2007-11-21 - 8:05 a.m.

...I'm still having a fantastic hair day...

I've got to go to work and meet with a potential Ph.D. student today, but before I go, I thought I would share a story about this weekend.

On Saturday, I got one of THE best haircuts I've had in YEARS. Wow. I've never really thought that I have difficult hair - in fact, most hairdressers love my hair because it's wavy and thick and shiny and will pretty much do whatever they want it to.

The trouble is, it WON'T do what I want it to do when I get home, and I do NOT have one hour and a team of stylists with 100 types of gel in my bathroom to FIX it every morning. Let's face it. I have FIVE-MINUTE hair.

I think that I must also have a challenging body/face shape to go with the hair. It's pretty obvious that most of us out there do NOT look like Teri Hatcher or Jennifer Aniston, or whoever else you'd like to suggest. I certainly do not look like either of them, and so it is a tad bit ridiculous to put their haircut on MY head.

And to make matters worse, most models out there clearly are not square/round faced - so most hairdressers wind up giving me a haircut that can accentuate every negative quality. Alternatively, they LOVE to give me LOTS of layers (because of this THICK LUSH hair that will fill them out). RESULT: HEAD FROM HELL. My hair just sticks out all over the place, giving me serious BIG HEAD syndrome.

Or something like that.

So I pretty much go from salon to salon looking for someone who will listen to what I want and DO IT.

I skipped yoga went into a hair academy down the street from me on Saturday, because the last time I got my haircut was in Germany last July...ahem. It was time.

The concierge / hair maitre d' asked me, "Would you prefer someone with experience, or someone from The Academy?"

ummmm...I opted for experience. But apparently, when asked the same question, so did everyone else. Because they were full up. So instead I took the little person from The Academy.

I saw her walking towards me. She had a dyed blonde fringe with jet black hair everywhere else. A HOLE cut in her hair in the back and a LONG BLACK STRAGGLY strand of black hair twirling down her left side. She wore a thick black belt with studs, had tattoos covering both arms, and about six piercings through her face. Okay...

So, I kind of expect hairdressers to be on the fringe of fashion, so this honestly didn't throw me. Their job is to have artistic flair with my head, and their job is also to be a professional who learns how to cut a wide range of heads and fashions. But, as her sense of personal fashion kind of FAR from MY sense of personal fashion, I did take notice.

But she was young and cheerful and personable, she asked a lot of questions, and I had a wonderful time just asking her what it was like to be a hair academy student. (put me at ease to learn all of the things that she had already learned, and what type of experience she DID have...).

Anyway, she was GREAT. It's shaped my opinion of trainees. I guess one COULD get a complete loser out there...but alternatively, it could be that the new ones are all the more eager to listen and please, and so they just do what you want. Which she did. It's GREAT. I love my hair. How cool is THAT?

I went to the academy's webpage and wrote to the instructors to let them know what a great job she had done. I figure it's a kudos for their academy, but also good for someone just starting out to get some positive feedback. I will definitely go back to my tattooed and pierced wonder of a hair dresser.