Oy... it's been something of a full day, but then I kind of suspected it would be...The morning wasn't so bad, Ma and I had both booked Haircut Days (well, Ma had one book and I figured I might as well have mine done too since I hadn't had it done since Christmas), so I got to have a slightly later start, even if it did involve standing around at the bus stop and whatnot.
I also figured I wouldn't bother getting an Iced Coffee before my haircut, which is kinda odd, because usually I make sure I have one, but I figured I wasn't having a colour done, so I could cope without it. Which just shows that the Universe has it's eye on me and works in strange ways sometimes...
When I got to the salon I found out some rather distressing news... today was Tink's last day... she's off interstate for at least a year, possibly forever!
Although she did do this once before, she disappeared for several months but ended up coming back, so you never know. But now I'm going to have to either train up one of the other little beige girlies (Tink was by far the most interesting person in the salon) or else find a new salon altogether.
But it just goes to show what happens when you build up the rapport and relationship with your hairdresser... not only had she been so worried that she might not see me before she left that she went into the computer system and left a little note for me on my file, but she also went out this morning and bought me an Iced Coffee to, I'm assuming, cushion the news of her leaving. So it was good that I didn't go and buy my own Iced Coffee... I didn't need to...
It was all kind of bittersweet the whole time she was cutting my hair really... and part of me wished that I'd actually been booked in for a colour too, not only to prolong the moment, but also so that it was done the way I like it (although Tink did say that she'd updated my file with all the appropriate details so I wouldn't have to retrain her replacement totally from scratch).
As I was leaving Tink wrote a couple of names down on a card for me (which was good, because I was going to ask her who she thought would make a good replacement), and we had a big hug (and she showed me the note she'd put in the computer which was very sweet). *sigh* I know I've been going to the same salon for about a decade (scary, hey), but it just seems like every time I get one of them trained up to know what I want without having to say very much, she disappears on me.
Actually, part of me is considering going somewhere else and finding myself a proper 'mo hairdresser... I've never actually had my hair cut by a fellow 'mo, but whether it's a good plan or not, I don't know. Fortunately I've got a while before I need to think about it.
Once Haircut Day was all over and I'd said farewell to Tink, I legged it down to where Ma was waiting for me and we headed off for a much later Supermarket Safari. Which other than there being more people, went about the same as usual. I did however, discover a new food-gasm (you know, it's like an orgasm, but caused by or resulting from food)... thanks to Ma actually, she recommended it (and then made me try some when we got back here, mostly so she could see my reaction I think)... Sara Lee Moccona Cappuccino Indulgence ice cream... "a creamy treat that combines Moccona’s finest dark-roasted coffee with decadent dark-chocolate chunks". Oh! My! Goddess! The stuff even smells like iced coffee... it's just too, too, too decadent, but damn it's tasty.
After a quick stop off at The Honey Man and the usual Drop Off/Unpack (which is never particularly interesting from a story point of view, but it needs to be done), we headed down to Arndale because I wanted to pick up one of those little jade Buddha pendants for Rockchick, as well as some giftbaggery for the Barbie journal I bought as her going away present (I actually bought it before Christmas, how's that for being far too organised... mostly though it was because they were on special at the time).
So I got a pink giftbag (actually from the same place I got all of Ma's giftbags a couple of years ago... so we're talking violently pink), I got some purple wrapping paper (none of the pink stuff was pink enough) and I also picked up this really cool backpack hanger/fob/keyring thing from EzyDVD (for me, obviously)... it was something that they'd been giving away with one of the Lost boxed sets, but obviously they hadn't sold or whatever, so they were basically getting rid of them for a dollar. Now you can't argue with a dollar, especially when it has a pretty cool looking clock, a somewhat crappy compass (if you don't hold it perfectly flat it has trouble with North, also I think my computer is making the compass point in the wrong direction right now) and a little red light/torch. Sadly I have no idea what it was originally called, so I can't find a picture of it online anywhere. We also stopped off in one of the clothing stores and Ma tried on a bunch of clothes, bought a couple of tops.
The final piece of the puzzle was the little jade Buddha... which I got not because she's particularly Buddhist (I don't know if she's particularly anything to be honest), but when J went overseas the first time I gave him a green crystal pendant (there's more to the story, but I covered it all in that previous post) that had been mine
So to make a long story short, I want to do the same thing for Rockchick... whether I go to the party tomorrow or not, I'm going to give the jade pendant a little of the old "yani magic" and get her to wear it at least on the first leg of her journey (she's going to a bunch of places). Interestingly though, while we went to exactly the same store and the pendants where exactly the same price, they were actually much more crudely made than the one I bought... way more stylised, so Buddha kind of looks like he has a pointy head. Oh well!
As sometimes happens, doing one particular bit of shopping triggers off a thought process and we run with it. This time it was Ma trying on clothes... she has my cousin's wedding (second time's the charm as they say... or whatever) coming up at Easter (which thankfully I've managed to avoid), so we have to find her an outfit of some appropriate description between now and then.
After we were finished at Arndale we headed down to this place Ma visits from time to time... it's one of those "clothing warehouse" type places, mostly low-rent, but they have the occasional halfway decent thing. And today was the first time I'd ever been with her... I've heard about the place a lot, but thankfully had never had to visit. It was about as scary and tragic as I thought it was going to be. There's an awful lot of really, really, really ugly clothing in the world, and this store is responsible for more than it's fair share of it.
So we didn't actually find anything for the wedding, but we did find a few vaguely interesting bits and pieces (which after Ma tried them on mostly turned out to look crap). I can't be too harsh on the place though, because I did consider buying something for myself very briefly... which is disturbing since they only have women's clothes (and no, I wasn't having a drag moment, although I did have a moment where I thought that it would be the perfect place to come and buy really, really appallingly bad drag outfits... plus they even have wigs).
The clothing that caused my momentary retail impule were these funky looking Chinese mandarin jackets with a couple of dragons embroidered on the front and then a massive dragon embroidered on the back... and one of them was in an excessively large size (given that it was a women's size), and it actually fit me perfectly... and if the lining and embroidery had been red and not blue I might have considered it. Ma however found the exact same jacket with grey/white dragons on it, and she did buy it (also a good reason for me not to buy it, it would be pretty tragic if we had the same jacket), so it wasn't a completely wasted trip.
Our final stop was West Lakes, since we were more or less pointing in the right direction when we left the dodgy clothing store... but other than having a late lunch, that kind of turned out to be a bit of a waste of time, we wandered around as per usual, but didn't buy anything.
And at the moment I'm weighing up between a couple of options for what to do with the rest of my evening... similar ideas, differing outcomes (I'm also kind of wondering if I can manage to roll two of the ideas into one big idea, or if that would just be a bad idea). Plus, on top of that, I'm still not 100% sure what I'm going to do about tomorrow afternoon...
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