My wife cuts my hair. She has been for close to three years, and though she still takes a very long time to do it, seriously, sometimes it's almost maddening how slow parts of the process can be - carefully moving the clippers over a portion of my head several times without the clippers actually making any cutting noise - they turn out very well.
I'm always happy with my hair when she's done, which is pretty amazing considering the track record of professional hairistas (really, what do you want, barber?), probably 3 out of 10 haircuts I get at a hairmasters or supercuts or whatever turn out well. It's pretty abismal.
So, a couple of days ago, my hair looking pretty shaggy, I ask my wife to schedule my personal stylist for a hair appointment. She was tired, too busy and I guess feeling a little overwhelmed and insisted I go to a barber. Reluctantly, I consented.....
'There you go, you're all done...are we good?' the allegedly trained stylist inquired.
'uhhhh, yep. Guess it looks fine' Was my usual response...How the hell should I know? Let me go home, shower and have a look at it, then I'll get back to you. So I paid my twenty dollars, and went home to shower.
It was not fine. How does someone call themself a professional and cut a head of hair like she cut mine, look at it, think it looks fine, and release me back into the wild, tagged for tracking by my rediculous bowl cut?
She should have her license revoked (do they have a licensing system? if not, they should form a hair-bar association of some kind for the exclusive purpose of disbanding stylists of this kind).
There should be some kind of organization which stations highly-trained analysts outside of hair cutting places to view the customers as they leave, and judge whether or not they are being given a disservice. It wouldn't be hard right? They would have to ignore whether or not someone was attractive, just focus on their hair cut, and ask a simple question, 'does your hair normally look good? Or are you a lunatic who prefers bowl cuts?'
Luckily, my wife was able to repair the damage and safely reintegrate me back into the population, but not immediately. I walked around for two days with my goofy hair, I even held an open house, talking with potential clients about buying and selling, all the while just wondering what they were thinking about my hair.
I suppose it wasn't quite as bad as my wife and I thought, otherwise I probalby would have noticed before I left the hair cutting place, but it was pretty bad. Needless to say, Audrey has agreed to never again force me to throw away 20 dollars on a bad hair cut, so all's well that something something...
....Oh sorry, I was looking in the mirror, damn I look good. OK, just kidding, but it really makes a big difference.
Ahhhhh, anyway, I got up Sunday morning at 430 am and went on a 70 mile ride followed by a 6 mile run. Very proud. Usually I just do my workouts later in the day because I'm able to, or I just don't do them. Working out in the early morning is brutal. I drank a cup of coffee, and then headed off, up highway 410 to Mt Rainier. I couldn't eat anything, I never can right after I have coffee for some reason, so it was a hungry day. I took three baker's breakfast cookies with me, which was a good thing.
What a tough ride! Starts out with 410 up to bonney lake which is pretty tough, but then it just keeps going up, especially after Buckley, up up and away to the mountain. For only 70 miles it took a very long time for the ride, I think it was four hours, but I'm definately doing that ride again in a week, great way to build strength, especially at the very end, climbing up Janelle Estates to my neighborhood, it's a beast of a hill and at the end of a ride it will all but kill you. I've named it three-hanky hill, after Bob Babbit's naming of a hill in Kona. It makes me want to cry every time.
The day before my tough ride I swam for an hour at the lake, and I'm planning on doing between 1 and 2 hours at the lake tomorrow, I REALLY want to do well in my half ironman in California in two and a half weeks.
This coming weekend, my family is going to Ocean Shores with The Rhodies (Chris' family) for the Ocean Shores triathlon, and my wife is going to run the half-marathon. The Olympic tri has a 1500 meter swim, 400 meters shorter than a half-ironman swim, and my plan is to go absolutely, no holding back, all out on the swim. If I blow up, I blow up, but I want 2 things: I want to know how long I can really hang, and I want to get a really strong training swim in before the half.
When I swim tomorrow, my plan is to go out as hard as I possibly can for the first lap around the lake, then dial it back/try to hang on for a couple more laps. Each lap normally takes 27 minutes, so I'll judge how I do going all out on if it's quicker than that - it better be!
I'll leave you with one final thought: The secret to obtaining lasting happiness in your life is this; maintain, under all circumstances, an absolute, unwavering confidence in yourself and in this life! Absolutely never, under any circumstances give in to the doubt and discouragement that will try at every turn to pull you down. If you can master just this one aspect of life, and I mean absolutely master it, your key to unending happiness will be yours.
It's a quote from my book, and it rings true for me on an almost daily basis. Doubt is a killer, a thief of beauty, happiness and success. Blocking doubt, being almost absurdly confident, is an amazingly difficult thing, but if you can do it, you can do anything.
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