 months of open windows and live music on Thursday evenings.

Crazies aside-- spring in Visalia is beautiful and the Art of Nailz has great view of it.

The Truth About "Friendship Bread" and Starters

2010-03-04T12:55:00.000-08:00

About 4 years ago I got it in my head that baking bread wasn't challenging enough for me.

Those little packets of "active dry yeast" just made it TOO easy. So I decided to make bread the old-fashioned way... and since most would argue that I was already making bread the old-fashioned way (without a bread machine), I mean the REALLY old-fashioned way!

And so my first sour dough starter was born-- literally.

A little warm water and flour sitting out on the counter for a couple of weeks and I was the proud new mama of my own little colony of Whoos.

Pretty cool.

Very shortly thereafter, one of my clients brought me a bag of glue. And if you've ever had a "friend" bring you Amish Friendship Bread starter, then you know that "bag of glue" is about the most appropriate description you can get!

My little ziplock baggie of glue came with a sheet of instructions that, had I followed it, would surely have lead to certain heartbreak for my dogs, who LOVE Amish Friendship Bread.
Fortunately, I had already joined the rather obscure-- although elite-- group of baking nerds who dedicate a small portion of their refrigerator space to at least one container of sourdough starter-- so I immediately memorized the Friendship bread starter "foods" and then threw away the instructions. (Kept the recipe though.)

I poured my glue into a container with a lid, made sure it had been fed, and put it in the refrigerator.

4 years later, I still have both my starters and the dogs still get Friendship bread now and then. While the client who gave me my starter long ago got fed up with the allegedly high maintenance starter and did away with hers.

Meanwhile, in those same 4 years, I have been offered new friendship starter by many slightly desperate folks who have run out of "friends" to pawn off baggies of glue on. Eventually it seems that everyone grows weary of having a bag of glue sitting on their counter, having to knead it for 3 days in a row, feed it, knead it, feed it, separate into 5 portions, bake one, give away 4.

Eventually everyone either ends up baking 5 batches of friendship bread and calling it done, or pouring the starter down the drain.

Here's the scoop: You don't have to be a slave to your starter.

For one thing, get it out of the ziplock bag. Yeesh! A ziplock bag is just not the most convenient way to keep a starter.

Put it in a Rubbermade container, or Tupperware, or one of those semi-disposable Ziplock or Gladware things. Something with a lid.

Also, you don't have to feed it 1 cup each of sugar, flour, and milk. Just as long as you feed it equal parts of each.

And keep it in the fridge. If you put it in the refrigerator, you can forget about it for a month at a time! Just take it out at least once a month, feed it, stir it really well, and stick it back in the fridge if you're not going to bake a batch!

Here's my routine:

1. Take starters out of fridge.

2. Feed starters. --If I am not going to bake bread, I pour half the starter out. Yup, down the drain. Then I increase the remaining starter by one cup. That means I feed my starter 1/3 cup sugar, 1/3 cup flour, and 1/3 milk. Stir it up, put the lid on the container and put it back in the fridge.

If I AM going to bake a batch, then I DON'T pour any out. I feed the starter, mix it up, wait for it to come up to room temp. As it does this, the yeast and bacteria start to wake up-- the eat and procreate and the starter gets all frothy and bubbly. That's when it's ready to bake with.
Amish Friendship bread is a quick bread-- like banana bread-- it mostly relies on the baking soda to make it rise. Like cake. I don't really know what purpose the starter serves, other than flavor. But it's hella tasty anyway!

Point is, that's what starter is. It's a naturally cultivated yeast culture. That's what sourdough bread is-- bread that is made without commercial yeast. I know most of us all associate "sourdough" with a specific flavor-- primarily San Francisco sourdough. Not all sourdoughs taste like San Fran's though-- and it turns out that San Francisco sourdough has a very specific flavor because the yeast spores that it's starter uses really only live in San Francisco. It would be difficult to take a San Fran starter out of the Bay Area and manage to keep that specific culture pure. So, if you're ever out and about and taste a sourdough bread that doesn't taste the way you think it should-- remember, sourdough isn't a flavor, it's a method.

So-- a few things you should know about your Amish Friendship starter:

1. Don't use metal. Don't put it in a metal bowl, don't stir it with metal implements. For some reason, metal is not friendly to starter. I'm not sure if it kills the yeast or kills the bacteria that live in symbiosis with the yeast-- and every so often I come across a sourdough baker who insists they use metal without problem-- but why risk it?

2. It's good for more than that recipe you got with it. I LOVE making my traditional sourdough bread recipe with the Amish Friendship starter. It makes a very sweet bread, great for making cinnamon rolls and pancakes with! MMMMMMMM.

3. If your friends really want their own starter, take it out of the fridge and feed it, pour a cup of starter into a new container for your friend, print out the recipe and instructions for feeding and storing. THEN BAKE THEM A LOAF OF BREAD! I can't believe it's become the tradition to just give your friends and neighbors a bag of glue and a sheet of high-maintenance instructions! Especially if the person you are giving starter to hasn't actually tasted the bread! Be a good friend and actually give them the finished product so they know why it's worth it to take care of that glue and convince them that it really is a show of friendship.

A New Phone

2010-02-26T11:37:00.000-08:00

Cell phone, that is. What other types of phones do we get excited about?

I don't have a contract with my carrier. I was happy AT&T wireless custome for a long time, continuously renewing my contract...until they merged with Cingular. Suddenly the terms of my contract went in the toilet, coverage disappeared in places where signal used to be strong, and customer service was no where to be found-- and none too happy when I did find it.

I finally said "forget this" and a long list of expletives that essentially ended with "so put that in your pipe and smoke it...and the horse you rode in on!" Told Cingular to go ahead and add it to the long list of other things that kept my 3-digit credit score at 12, and took my cell phone budget to T-Mobile, who was the only carrier that didn't charge roaming fees on their "pay as you go" phones.

It actually cut my average monthly cell phone expense in half and I've been happy ever since.

Problem is, I don't get a "free upgrade" on my phone every so often, none of those "rebates" apply to me when I want a new phone-- I get to pay the full retail price. So I don't upgrade very often.

I bought my last cell phone in 2006.

But I finally got to the point where I just couldn't stand not havng a camera on my phone anymore. So I sat down and Googled my head into a spin researching camera phones to the point where I was nearly convinced I didn't want a phone at all anymore.

I finally settled on a Motorola Zine zn5 (or maybe nz5, I don't know what it matters, I can only find one phone that's called a Motorola "Zine" at all.) It has a 5 megapixel camera with a good flash and a MACRO MODE. Ooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhh.

Of course, buying it from T-Mobile (a mere coincidence that the camera I decided on happened to not require any "unlocking" or "flashing" or changing of carriers) was going to set me back a hefty $400. Which is OH SO NOT an acceptable amount of money to pay for a phone in my book-- not even if I keep it for another 4 years! Quite frankly, I hate phones. I hate being on the phone. If I could get a trained monkey to answer my phone for me, that might be worth $400 to me.

So I hmmmm'd and haw'd about it until the Motorola Zine was pretty much old news and no longer one of the fancy new phones I could get from T-Mobile.

Which is actually great, since that meant that Ebay abounded with them.

And so, last week, I finally won my first-ever Ebay auction and am now the proud owner of an almost new Motorola Zine... and that, naturally, is where the trouble starts.

No no! There is nothing wrong with the phone. I fear, rather, it's the operator. What is it that computer techs call it? PEBKAC? In this case maybe PEBPAC?

The first problem was that I managed to delete my contacts from my SIM card instead of importing them to the new phone. So, if you call or text me, you might want to let me know who you are.

I don't need my phone to alert me every time I get a text message, but I don't know how to turn the text alerts off without turning off the ringer too.

But it's got a nice camera on it. A camera that is, in fact, better than my beloved Casio Exilim point and shoot that seems to have finally gone to digital camera heaven. And believe me, the Casio saw some great stuff in its life and did an awesome job of showing what it saw to the rest of the world.

Now. If I can just figure out how the camera on the new phone works... and that picture is courtesy of the Casio btw. I haven't figured out how to sync the new phone to the computer

Next on the List

2010-02-23T15:49:00.000-08:00

This picture was taken from the window of the salon just before sunset after a stormy day a few weeks ago. We have windows that face east, so sunsets are usually left a mystery, but when the view outside lights the town up in gold like this, well, that's pretty impressive.

I keep promising myself to keep this blog up-to-date, even if it means short entries. I'm not very good at keeping my thoughts short and sweet-- ask my editor at Nails Magazine where they want me to "keep it to less than 500 words, please."

So I have a tendency to think that if I don't have time to do it right, I'll just wait. Problem is, of course, that means a whole lot of folks stop dropping by to see if I've updated anything.

February has been the month of worrying about retail for the salon.

When I decided to go back into my own salon again, one of my goals was to have lots of goodies on the shelves to retail. Something I've never put much effort into before.

It almost goes without question that any and every hair stylist retails. At the very least, a hair stylist will retail hair products that she recommends to her clients. Clients just expect their hair stylist to recommend products for maintaining their investment in their hair. Color safe shampoos, deep moisturizing conditioner, styling products that offer volumne, tame frizzies, and don't weigh down your hair-- you name it, we expect to buy stuff when we go get our hair done.

But not when we get our nails done.

WTF people?

I mean, on one hand, I encounter resisitance from clients who don't want to invest in maintenance products to care for their hands and nails between visits to the salon. But I also see that nail techs (myself included) don't offer products-- or even suggestions for products-- for this maintenance.

Well that's just crazy! And I'm going to put a stop to it!

You need to take care of your hands and nails outside the salon. You are making an investment in your professional nail care, and there's no excuse for not protecting it.

First and foremost, you should be using cuticle oil. NOT baby oil, or any oil that contains mineral oil. Mineral oil just doesn't penetrate the skin effectively, so it doesn't do any good. There are lots of great oils and oil blends out there, but wouldn't it be easier if you could just pick up a bottle from your tech at your regular appointment?

And how about lotion? Everyone loves a smelly lotion from Bath & Beauty Works-- but most smelly lotions are little more than perfume. They're full of so much alcohol and alcohol derrivatives that all you get is the smell. That's all well and fine for smelling pretty, but it doesn't do much good for hydrating your skin.

I can give you a list of things to watch out for on the ingredient list-- but wouldn't it be easier if you could just pick up a bottle of good lotion when you come get your nails done?

Most of my clients don't wear polish on their nails, but let's face it: we're all suckers for polish. We use it on our toes. We polish our daughters' nails, our neices' nails, our dogs' nails. We love polish. And the average consumer is fond of OPI polish. But it seems that here in town, the places that offer OPI polish for sale to the public continue to dwindle.

*sigh* I gotta tell ya-- that's a painful initial investment! But I'm seriously looking into it. Cuz people want OPI polish and there should be some place you can get it!

Aside from all the obvious nail-related retail products on my list, I'm saving some space on the shelves for some of my personal arts and crafts, including some really fancy sunglasses and some handpainted glass ware.

I'm working on selling Miche Bags here in the salon too. And dang, if that hasn't turned out to be far more complicated than I thought it would be! Not the fault of my pending distributor, mind you! More to do with the fact that they are 200 miles away from me and I am a busy woman with little time to make the initial trip to get things under way! But fear not! I am determined.

What else would you like to paw through while you're at the nail salon? I'm still working on getting it all together-- gotta organize the cabinets and make room for inventory. But this is just one of the things on my "to-do" list right now. And it's taking more time than I'd expected to get all set up.

But at least we all have something to look forward to!

Nascar Nails

2010-02-11T18:26:00.000-08:00

Visit the professional website for the Art of Nailz: http://www.artofnailz.com/

My biggest Nascar junkie-client came in and announced that she'd scoured the internet looking for Nascar nail art for inspiration for the Indy 500 (I think that was the race) only to discover that her Google searches were coming up empty.

I could not believe this! So here are some Nascar nail art offerings for anyone out there searching!

I Moved Already!

2010-01-11T15:56:00.000-08:00

I would add a picture to this post, but my computer has decided not to cooperate. Who knows the ways of computers? All I know is that it refuses to open any new windows. I can't even click on the links from a Google search. Go figure.

Which is kinda preventing me from being able to update a series of referral websites such as Yelp or Mechant Circle or ...ummmm...? that come up when people search for a new nail tech in Visalia. I have had a ton of new clients call up over the last 2 weeks to make appointments with me. When I ask if they know where I'm located, they have ALL said, "oh yeah, you're on Dorothea..."

No I'm not.

I updated my own website when I moved. I have worked on making sure that all the sites that I'm in charge of have been updated (did I update Myspace yet?) but all these other little referral sites? I don't even know what they all are! So the best way I have of updating them is to Google myself-- visit the sites, and update each one.

That doesn't work if I can't get there from Google though.

Ugh.

Oh well. So I decided to post a little blog here, but the computer won't even open up the little window that lets me add a photo. Good grief.

I guess I'll just go do something productive then.

A Room with a View

2009-12-11T11:24:00.001-08:00

The Art of Nailz is back!

I am once again a salon owner, sitting in my own small studio on the fourth floor of Visalia's historic downtown bank building.

Pretty sweet view too-- when I get to enjoy it. Most of the time I still have my head down, nose to the nail. But this morning finds me with a lax schedule, a Pumpkin Spice latte in hand, internet access in the salon, and view of downtown Visalia to the east on a rainy Friday.

I still have a million things to do before the salon is finished and ready for prime time. But I'm thrilled to say it's shaping up, however slowly it might seem.

So here's to looking forward to a new year! With a great view and great clients who have sworn to brave downtown parking, a main entrance door that sticks so badly you have to call up to have me come down to let you in, and an elevator that feels more like a ride at Disneyland-- as well as rumors of ghosts.

My clients are the best! And I'm looking forward to meeting new ones this year who are just as ready to brave the trip to the fourth floor for the promise of the best nails in town.

Cutest Dog Evar

2009-12-02T19:51:00.000-08:00

http://www.hhofdogcontest.com/dogs/parker-franklin-dec-02

You can't tell me this isn't one heckuva cute dog! Now we have entered him into a photo contest to prove it-- which is why you should click that link up there and vote for Parker!

You can vote everyday and by all means, share that link with as many people as you can possibly con into voting!

If Parker wins, we get 1,000 greeting cards with his picture on them. Who doesn't need a thousand cards with a picture of their dog on them?

A Good Example

2009-10-27T15:45:00.000-07:00

Kudos to Visalia Police car #212466 for setting a good example and making a positive impression!

I was following this local PD unit east on Tulare Ave today when the officer driving the car held back when the light turned green to let another motorist pull out onto Tulare from the In-Shape City drive way.

All too often I see our local PD driving around doing stupid stuff that would warrant a ticket for any other motorist. Generally setting a bad example and feeding the negative image of authority-abusing cops on power trips.

It was great to see a local officer in the act of doing something kind and patient for a citizen of the community. This is the kind of behavior I expect from my local law enforcement. Polite, patient, kind and generous-- at least when dealing with law-abiding folks on a day-to-day basis.

Thanks for doing something great today #212466!

The Truth About MINX Nails

2009-09-25T10:56:00.000-07:00

So... the thing is, that I have a really hard time selling stuff.

I have to be 120% convinced of everything I say in order to sell something.

So I didn't jump on the MINX bandwagon when it first rolled through town a few years ago. The stuff just didn't seem all that interesting at the time.

Then a buddy of mine who does nails in Houston, TX jumped on that same bandwagon and she can market socks to snakes if she needed to! So Athena start telling everyone over at the Nailtech Mailing List how AWESOME Minx Nails are and how much she's lovin them and how popular they are in her neck of the woods!

At some point, she starts Minxing Beyonce on a regular basis. [note per comment below: Athena doesn't Minx Beyonce, but has worked Minxing Beyonce's BAND. Athena DOES, however, sport quite the impressive clientelle, particularly some local (to Houston) celebrities: you can check her out yourself here: http://www.minxhouston.com/]

So Athena is so into the Minx game that she gets all her colleagues on the networking list all fired up too! So a ton of us start reconsidering our initial thoughts on the product and we run out and invest in the stuff.

So here I am, with about a hundred sheets of Minx and a shiny new heat lamp sitting at my station, waiting for the world to beat a path to my door for this hot hot hot new trend.

Except-- I have the dangedest time selling the stuff. Even to people who call me specifically asking for it!

For one thing, Minx is more of a retail item than a service. Sure, I have to apply it, but I don't create it like I do acrylic or gel enhancements.

For another thing, it's really hard to describe what it is. So I see a lot of confusion in people who have seen it on tv or the internet. A lot of people think it's some sort of revolutionary new enhancement product that is a going to be a great alternative to acrylics; which it is so not.

And it's pricey. It costs me an arm and a leg for each sheet, once I factor in the time and skill required to apply it, it's the same as getting a full set of acrylic nails. But it rarely lasts as long.

And that is where my love for Minx breaks down.

I just can't justify spending the same amount of money on something that will last a week as for something that will last 3 weeks.

Visalia does not have a hoppin club scene. This ain't Hollywood. It's not Miami. It's not Houston. I can totally see how a more ubanized area would have a higher demand for this type of product. If I was headed out to the clubs on the weekend and needed the ultimate look for my nails to match my outfit, I'd be all over Minx.

I think Minx is perfect for proms and special occassions where you want to sport an awesome look for your nails without the commitment to enhancements.

I'm so not going to tell anyone that they don't want Minx! I just want my clients and potential clients to know exactly what it is! I HATE seeing dissappointment in a client's face, and I hate taking the fall for a disappointing product-- like I'm screwing someone over because they thought they were getting something different from what they asked for. So here's the scoop:

Minx is a sticker. That is the absolute most basic, plainest language description I can give you. It's just a vinyl sticker. It's pre-cut into a nail shape and there are 9 or 10 sizes on each sheet. They get put under a heat lamp and warmed up to soften the vinyl so that it can be stretched and molded to the contours of a nail. Once it's pressed down on the nail and carefully fit around the cuticle area and into the sidewalls we let it cool off for a little bit.

Then I use a very fine file to gently file off the excess vinyl at the free edge. Yes. This takes skill. It has to be done very carefully so the vinyl doesn't shrink back from the free edge. It has to be done just right so the vinyl doesn't fray where you file it.

It stays on the nails about a week. If you're really good at not playing with it, then it could last longer, but most people end up picking at the edges and once it starts to lift up on an edge it'll just peel right off. On the toes, however, it lasts forever! I LOVE Minx for toes!

One thing that Minx has going for it is that it's the only way to get a true chrome effect on your nails! No polish, paint, or Rockstar glitter has quite the same effect as Minx. It really is cool looking, there's no denying that much!

So if Minx is what you want, then I'll be more than thrilled to book that appointment for you! I just want to make sure you know what it is before you're sitting in front of me saying, "Oh, that's all it is?"

Visit the professional website for the Art of Nailz: http://www.artofnailz.com

Handpainted Nail Art

2009-09-19T16:57:00.000-07:00

Visit the professional website for the Art of Nailz: http://www.artofnailz.com

So.... I thought I'd post a bunch of photos. These are all nails that were done by me-- Maggie. What I really wanted to spotlight with this post was my handpainted nail art.

The problem is that not everyone can paint. And I can't paint everything! And if you want me to paint something special-- like these designs-- you need to give me notice ahead of time so I can be sure to not only book enough time for the artwork, but get a chance to research the design and practice a little. This kind of custom artwork takes a lot of extra time!

1. Tiki Masks with Sunsets: these are entirely handpainted, even the background colors. It took me an hour and a half just for the painting process-- combined with the basic acrylic fill beforehand, it took me 2 1/2 hours to these nails! Artwork is on all 10 nails, with masks alternating with the sunsets. Every mask is different.

2. KICKASS Ed Hardy nails! -- You can probably tell this was one of my favorite sets of nails! I started by doing a modified "stiletto" nail shape (Stiletto nails are very narrow and pointy, these are "lipstick" stilettos, with the tip cut at an angle-- like a new tube of lipstick) with Rockstar in deep red, fading to black. Then each ring finger got handpainted Ed Hardy designs and the remaining nails got 3-D sculpted roses. (Roses are sculpted using colored acrylic.)

These nails took me 3 1/2 hours to complete, from naked natural nails, to what you see in the photo.

3. More Ed Hardy Nails: Another one of my Ed Hardy faves! The nails are Rockstar acrylic with black free edges (I've taken to using the term "free edge" so as to avoid confusing everyone since I don't use tips -- plastic glue-on nails-- I sculpt on forms) with all handpainted designs. Painting that "love kills slowly" banner on nails is really challenging but it's everyone's favorite! It's really hard to get a good picture of the whole banner because it wraps around the sides of the nails-- but believe me! It's there!

These nails took me an hour just for the design. Not too bad for all that work, but I've done the "love kills slowly" design several times now, so I'm getting faster at it!

4. Harry Potter Nails: Good grief! When I got the message that this client was looking forward to Harry Potter designs on her nails for the openning of the new movie I about packed up my toys and moved out of state to avoid it! This particular client loves to challenge me with new ideas-- and I LOVE it!

I was particularly nervous about having to paint Harry himself, since portraiture is not my strong point-- but I am so proud of the way these nails turned out!

Nail art alone took me 2 hours. I did Harry on one nail and Headwig on the other ring finger with Hogwart's crest on both middle fingers. The other fingers are done in a dark ink-blue polish with stars and an awesome holographic topcoat for a cosmic feel.

5. Bandana Nails: These were fun! This was a total on-the-fly idea that we came up with on the spot. Fortunately, she was my last client that day and time was not an issue! Otherwise we would not have been able to do every nail!

Every nail is slightly different, each with a variation of the paisley and lace theme. The artwork took me one hour, one latte, one very small detail brush, and one very steady hand!

Now-- These are just a few masterpieces that I've had the opportunity to try my hand at over the years! Hopefully this post will give everyone out there a chance to see that hand painted nail art is still alive and well, it's not all Rockstar and decals!

I'd like to ask a favor:

2009-08-17T12:26:00.001-07:00

The beauty industry has really gone through some changes in my time. And not all those changes have been for the best.

For one thing, I learned to do acrylic nails by sculpting them on forms. The only time anyone pulled out plastic tips was for nail biters. Most people who did nails in the 80's considered tips "cheating." But these days, that's all you see!

It's not unusual at all these days for me to have clients who have never seen forms! Sometimes they freak out a little when they see me pull them out, they don't know what they are! Once I explain it and they relax, they almost always end up preferring sculptured nails.

This is because there are a lot of cheap nail salons out there these days that use tips to cut corners. They just grab a plastic tip and slap it on the nail and then throw some acrylic over it and take your money. They don't put much effort into producing a quality set of nails and they don't take pride in their work. They are in it for the money and they make their money by working fast so they can fit more people into the day.

These salons are new too. Visalia has only had them for about 10 years now. But they spring up fast and spread like wildfire. There's one in every stip mall, every shopping center. They are highly visible and easy to find. But why people think that the one in Mary's Vineyard is going to be any different from the one in Packwood Creek is beyond me. Can't you tell they are all the same type of salon?

They advertise cheap rates and don't take appointments. Just like Supercuts isn't much different from The Perfect Cut-- same type of salon, just a different company. Yet I see people all the time who try every single one of the cheap, walk-in nail salons in town before they get on the internet and find my website.

This is different too. Back in my day we had the yellow pages. There weren't any nail salons that did nothing but walk-ins. Some places might take walk-ins, but only if they had time, which was rare.

We had to get out the yellow pages and start calling salons and find out when we could get in.

We made appointments.

People understood appointments better back then. They were just more common, so maybe more people understood that if you made an appointment-- you kept it. OR, you called in advance to cancel it.

This is probably the single greatest frustration I have with the changes I've seen in my business.

People don't know what appointments are anymore. Oh sure, they'll call and make one. But then they just blow it off without a second thought. It doesn't matter if they just decide to go somewhere else, or decide not to get their nails done, or if something comes up and they can't keep their appointment... problem is, they don't tell me.

So there I am, waiting on you. Sitting at my desk with my implements all disinfected and set out, looking forward to meeting someone new. Getting to know my new client and getting a chance to introduce someone to a different type of nail service. A service that is clean and safe, that doesn't hurt, or destroy your natural nails. And a nail-lady who actually cares about who you are. Who wants to have a conversation with you and get to know you.

But you've never met a nail tech like that before, you don't know that I'm sitting there waiting just for you because you've never been to an upscale salon before. You figure that if you don't show up, I'll just take who ever's next in line.

But there IS no next in line, not until my next client is scheduled for her appointment. Because I set aside that time just for you.

And I happen to be self-employed. I make money by doing nails. If I'm not doing nails, I'm not getting paid. I have to do a certain number of clients each day in order to make enough money to pay all my bills. If you make an appointment and don't keep it, then I just sit around, not making any money.

It's hard not to take that personally. I mean, I know you don't know me and you may not have known that you are costing me an opportunity to make a living by not keeping your appointment-- I really do try to remember all this and cut you some slack. But I'm sitting there at my desk not making any money and that gives me a lot of time to start thinking about all the changes I've seen over the years-- and it's just so hard to believe how we, as a society, have gotten so lazy at being courteous to one another.

I mean, back in the day, if you had a flat tire on the way to the salon, or your kid got sick and you had to go get them from school, or your doctor appointment took longer than you expected-- it was reasonable when you called the salon the next day to explain why you missed your appointment. But NOW ADAYS we all have cell phones. Even 5th graders have cell phones! There's just no excuse anymore for not being able to at least send off a quiet text message to give us a head's up when an emergency pops up.

But emergencies are few and far between-- what really bugs is how many times someone just doesn't show up. Just blows me off. Like it's no big deal. Like I don't matter and my time means nothing. And if I call up and politely say "Hey, you missed you appointment today..." that person is SO SURPRISED to hear from me! Like it never occurred to them that by making an appointment with me, I may have been expecting you.

Well, I was. I was expecting you. I cleared my schedule just to sit down and chat with YOU and do YOUR nails. And when you don't show up and you can't even bother to call me or text me to let me know you can't make it-- My feelings are hurt. My feelings are hurt and my bank account is hurt. And I really like doing nails. I'd like the opportunity to do your nails. I don't want to have to find a "real" job. I want to make a living doing nails.

So, next time you call up and make an appointment. Keep it. Or at least call to cancel it. And I don't mean call to cancel it when it's 6 minutes before you're supposed to be there. That's just weak. Call and give a day's notice. At least call the morning of. Just like you were calling in sick to work or school.

OMG! And that's another thing! If you have a nail appointment at 6 o'clock in the evening, DO NOT call me at 5:30 to tell me that you are sick! And then try to get my sympathy by telling me that you are so sick, in fact, that you did not even go to work that day! If you KNEW you were too sick to go to work at 7 a.m. that morning, WHY didn't you call ME right after you called in to work?

Waiting until half an hour before you are supposed to be sitting in front of me is just rude. There is NO WAY that gives me enough time to call someone else and offer them your spot. It takes at least a couple of hours to allow someone else enough time to find out that I had a cancellation, make arrangements for their kids or finish up with what they are doing, and drive to the salon. At least 2 hours. So don't wait till the last minute to cancel.

You can avoid a lot of hurt feelings by just remembering to call me at all, and I'll cut you some slack if something comes up at the last minute-- but if you cancel or reschedule everytime you make an appointment, that gets old. It gets old, and it means I can't rely on you. And if you reschedule all the time and you only give me a few hours notice everytime, that's very stressful and eventually I'm going to learn to stop reserving time for you because I know you'll just reschedule.

So have a little compassion for the people you do business with. You sit with us every few weeks while we hold your hands and listen to you share your ups and downs. You come to be part of our lives and you expect us to pay attention to you and be supportive.

Please return the favor.

Random Stuff

2009-08-05T14:09:00.001-07:00

Here's a picture of some nails. They're very pretty nails and I'm especially proud of them. But I can't promise they have anything to do with this post.

Mostly, it's been far too long since I updated. I have lots of things on my mind and I could go off on a rant about any number of subjects at any moment without warning-- so be warned.

I ought to be writing up my blog for Nails Magazine, but that requires focus-- which is not something I'm particularly feeling today.

I have been in a particularly "lovin my job" mood for the last several months. Unfortunately, it seems that a lot of people around me are not sharing my mood and seem to be in a downright "not lovin my job" mood themselves. I mean-- maybe they love MY job, but they aren't lovin theirs.

Or they're not lovin their lives in general, but in any case, I'm having a hard time finding anyone who wants to jump on my "yay for me" bandwagon lately.

That can really bring your bandwagon to a grinding halt.

Also, I don't understand why the back-to-school season isn't one of my busiest seasons? Instead, it is traditionally one of my slowest seasons. I've been just sitting around the salon lately, putting nail art on anything that isn't nailed down. --ouch. pun.

I remember when I was in high school-- back to school meant getting my nails done! Of course, back then, we didn't have all these budget, walk-in shops. But still, with the interent today, it's too easy for potential clients to find someone who does good work. There's no reason for anyone to continue to subject themselves to rude service, poor quality, unclean conditions, or just plain pay for nails they don't like when it's so easy to Google up some photos of badass nail art and make a call.

So I don't get it.

Maybe I'm not supposed to "get it" but at any rate-- my sunglasses sure are cool

Another thing that is bugging me: Why is it that when I type my blog postings here I always double space between my paragraphs, yet when I preview what I've written, it's all just one solid block of text? Trying to read text without paragraph breaks is really hard on the eyes. That's why I double space my paragraphs. But every time I have to go into the HTML preview and add a bunch of stinking breaks! Look! If I hit the "return" key and make a hard return-- it should freakin show up!

Also, why do I live where it is hot? And why doesn't anyone in this hot town know about YELP.com? For criminy sake-- click over there and add a review! Say something nice about me or the salon where I work.

Meanwhile, I am going to get back to checking off things from my to-do list.

Live Long and Prosper-- or Don't

2009-06-26T15:17:00.000-07:00

It would seem that I am part of some sort of minority-- I prefer the term "Trekker." Despite the apparent name-calling and finger-pointing behind the controversy, quite frankly, I just perfer to think of myself as "one who treks, not one who is trekked upon."

The whole silliness wouldn't be an issue at all if I hadn't sat down and watched 5 movies in a row (there were only 5 at the time) back in the extremely early 90's. Let me tell ya, if 10 hours of Star Trek doesn't brain wash you, nothing will!

At some point, the portion of the fan-base that calls itself "Trekkers" came to my attention-- but possibly after the "X-philes" debate, or it probably wouldn't have made any type of impression. Who knows?

But it seemed perfectly reasonable that fans of Star Trek should be "TrekkERS" -- per my aforementioned "one who Treks, not one who is Trekked upon" interpretation.

Whatever.

I never really bothered to sit down and decide if The Sneetches with Stars had jobs and "lives" while the Sneetches with no Stars Upon Thars lived in their mothers' basements. Or vice verse. Now, of course, the Internet has come to town (and my mother's basement, as it were) and with a few simple clicks I can research millions of peoples' thoughts on the subject; with everyone arguing back and forth about what's correct or not. (BTW: a sad point against the late-- and great-- Mr. Roddenberry... one creates a mythos, one does not create its fans. Fandom is a happy consequence of one's creation.) Quite frankly, it never occurred to me that the fans themselves were busy making fun of eachother.

Wait. I take that back. [cough cough] But, all things considered, I thought we all knew we were making fun of ourselves as well.

No. This Trek-chick has not managed to see the new movie yet. It is a subject of great soreness and I don't want to discuss it. Yes, of all the people you know, I am the one most likely to have been camped outside the theater by 5 o'clock on Thursday evening wearing my Starfleet uniform waiting for the midnight showing. Alas, I was not. So maybe not a Trekker afterall? Or not a Trekkie? I can't even keep it all straight anymore!

Nevertheless, it would seem that a surprising number of seemingly normal people in my life not only beat me to the movies, but have willingly revealed themselves to me as "Trekkies."

To which I have scoffed. Being my official position that true fans would consider themselves "Trekkers." And so it is that with my preciously minimal free time I find myself scouring the internet today, searching for the One True Answer.

Which everyone knows is 42. Which goes to show, I don't really care what you call yourselves, I have much bigger Geek Banners to fly.

But for Trek, it looks like I'm out-voted. [shrug] Go figure.

So, for the record: I still consider myself a Trekker. Not because I claim to have "a life" or have any better grasp on this thing called "Reality" or because I think "Trekkies" are a lower life form or predisposed to being any sillier than myself.

I simply think the definition "One who Treks, not one who is Trekked upon" should stand as a monument to the whole concept of the Star Trek culture-- the Prime Directive-- and Life the Universe and Everything...

Cabin Fever

2009-06-24T14:33:00.000-07:00

After my first backpacking trip, during a 2 week stint at Girl Scout camp when I was 8, I swore I would never do that again!

Of course, one of the first lessons I learned in life was "never say 'never'" and true enough, some 20 years later, out of the blue and with no apparent provocation-- I was sitting in my apartment one day and realized I HAD to go backpacking!

Kinda the same way you realize you HAVE to go pee right when the movie is getting really good.

I just had to do it.

Lucky for me, about 10 minutes after this came to my attention, my good friend Amber called. At the time we lived some 400 miles apart and hadn't been very good at keeping up to date with one another-- that was back when the internet was very young and only doctors and drug dealers had cell phones. Not that the modern marvels of email, text messaging, and Facebook have spurred Amz on to being any better at keeping in touch!

So there we are, chatting away about all that had been happening in our lives, when my dear friend Amber says to me-- completely out of the blue-- "I really want to get into backpacking!"

Wow. Maybe I'd been channeling her enthusiasm or something? Whatever-- backpacking we would go.

And backpacking we did go. And have gone. And will go again. And again.

I have more money invested in my backpacking gear than I do in my car. Or about anything else...possibly second only to my investment in glitter.

No seriously, I have a LOT of glitter! And various colored acrylics, gels, confetti, mylars, and miscellaneous doo-dads crammed into every nook and cranny of my space both at work and home-- but that's for doing nails and covered under a seperate insurance policy-- therefore, it doesn't figure into this conversation.

For the last 10 years I have spent countless hours pouring over maps, planning trips into the wilderness. And I've spent countless dollars pouring over outfitters' catalogs, websites, and showrooms, amassing a collection of gear that is now sufficient to outfit a small army-- an x-boyfriend actually suggested that I have more tents than I do friends. It goes to note, I have more x-boyfriends than I have tents.

As it turns out, I suffer from an extreme case of "delicate princess syndrome." With joints that don't bear weight well; skin that sunburns, chaffes, cuts, bruises, blisters, and scrapes easily; a slight tendency to tachacardia on uphill climbs at high elevations; and feet that were decidedly not made for walking-- no matter what boots I put them in.

Nevertheless, I keep on going out there. Sleeping on the ground, carrying a pack, putting one foot in front of the other.

Amber, on the other hand, seems to be built of solid pioneer-woman stock. She swears she never had a blister until our Skyline-to-Sea trip 2 years ago when we walked 35 miles over 3 days with her in new shoes. Yeah, right, like that tiny little blister on her toe even counts!

I get blisters on my blisters. Amber has seen me get blisters just walking from the car to the trailhead! She has seen my feet covered in blisters from boots, trail-runners, tennies, sandals, slippers, Uggs, and barefoot. She shakes her head and wrinkles up her face and probably wonders how I manage to live a normal life at all. But then again, Amz brings her own adventure to the table, so she can't say much.

The good news is, after a particularly heartbreaking and painful attempt at a section of the John Muir Trail in 2005-- where no one on horseback appeared to rescue me from my fate, despite my spending many tearful hours slowly trudging on bludgeoned feet promising God that I would never backpack again if only someone would come to my aid (read the story at trailjournals.com)-- after waiting 2 weeks before the swelling went down enough to put shoes back on... I spent several months and hundreds of dollars researching and tracking down just the right boots. The boots, the laces, the orthotics... that would see me through the miles of trail that continued to wait for me.

I can only hope that Montrail never stops making my Blue Ridges.

Well... After a little hiccup in the timeline where Amz moved out of state and the personal budget and boyfriend conspired to chain me to "real life" and "responsibility" -- the planets have realigned once more and I am spending my afternoon sitting on the floor among the topo maps.

Ahhhhhhh.... where will we go first?

who'da thunk?

2009-06-07T17:01:00.000-07:00

Last year we decided to plant a garden. But since we rent a small house inside city limits, and we have dogs-- boy dogs-- we came to the conclusion that we should try our hand at container gardening. Which would keep our veggies high enough to escape being claimed as dogs' personal territory, and ought to keep the landlord relatively happy that we didn't dig up the backyard.

We managed to acquire a big blue, plastic barrel by way of a friendly neighborhood delivery driver who apparently knew someone who had a surplus of big blue plastic barrels. We then cut the barrel in half and proceeded to clean it thoroughly. Then we filled it with rocks and dirt and pepper plants and then decided we should have put our barrel garden in a slightly different arrangement in our back yard.

Our back yard gets very little sun. In every other respect, I consider this fabulous. For one thing, it gets hots in the summer time. Hotter than I think is actually fit for human habitation. Nearly full coverage of our house by trees means cooler temps in our backyard-- all the better for lounging about with a cold beverage sporting a tiny umbrella, and possibly a twist of lemon, since we also have a lemon tree. Shade also helps keep the electric bill a tad bit lower throughout the hot summer months, seeing as how our house was built in 1950 and I think we have the original air conditioning unit still.

However, full shade is not what the little tags that come with vegetable seedlings recommend. So we opted to place our garden behind the garage, in the only place that gets sun throughout the day.

Once we had our garden in place, we discovered that while peppers and tomatoes may prefer "full sun," they may not actually like 110 degree afternoons with the sun reflecting off of the back of the garage. However, plastic barrel halves filled with rocks and dirt are not easily moved, so a clever mister system was devised and we did, indeed, end up reaping the unspeakable rewards of being able to walk out the back door each day to choose peppers from our own garden for dinner.

We eat a lot of peppers. Bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, whatever peppers are handy. The tomato, however...*sigh.*

Well, first of all, I like me a weird vegetable. And we don't really like tomatoes much. They're fine for salsas and sauces, but both us eye them suspiciously as a vegetable on their own-- possibly because they are actually fruits, but then again, so are the peppers. In fact, it turns out that a lot of vegetables are actually fruits. But for reasons I'm still not sure of, we had to grow a tomato, so I picked a green one.

Yes. A tomato plant that produced green tomatoes. They would never turn red. or orange. or yellow. Just green. And the BF's concerns proved correct when, indeed, I could never quite determine if they were ripe or not.

Not to mention my apprehension about touching the dang plant at all! After growing up with summer vegetable gardens and watching my grandmother hunt for tomato worms each day I am utterly convinced that you cannot grow a tomato plant without also growing tomato worms. I suspect the caterpillar eggs may actually exist inside the tomato seeds! (All the more reason to approach the fruit with suspicion.) And sure enough, considering we only had one plant and live within city limits (really! Where was the next closest tomato plant? The store where we bought ours?!) over the course of last summer we managed to find and kill over 50 tomato worms!

Have you ever seen a tomato worm? Go ahead, click on the link, I'll wait. (hum hum hum) See why I don't want to touch the plant? The notion that I might inadvertently come in actual physical contact with one of those creatures makes me break out in a cold sweat! I'd have to cut off my arm if I touched one of those things! I'm utterly convinced that these things are the work of the devil.

I also discovered that tomato worms are born with those horns. Seriously, the smallest one we found was no more than 5 millimeters long and it still had a horn! That is just WRONG!

So this year, we opted for Roma tomatoes. And a whole lot more peppers! And zucchini. Essentially, we opted for more garden altogether.

So earlier this afternoon I was enjoying the breeze and the uncommonly cool weather, sitting in my garden, admiring all the little plants that are busy blooming and making peppers. Even if my pots aren't as aesthetically pleasing as I'd prefer. When it occurred to me that I am growing several plants.

Actual plants. The kind that grow. And are alive.

I'm growing plants! Growing, not killing!

I am so proud of myself!

Next year I am not growing tomatoes though. I don't care what Guy Clark says, it's just not worth it.

Old friends, good times

2009-06-03T10:43:00.000-07:00

As much as I like being a grown-up, it certainly does come with it's dark side. Sometimes that translates into crappy stuff like paying bills and spending all your time at work to make money to pay bills so you have a roof over your head... whatever. Roofs are nice and all, but my dream house is an Airstream trailer-- which are almost as pricey as a house, pricier in fact, compared to some housing markets! Which is why I'm equally ready to accept any small travel trailer. No really, not even a big one! My dream house travel trailer is also only 18-22 feet long!

Unfortunately, the vast majority of people I encounter have these insane notions that living well involves some sort of house that does not come with wheels. Since I live in an area that still has much rural property, I do know a significant number of folk who live in pre-fabricated "mobile" homes...but even they insist that even though their homes came with wheels, those wheels need to go away after the house has been properly put in place.

So basically, what I'm saying, is that instead of living in a travel trailer that I can pull with my Jeep Cherokee, I live in a house. With a roof, and a toilet that is connected to the city sewer.

Whatever!

Jeesh, the things we do for love.

Fortunately, I really really really like my job. So most of the time I don't mind spending most of the week at work, making money.

I work closely with people though. Women, actually. And we are a complex, and often depressing and snarky lot. Most women know this about themselves and actually don't really like spending time with more women. I hear it all the time! "I don't really like women." But we still find ourselves congregating with our own kind quite often. Because even though we know we're snarky and competitive, at least we understand us. As opposed to hanging out with boys-- which we find fairly simple to figure out, it's just that we have such a hard time accepting that they are really that simple! So there's always an element of "boys are stupid and they smell funny" in our minds, no matter how much we enjoy their company.

So anyway-- I work in a salon. I do nails. I spend my days in a very intimate setting with my clients. I literally hold peoples' hands for a living. Face to face, less than 2 feet apart, holding their hands and listening to whatever they have to say.

A lot of people and a lot of different types of people come through my life on a daily basis. Some of them feed my soul and enrich my life. Some of them feed off my soul and drain my will to live. But it's never boring! And I only see each person for an hour or two at a time, so it's easy enough (usually) to shake it off and get back in the groove.

So going to work to make money is rarely a downside to being a grown up for me.

The part that sucks is that it takes so much time to make the money. So by the time you make the money and get the bills paid and figure out if you have any left over to do fun stuff with-- you don't have any time to do fun stuff because it's time to go back to work to make more money.

Now that gets to be irritating!

But that's not what I was talking about. I was talking about the dark side of being a grown up, and I wasn't going to go on a rant about the obvious. I was going to speak philosophically.

Part of developing wisdom is realizing that as you age, fewer and fewer things still come in black and white. As you get older and fill your head with more knowledge and experience you gain maturity and wisdom but suddenly you discover that it gets harder and harder to take a hard stance on issues that require taking a side.

Which means when it comes to friends, you will either have very few, or you learn to be very forgiving.

Because your friends will do very stupid things throughout their lives. They will do things that you do not approve of and it will be up to you to determine if your disapproval weighs more than your friendship.

Let me just say: Disapproval is a cold companion-- and she won't hang out with you or take you to lunch or loan you $20 when you wallet gets stolen or hike 40 miles into the wilderness with you. So before you choose Disapproval over your friends, you might want to take a minute to seriously consider what Disapproval has ever done for you.

I learned a long time ago that I cherish my friends well and above the company of Disapproval. I'm already holding plenty of grudges (and believe me, I have a death grip on a few of them!) and my hands are kinda full with those. So my friends really have to screw up big time for me to walk away from them.

I can only hope that my friends know this about me and are able and willing to extend the same amnesty to me and whatever I might do that causes them weigh their friendship against their disapproval.

of Ants and Grasshoppers

2009-06-01T10:39:00.000-07:00

I'm constantly amazed at how many people were not forced to endure their grandparents tell them this story repeatedly. So, briefly, the story goes:

Once upon a time there was an ant and a grasshopper.

The ant spent all day, everyday through the whole summer working to get ready for the winter. Stocking piling food and water and building a warm, comfy home so he and his little ant family would be safe and happy through the winter months.

The grasshopper, on the other hand, spent his summer having fun. The grasshopper sat by the river and played the fiddle. He danced and sang and generally partied down and whooped it up all summer long.

So when the snow started to fall, the ant holed himself up in his little ant house and spent all winter staying warm and catching up on his reading presumably. While the grasshopper was stuck outside in the cold with no home and no food and he froze to death because he wasn't prepared.

It's a parable-- a story designed to teach a lesson. My grandmother used to tell it to me over and over again because, I guess, she was really hoping I would grow up to be an ant.

(Hang on, let me put down my fiddle.)

Not so much, as it turns out. I'm all about the here and now. I live by a strong, "what if I get hit by a bus tomorrow?" ethic.

My mom has 4 brothers. One of them wanted to take early retirement. For the last 30 years I never saw him awake. He had a wife and 3 kids and a good job. He wanted to retire at 55 and spend the rest of his life with his wife, do some traveling, see some stuff they never had time to get around to, enjoy his kids, look forward to grand kids-- all that stuff we hope to do when we retire.

In order to do this, he had to put in X amount of hours with his company so he could retire early with his full pension and benefits. So, for most of my life, whenever the family got together, he was asleep. He worked double shifts. He worked 7 day weeks. He worked on holidays. When he wasn't working, he was taking classes to stay viable in his field so he didn't get replaced with younger workers.

From my vantage point, he either slept or worked through his children growing up, their soccer games and high school dances. He slept through family get togethers.

For many many years while I was growing up and into my adult life, whenever anyone scolded me about my grasshopper ways and tried to convince me that I ought to be more ambitious and spend more time at work, toiling for money for the future-- I thought of my uncle. Sleeping through the here and now in order to secure a future when the future is never secure.

He was the example that I lived by. I did not want to be that person. I did not want to miss out on where I was-- on where I am, now, at this moment-- I never wanted to trade my present, for a future that might not come.

What if he got hit by a bus?

And then it happened. The family received the grim news that that very same uncle had been diagnosed with cancer. Really nasty, awful, didn't-have-a-prayer cancer.

6 months before his 55th birthday.

6 months before his retirement.

He was given 6 months to live.

So all those years of playing Rip Van Winkle so that he could enjoy his retirement really paid off. As long as he lived to his 55th birthday-- at least his widow would get his benefits.

He did live another 9 months. So he got his early retirement and his widow has his benefits to keep her warm at night.

I can't say that he would have avoided the cancer had he not worked himself so hard-- cancer runs rampant in our gene pool, I don't think the lifestyle can entirely be blamed. But his family would have had more time with him. They would have more memories of the time they had together. They might have photo albums and scrapbooks overflowing with pictures to show the grandchildren who will never know him.

I don't know how I'm going to weather the winter of my own life. I certainly hope I live long enough to figure it out! But I know that I am here, right now and I try to appreciate that.

I truly hope that when I'm gone, at least people will remember me being awake.

Keeping up

2009-05-27T14:13:00.000-07:00

Keeping up with everything has really been rough lately. I suppose this is what grown-ups have against being a grown-up.

Frankly, I'll take being grown-up. I love that no one is "responsible" for me now. I don't have to "mind" anyone and when I screw up it's all on me and I don't have to worry about my mom catching flack for not raising me right. That was a big issue when I was younger. Probably because my mom got divorced when I was little and never remarried-- there were fewer single moms in the days when my own was blazing that trail, so every time I did anything that didn't meet with someone's approval it was somehow Mom's fault.

I've always hated that. I'm really big on accountability. I'll take the blame for what's my fault, but I also expect credit when it's due and I expect others to take the blame that belongs to them; I'm nobody's scape-goat.

So growing up has been swell overall in that respect.

It's also awesome that I can choose my own schedule. In my case, I chose a career in the salon industry as a nail enhancement professional (Onychological Enhancement Specialist, thank you. I like to use that euphemism when I'm in pretentious company that looks down on my being "just a nail lady." Throwing that out there and smiling sweetly is my way of saying, "Oh yeah, and how's your Latin?") which has afforded me the opportunity to set my schedule. Which means I don't have to be at work before noon if I don't want to.

Throughout my life people have assured me that as I age, I would become more and more tolerant of earlier hours. Well, I guess that's been true: if you consider that I am now willing (willing, mind you, is not exactly the same as "happy") to start my day at 10 a.m. instead of noon.

Honestly, that's a compromise on my part that allows me to work 4 days a week instead of 5. I really liked going to work at noon.

I've never been a morning person. My mom used to break down in tears because it was so hard to get me out of bed in the morning in time for school. Her logic? If I couldn't get up in time for school, how would I ever be able to hold a job?

Unfortunately for Mom, one of my uncles had been working the graveyard shift throughout my entire life. This meant that I was fully aware that the world did not close down and roll itself up between the hours of 5 p.m and 8 a.m.-- also, parents sometime under estimate the motivation of getting paid, which school did not offer.

Also. I like that I can start drinking Pepsi as soon as I get up. No one is hovering over me telling me that Pepsi and chocolate chip cookies are not appropriate breakfast foods. If I want to snack between meals, I can. If I am in the store and I want to buy a candy bar, I can.

I can drive. I make my own money. I can dye my hair pink. I can date who I want. I can choose my friends. I can go to R rated movies. I can stay up past my bedtime. And I can leave the house dressed however I want.

I enjoy the rewards-- and suffer the consequences-- of each of these decisions.

Overall, being a grown up is pretty freakin great.

The downside is that there's never enough time.

Forget about the money. Let's face it, you didn't have "enough" money when you were 8, or 15, or 25, 0r 50. I'm sure there are times when Bill Gates thinks HE doesn't have "enough" money. No, I don't have enough money: but enough for what? I mean, the bills get paid, I still manage to go out to dinner, I manage to buy a new outfit now and then and I'm running the air conditioning right now even though I know that will mean the next electric bill will be double what it was last month.

The problem is Time. I never seem to have enough time anymore.

My time gets sucked up with work and Boyfriend and dogs. All of which I truly love and am not willing to give up. MAYBE if I won the lottery, I'd cut back on work, maybe. I really like my work though. I like my work so much, in fact, that I dedicate far more time to it than it requires.

I could just go to the salon each day, do nails, collect money, come home and use that money to buy more dog toys. But I'm not content to just do nails for a living. I want to do the best nails. I want to know everything about nails. I want to talk to other people who do nails. I want to teach other people to do nails. Nails is not just my work, it's my passion.

Passions are extremely demanding on one's time.

As are boyfriends, btw.

So I have somehow managed to commit myself to a great many undertakings that I never seem to be able to keep up with.

When I got the internet I joined an online community for nail professionals. Which I remain active in. I also built a website for my business-- which doesn't get updated as often as it could, but it also doesn't need updating very often, so I guess it has found it's own pace.

It took YEARS before I got talked into creating a Myspace account. Once I did, I have to admit I enjoy it. But talk about something you need to keep updated! I try to log in about once a week, and everytime I do I have 4 pages of friend requests waiting for me.

Then I got talked into the Facebook page, and as far as Twittering-- I just went ahead and did it instead of waiting for everyone I know to start first and then bug me till I do it too.

And then there's this blog. Which I really thought was going to end up being the place where I came to muse and maunder on a regular basis.

Then I started blogging for Nails Magazine. Which is, to date, the brightest feather in my cap. But it's a professional gig. I have deadlines and-- can you believe?!-- a maximum length! Which makes it easy enough to sit down for a few minutes every couple of days and type up a little something of interest, but really limits my ranting!

Anyway, I don't get much opportunity to just sit down in front of the computer and start going off. Especially since once I get started, I never know how long it'll take before I'm done.

Oh yeah... I also started an email newsletter. Which I promised I'd send out at least once every other month. I'm a month behind. Frankly, I'm not sure what to put in it.

And I haven't even picked a PCT hiker journal to follow this season! EEGADS! I am falling behind!

R E C E I P T is not a synonym for "copy"

2009-04-08T14:24:00.000-07:00

So I go by the property management office a couple weeks ago to drop off the BF's rent check for him.

Nevermind that our property manager has never impressed me much anyway, but I walk in the door to the office and the gal at the front desk smiles at me, then gets up and walks away.

Huh? Is she coming back? Where did she go? Is she getting someone else to come out and take care of me? Am I supposed to follow her?

So I stand there at her desk.

Sure enough, she returns shortly and holds out her hand to take the check.

It's not that she's been anything but pleasant so far, but she also hasn't actually spoken to me.

So I give her the check and stand waiting patiently while she enters the information into the computer. Then she puts the check on the side of her desk and procedes to go on with whatever she is doing.

I ask her if I can a receipt.

At this point she looks up at me, bearing a slight resemblance to a parakeet that has just heard a strange noise. She says, "Just use your copy."

????????

I try to remain calm and pleasant, but at this point I am thinking that she might be stupid.

I inquire as to what copy she is speaking of.

She says, "Just use the copy of your check."

Now I look like a parakeet. I wrinkle up my brow and try not to assume she means the carbon copy that comes with duplicate checks. She can't be that stupid, right?

So I verfiy that this is, in fact, what she is referring to.

OMG. It is. She actually is telling me to keep my carbon copy from my checkbook as my receipt of payment for the rent.

I did NOT have time to give her a lecture on all the ways that her statement was full of FAIL. I did hear my voice squeek a little in incredulousness as I managed to inform her that not everyone uses duplicate checks.

She printed out a receipt for me and I walked out-- just a little stunned.

WOW. Somebody really needs to explain the concept of a receipt to this girl!

So-- if this is the commonly accepted practice of proving payment I am thinking that I should invest in duplicate checks ASAP!

Then, the first thing I will do is write out a fat check to the Mercedes dealership. I'll make sure to put "Mercedes Benz SLR McLaren Roadster-- fully loaded" in the memo field, just to cover my bases.

Then, of course, I'll just go ahead and shred that check. But I'll take the COPY to the dealership and demand that they hand over my half million dollar baby immediately-- showing them the "receipt" to prove that I obviously paid for it IN FULL.

Then I'm driving my shiny new roadster over to the court house to get the deed on my 1500 acre ranch land-- with the "receipt" that it too, has been paid in full.

And then the yacht. And then the jet. And then the small private island off the coast of Fiji. (do I even want a small, private island off the coast of Fiji? Who cares, I've got a receipt that says I paid for it!)

Who wants to go shopping with me now? Just grab those duplicate checks, girls!

I guess I twitter now

2009-03-30T12:50:00.001-07:00

So I decided to open a Twitter account. I'm actually in the process of doing so now. The Twitter site is being very slow.

I'm currently uploading my picture...

I'm not sure I understand the Twitter thing just yet. I think it's a lot like my status bar on Facebook. I guess I'll find out.

What I really need to know is how to tell everyone to follow me now.

Ouch, adding my cell phone. I don't have unlimited texting-- YET! I should look into that, this could get expensive!

Hmmmmm....I'm not clear on this. Is the verification code supposed to pop up on the computer? or do I get a text? How long is this going to take?

WOOHOO! There ya go! Over there --> in the sidebar, you can follow me on Twitter now!

Now I just gotta get it on my Myspace and my website.

Keeping up with trends.

2009-03-28T13:23:00.001-07:00

So one of my bestest clients has r-u-n-n-o-f-t to a small coastal town in Oregon. And gone and left me behind.

No matter... the BF refuses to move to Oregon because they won't let him pump his own gas.

So anyway, afore-mentioned client comes back for a visit and tells me she needs me to do a wicked set of nails on her before she returns to her new home, because they don't know what the heck she's talking about!

She has found a new nail tech. She's very happy with the new tech-- good personality match-- and the new tech does great work. Problem is that the new tech only does pink and white acrylic. NO nail art! And my former client says they look at her like she's gone loopy when she wears polish instead of pink and white.

(Well... ok, we in the biz have known for years now that polish is pretty much just on our shelves for toes, and since the rockstar toe craze and now the Minx hottness has come around, even polishing toes is SOOOOO 5 minutes ago!)

Nevertheless, here in Visa-town (that's VIE-SAH, short for Visalia, which is pronounced with a long I sound, NOT "vih-zay-lya" -- it doesn't rhyme with the place the onions come from!) we tend to run about 10 years behind the trends. It's actually gotten better since our recent real estate boom brought in new blood from urbanized areas such as Los Angeles and the San Francisco bay area-- I think we're down to only 3-5 years behind now. Polish with nail art is still hot here... but now there's more diversity to nail styles. Which is cool, it keeps me from getting bored or stuck in a rut!

So-- I was talking about my client who moved to Oregon-- she tells me that the techs near Coos Bay only do pink and white. No handpainted nail art and no Rockstar, no Bling, no colored acrylic or gel-- and the concept of enhancements for toes was a shocker to them too!

My client printed out some photos from my website to show them what's hot here and they were amazed.

So, while I'm knocking out those kickass bragging nails you see at the top of the page, I'm wondering why these gals haven't been online? Are their subscriptions to Nails and Nailpro magazines not up-to-date? Why not?

I suppose, if they are making a good living doing nothing but pink and whites, then good for them. No sense fixing something that ain't broke.

But I rocked out some sweet rockstar nails for my client and sent her back to her new home with instructions to really pay attention to how many comments she gets. If everyone looks at her nails and says, "OMG! Those are wild!... I mean, I'D never wear something like that but...." then chances are, there's no sense trying to talk her new nail tech into learning new tricks. But if the comments are, "OMG! Where did you get those done! Those are awesome! I want some too!" Then she needs to take that info back to her new tech and let her know that people want wild nails.

AND, of course, I'm available for private instruction.

I'm gonna keep this updated-- really.

2009-03-04T09:25:00.000-08:00

Ok, where did I leave off?

Well, so far, Mom has had her surgery at Stanford. She's VERY disappointed that her tumor ONLY weighed in at 30 pounds. She's doing fine and I am waiting for her to call and let me know when they are kicking her out of the hospital. It'll either be today or Friday-- her very self-centered daughter says there is absolutely no way she can reschedule appointments to go get her mom on Thursday. :)

Meanwhile:

It seems like it's been forever ago now, but I also got to attend the HRTE (High Road to Education) nailtech networking and eduactional event in San Jose, CA. It was a couple of weeks ago-- on February 15-16.

I have a few thoughts on that:

A. I hate the Hilton.

Ok, maybe "hate" is hyperbole. But just a little. The room was clean, the toilet flushed, and the water was hot. That's really all I require of a hotel room and the Hilton did live up to those requirements.

Where the Hilton falls TERRIBLY short of any Motel 6, Vagabond Inn, or (my personal fave) Best Western is that for one thing, of course, it's twice as expensive as any of those chains.

Well, ok, if you're going to charge me twice as much money-- what are you going to do to make it worth it? -- Well in the case of the Hilton, apparently NOTHING. Not only did they fail to convince me that their room was worth twice what I would normally spend on a hotel room, but they actually include FEWER ameminties for that price!

Parking? $18-$23 a NIGHT extra, depending on if you want to brave parking your own vehicle in their garage or trust them to do it for you. The parking spaces were so narrow, you'd have thought the entire garage was designed only for motorcycles! And I don't CARE if it's "not the Hilton, ma'am, it's the city that charges..." First: just go ahead and charge extra for the room and include your parking fees in that cost. The city isn't charging ME for using those parking spaces, it's charging the HILTON for reserving those spaces for use by their guests. Suck it up, Hilton! And second: barring hiding the cost of parking in the overall room fees, at the very least, notify your guests that there are additional fees for parking when they make their reservation! Don't just hit us with an extra $20 a night when we check in. That's just RUDE.

Breakfast. It just isn't that expensive for a company to provide free coffee and bagels in the morning. Nevermind that my favorite Vagabond Inn in Sacramento-- and several other hotel/motels of choice-- not only offer free coffee and pastries in the morning, but provide nicely appointed rooms complete with flat screen tvs, fireplaces, coffee, juices, milk, cereal, fresh fruit, pastries, AND make-your-own waffles! (BTW: I think hotels where I get to make my own waffles ROCK!) -- so Hilton? Are you really trying to tell me that you're so upscale that you charge me $180 and up a night, but can't afford to give me a damn bagel in the morning?

No. The Hitlon not only does not offer a continental breakfast for free-- you can't PAY for a continental breakfast in what they refer to as a restaraunt. BTW: I have actually been to a Motel 6 that had a nicer in-house restaraunt. No lie.

I'm not a big morning person. Mornings happen to be beautiful-- they just happen at the wrong time of day for me to properly enjoy them. I suggest we move mornings down to about 1 in the afternoon. So, when I'm on the road for business purposes and have to get up at the crack of dawn to be in a class or at a show by 8 or 9 a.m. I do NOT want to sit down at a restaraunt where I am at the mercy of either overworked or undermotivated wait-staff to take my order, bring me my food, and process my credit card. I'm also not in the mood for a 3 cake "short stack" with 2 eggs and bacon. Too much food, too early in the morning. I JUST WANT SOME DAMN COFFEE, and maybe a bagel or a cinnamon roll.

Fortunately, there was a Starbucks just outside the doors of the hotel, in the convention center. All hail the coffee-siren-goddess!

And Wifi. For crying out loud! My local BREWPUB offers free wifi connection. Seriously. The Hilton CHARGES for connecting to the internet in your room? What do they think this is? 1998? Good grief. Sure, they have a small "business center" downstairs where you can check your email or print out directions to much nicer restaraunt than they have to offer-- but it's not like you can download your porn from their computers... or watch Ghosthunters, which is what my friend wanted to do which is how I know there was a charge to connect in your room, since I was too tired to bother.

Nope. Paris can keep her hotel. When I checked out, the front desk staff asked the obligatory question, "how was your stay?" I told them it was a good thing I didn't have to pay to download that video of Paris.

Now, my question is: How do I rework MY business so that I offer HALF the service at TWICE the price? And then convince my clients that I'm UPSCALE? Because, as I attempted to explain to the staff at the Hilton, in MOST industries, a premium price indicates premium service and quality.

I certainly know that's how it works in the salon industry!

But I digress-- back to HRTE.

I think that most of the (all of 4) readers of my blog are also in The Biz and already know what the HRTE is-- but believe it or not, I actually have a couple of personal friends and clients who pay attention to me on occassion so I'll expound:

The High Road to Education is a grassroots educational event designed by nail tech and eduator, Tammy Warner. She got together with some of her homies and they started the HRTE....

OH! Well, just got word that Mom is being released TODAY! That means that I don't have time to finish my thoughts, and now I have to jump in the car and drive 4 hours to Stanford to pick her up!

TA!