who IS alejandro?

who is alejandro? you ask. well. it's rather a long story...so i'll make it longer.

i happened to see a post on a childhood friend's fb page. she posted something about the brazilian blowout, and so it made me curious and i opened it and read about it. it was an article by a huffington post style writer, and it was pretty convincing! i decided that it was important for me to figure this frizzy hair thing out, and see if there really was a solution. especially after having to deal with it at the beach this summer.

fortunately i found a groupon for a brazilian blowout not too far from my neighborhood, and i did it! i committed to it and contacted alejandro. his first available date was august 26th (i had called to set it up on aug. 1). we exchanged phone calls and emails to set everything up, and i'd been looking forward to this for almost an entire month.

so when wednesday the 26th finally rolled around, i made sure that i was at his place of business on time. the only thing was that when i got there, i wandered in a complete circle observing all of the different individually owned salons in this place, and couldn't find his. so i interrupted two ladies having a jovial little chat over nails, and i could tell they were irritated that i interrupted them. don't care! one of the ladies explained that there was a 2nd floor and he may be located up there. so up i went, and sure enough, he was one of the first salons.

"julie?" he asked, to which i replied, "yes, you must be alejandro!" and so he had me sit in the chair and told me what was going to happen and how the procedure worked. then the magic began; shampoo, condition, cut, product, dry under the cool hair dryer that i only see in movies like legally blonde and steel magnolias...then he pulled out the handheld dryer and finished it up...then for the flat iron. he talked some of the time, but he didn't force conversation like some people do, which was welcomed by me-t.v. background was enough noise; on the news they were rehashing the story about the reporters who were shot live that morning...and alejandro was shaking his head about guns. i opted not to tell him about mine. what he don't know won't hurt him (and in turn he won't take out his differences on my hair)!

although, he did find the opportunity to tell me stories about one of his 'crazy' clients who accidentally butt-dialed him at 5 am and later told him that it must've been when she was on her way home from a crazy night...and another who showed him a picture of how she wanted her hair-and that pic was topless, but she made it all less awkward by saying, "i know you're not interested in boobs, so i didn't think it would be inappropriate since you wouldn't be interested in me." yep...it was really none of my business, but maybe he was just trying to convince me that if i did want to talk about anything, he was approachable. like i said, nice guy, but i'm just not into telling a hairdresser crazy things...nor am i EVER going to have a pic in my phone that i would have to explain. and the mere fact that he was sharing with me about other clients was proof enough that i should keep my personal life personal! that wasn't hard.

he did have a great elle magazine that i picked up. i found an article called: i am not my hair. great article about not letting your hair be your identity...i don't know that if i were a hair stylist i would want people reading it, as the girl talked about cutting her own hair and not trying to get fancy with it-just enjoying the natural-ness of it. as i just looked it up, i came across a song-which i believe is based on the lyrics from some of the poetry she'd written, and i LOVE it!! listen to it here!

back to the story. he asked if i was doing anything for labor day, and i said, "well, i probably won't go very far, we may just go up to orlando if we go anywhere." freudian slip!!! he looked shocked, so i quickly corrected myself and said oklahoma, i'd go to oklahoma. then for whatever reason, i felt the need to share with him my train of thought. so i continued with, "i was in orlando this summer, and so it was still on my mind!" to which he felt the necessity to explain why his face looked so shocked, and he proceeded to tell me, "i was just thinking about a trip that my partner and i will be going on this fall to ORLANDO, so when you said that, i was thinking you were reading my mind!" comical. and he continued to tell me about finding cheap flights on spirit airlines, even though they had to pay extra per bag...i may have mentioned something about just taking carry-ons, and then it hit me-maybe they are shoe people, and needed extra bags for fashion accessories (you already know i've seen legally blonde- don't stomp your little last season prada shoes at me, honey!) 

so we finished and he took the after pic and gave me some business cards.
i'd taken some of my own before pics, and an after:

at school right before going to the salon

yikes...there's a lot going on back there.

after-much easier i LOVE it straight!

um...let's see. i've had two occasions now where i've had to help people open things that they couldn't find a key to...cue macgeyver music!! and yes, believe it or not, it worked on both occasions!

i really wasn't sure about the 2nd one, i impressed myself! 

and i should've known better than to purchase aleve gel caps before a training day in dallas. i even thought about not leaving them in the car, but i figured, it's just 8 hours. not my most brilliant moment ever! i ended up with a large clump of aleve. i had to cut the pill bottle from around it, and then meticulously separate as many as i could with a little twisting, pulling, some of the capsules popped and got gooey, but i was able to extract most of them from the lump of pain-killing-nastiness.

what made me think that leaving them in the car for 8 hours was remotely okay? 

and earlier this week we had a request from a campus that was needing some help in their implementation of all in learning. we've been using it for quite awhile now, and so i told them we'd love to spend some time walking them through it and showing them the important things, and giving some tips about how to best roll it out on their campuses to get the results they were looking for. well, i thought it might be a good idea to extend the invitation to some other coaches in our feeder pattern so that we weren't getting a bunch of separate requests-let's knock it all out at once! so today we had a small training with coaches from three different campuses and it went well-hopefully they felt better about it when they left than when they arrived!

and today on the way out, i saw this-the teacher transcribed what the student had written and it made me happy.

i don't understand it, but that's okay, it made me smile!

week one is over...we did it!
we've still got a way to go, but we will get there!

julie