Legwork and Life, week of 8/22/17

As you can see, I got my hair redone.  It's quite short, but I mainly used this picture because it conveys how blue they got my hair.  This is actually darker than we were aiming for, but the professionals were kind of expecting me to wash it in warm/hot water a few times, and that would make the color closer to what I wanted... which was the color of my wedding dress.  Chris (my spouse) actually lent me the scrap of the dress fabric he carries so they'd have a color reference.

Other than the length and difficulties related to getting it to behave, I'm pretty pleased with this iteration of hair-adventure.  Chris seems to be also, as he's made numerous approving noises.  So it's nice that this little adventure is turning out well.  The color is quite dark and deep now, but it'll fade as I shower more and might eventually turn back to platinum blond, which was a midway step between my hair color and the blue. 

Also before they cut it super-short.

I got the hair fixing done early in the week, which gave me time to adjust to it before I actually had to go out and interact with people.  Which was nice, because I definitely needed preparation for people remembering me in the grocery store line.  I was jokingly accused of following another lady while at Meijer because she recognized me from Costco, where I had also stood in line with my groceries behind her.  I wasn't super-graceful at handling that situation, but the lady was kidding and seemed good-natured, so I'm not going to worry about it too much.

This week I also got a good hour's worth of exercise by helping out a bit at church.  I think the reason was carpet-cleaning, but I honestly forget why all the furniture in the church had to be moved around.  Anyway, I missed the "moving the furniture out" on Sunday, but did catch the "moving the furniture back" on Friday.  It's not a mega-church or anything, but my church does have a number of classrooms and offices, which each use tables, chairs, carts, etc.  So there was plenty to do.

It actually ended up being a huge ego-booster for me.  I'm biologically female, and my specific genetics gave me pathetically weak arms.  That's always been kind of a downer for me.  But the genetics sent all the arm strength into my legs, so I have these beefy doom-thighs that give me enough strength to carry most things by virtue of stubbornness.  Which is how it ended up being me and the head coordinator-person doing all the heavy lifting for the big tables and such.  The coordinator's wife also came to help, and she was more visibly muscular and in-shape than me, but I think she got busy directing the other people that showed up.  So there was that.  I stuck around to the end, got the job done, and the coordinator seemed happy about it.

The only downside was that I only half-remembered that very important rule of lifting, to lift with your legs and not your back.  So despite not being 30 yet, I did in fact anger my lower back and it has been whining at me every day since.  I put ice on it for literal hours and took ibuprofen on the advice of an older friend of mine (who used to be a physical therapist) and I suspect that's why I'm not really miserable right now, just kind of annoyed.  I'm not too worried about it, anyway.  I'll be seeing the chiropractor this week, who will give me an earful I'm sure.  But also likely be able to help a bit. 

The last thing of note is that I went to see the eclipse yesterday with friends.  I didn't travel far, so I didn't get into the path of totality or anything, but it was still kind of a fun experience.  These kinds of events, I'm coming to realize, may not be earth-shaking to me in person, but they're still rare events and it's wise to take advantage of them to see people and take a break from regular life.  I didn't manage to snag any eclipse-safe glasses, sadly (the Internet stores were all out of them, or at least the ones that are actually safe), so I only took peeks here and there and checked out NASA's barrage of cameras around the US.

I suppose it wouldn't have mattered that much if I had found glasses, though.  It was cloudy for a good portion of the time.  But between my phone and my friend's, we were able to watch the moon entirely block the sun (totality) from three different locations, one after the next.  It was pretty cool to see and hear all the people cheering, as well as actually see the corona around the moon.  The NASA announcers were entertaining, too.  Like sports announcers, but nerds and somewhat unpracticed.