Ardentli.Net

Ah, how refreshing. I spent this weekend in Rochester to visit my boyfriend. While there I decided to dye my hair for the first time ever (I’ve always been a brunette because I’m boring and not devious). I made an appointment for a cut and color with a local salon I’ve gone to once before and had good experiences with. I decided to go red. Lindsay Lohan pre-cocaine kind of red. The dying part went well, but as the stylist was drying my hair I noticed my roots looked oddly oxidized and a substantial bit lighter than the ends of my hair, but I figured it was just me or the lighting of the salon. My haircut went well all the while the stylist was raving about how awesome my color was so I assumed nothing was wrong.

I went home and had a chance to really stare at my new hair. There was definitely a huge color distinction between the crown of my head and the ends. I freaking looked like Lee-Loo from the 5th Element. It was pretty awful. I decided that I’d call to make an appointment for Sunday to get the color fixed. Turns out the salon’s closed on Sundays (how wonderful).

^ This is Lee-Loo for those of you who haven’t seen the 5th Element. Lawl.

Not wanting to go back to work in Boston looking like a circus freak I made a speedy appointment at another salon. I walked in and the stylist I had was amazed that another salon would let me walk out with a hair coloring job that poor. Either way this girl re-dyed my hair the correct color and fixed my roots. My roots are still slightly lighter than the tips, but I can live with it as long as I don’t look like an alien-fighting superstar. I’m pretty sure the whole salon felt sorry for me, but they were raving about my fixed hair color. I laughed and joked people were only loving my 2nd coloring job because my first was just that awful.

Needless to say I did call the 1st salon and leave a voice mail about how my hair had turned out. I mentioned I wasn’t able to come in to get it fixed and was leaving that day on a plane to Boston. I wonder if I’ll get a call back from the owner, receptionist, my stylist, whatever to apologize. Either way, I’m not going back to the 1st salon for a color ever again if I ever get daring enough to decide to change my hair color again.

I don’t have the best pictures of my hair now to show the before and after as the only camera I have here with me is my BlackBerry’s camera (a whoppin’ 2.0 megapixels, baby). You can kind of tell its intended color, but it looks better in real person, honestly. Only so much a 2.0 megapixel can do for you, unfortunately.

Anyone else ever have a crazy case of bad coloring jobs?

And no, I took no pictures of my horrible hair after the 1st dye job. It was so horrific I refuse to immortalize it via picture.

I never thought I’d complain about this since I’ve always wanted a bigger chest, but… my boobs are too big! This stupid fitted tube-top black pencil dress I bought online fits perfectly at the hips, waist, etc, but my stupid boobage is about a freaking inch too big so I can’t zip up the zipper the last TWO INCHES. UGH. It was such a cute, sexy “little black dress” too!

Well, I am losing weight right now, so after I lose 5-10lbs I’m sure I’ll lose some chest width because boobs seem to be the first thing to go. I don’t understand though. It’s a medium and my chest is 32-33 inches and my bust is 36 inches. I should be wearing a medium and I’m sure a large would be too big and fall off my chest. Which could be awkward. Just a bit.

>:( Stupid dress.

(And for the record, my chest is of very average to a little on the small side. I was not blessed with lots of boobage)

I’ve finally got around to making a custom layout. It’s nothing spectacular, but at least it’s no longer a pre-made template (if you’re seeing anything funky it’s probably because I’m not done editing the layout yet!).

Spring quarter is finally coming to a close. I have another week of classes and then a week of finals before I can finally put this quarter behind me. It’s been a flurry of exams and projects so I’ve had to put a lot of my online endeavors on the back burner. Hopefully I’ll have a little more time to get some of my projects done.

I’m having a great time perusing the tutorials over at Smashing Magazine. I love all their issues on typography. I seriously wish the web supported more than the basic font families. I’m hoping in the next few years browsers will evolve such that you can use any font and it’ll be imported into the user’s browser so that we can have all kinds of beautiful web interfaces. I’m also in the process of expanding my web development skills a bit and learning AJAX. I’m assured there’s not much to it (and it doesn’t appear there really is). It’s so refreshing just to be able to sit and learn things at my leisure versus them being projects in class.

P.S. In regard to Bare Minerals from my previous entry, I returned my starter kit. I didn’t like how the makeup made my face look super shiny and it just wasn’t giving me the right amount of coverage. I’m a bit on the disappointed side. I heard so many great reviews. Oh well, on to the next best, new thing I suppose.

Today was a great day of beauty discoveries for me. I found two new things that I really, really like.

First off, I’m a firm believer in using foundations that are liquid-based. I’ve honestly used L’oreal’s Trumatch liquid foundation for years. It works better than most of the higher-end foundations for me since I found the perfect shade for my face. I also have quite large pores on my nose (thank you, acne) and I have dark under-eye circles. It did wonders blending those away and I also used Clinique’s press powder to top it off.

I asked a few people at BoardX what they used in terms of mineral foundation. I had tried it my freshman year of college and it was ok at best. I didn’t think it was any better than liquid foundation and back then I had horrible cystic acne thanks to hormones and disgustingly oily skin (I’ve since had it treated with a round of Accutane). A lot of people suggested Bare Minerals so I went out today and bought the starter kit. I had one of the makeup ladies there figure out I should be using “Fair” which is the palest shade.

I went home and gave it a try and I’m quite pleased so far. I washed my face, put on my own lotion, and then put some powder on. I feel as though I need to heavily conceal under my eyes since I have lovely genetically engineered raccoon eyes. Anyone else used it? Does it help with your acne at all? I have pretty good skin now thanks to Accutane, but I still occasionally get whiteheads and clogged pores. I want to hit the ground running and make sure to take care of my skin as best I can to prevent a resurgence of acne.

The starter kit cost me $60 USD. I’m hoping it was worth the money. I’m guessing if it sucks after a few days of use I could always return it to Ulta.

My other find of the day is finally ponying up the dough and buying a Chi ceramic plate hair iron. I had previously been using a cheapo straightener that I’ve had for a number of years. What a freaking difference the Chi makes. Holyyyy crap. I seriously could style my hair in about 5 minutes versus 15-20 with my old crappy straightening iron. Needless to say the old cheapo one is in the garbage now. I can’t believe I was too cheap to buy a nice iron all these years. The Chi cost about $140 and I’ve read a lot of people have had problems with them breaking after a while so at least I have a one year warranty with it. I got one of the limited edition Chi “In Love” things in aqua cause the pink made me want to vomit. I think pink looks corny.

Oh! I also started playing Star Ocean: The Last Hope for Xbox360. I am impressed by the graphics and fluidity of the game so far, but I do have major gripes about the voice acting. It blows. I also don’t like Reimi (Is that her name?) and her crazy jerky neck motions and crazy hair physics. I’ve never seen a character whip her hair around as much as that girl does. This is my first Star Ocean game so we’ll see how much I like it.

In related Square-Enix gaming news there are new trailers out for Final Fantasy XIII that look great.

Here’s a gameplay trailer that was recently released. The battle system seems to return to ATB ala Final Fantasy 7/8 so that’s cool. I can’t wait for these series of games. I’m just minorly irked that one of them is still PS3 exclusive.