Oh, and by the way? This happened.

At 8:45 a.m. on Saturday, February second, I was waiting in a parking lot, trying to peer through the shop window.  Although I was dressed in sweats and an oversized long sleeve t-shirt, my car held a dress, a dress shirt, make-up, and my nice coat.  My purse was packed with trail mix and books.  I was ready.  Ready for this to happen:

I have dreads again!  From 9:00 a.m. to after midnight, I sat in a chair in the office of Salon 21 in Orem while The Amazing James turned my normal hair

Into something much more fun.

The original time estimate was only 6-8 hours, but it turned out that I have deceptively thick hair.  James thought I'd have about 50-60 dreads at the size I wanted.  Instead, I have around 110.  So eight hours turned into fifteen, and James and I swapped life stories, talked philosophy, and watched the entire first season of the new Doctor Who.  I missed the dance concert I had intended to go to with Rachel and Allie, but I walked out of the salon at about 12:30 a.m. with a head full of dreads.  And I am very, very happy.

I didn't tell my family I was getting dreads that day.  I didn't tell my friends.  I did tell my 250 students, but mostly to prepare them for the change.  After all the fuss, fuss, and even more fuss that I made about my first dreads, only to have them need to be combed out after only a few months, I was ready to do this the quiet way.  I am the proud and happy owner of a head full of song quotes and fragments of misremembered poems, packaged on the outside with a thick layer of dreads.

Wahoo!