I figured out how to post pictures in here finally. I'm a little slow I guess. Thanks to Bek for the pic...

Dear PMTS,
I hate your school because I'm a sore loser and I can't win your stupid contests--contests that I believe will give me the opportunity to network in the industry and get me a killer job. I now have to choose between Super Cuts, Fantastic Sams, or Dollar Cuts.
Yours Truly,
Tracy

Today I wore a hat in shame. I wanted to be at school for the hours but I didn't want anyone to know I was there. So I hid under my little pink hat and stayed in a room where no one I talk to ever goes, for the better part of the morning. Pretty soon I got a text from someone wondering where I was. I was twenty feet away.
Pretty soon I realized that there were several other students feeling the same way as I am--that we were competing in a totally different contest based on who won.
I also realized today that I have been putting all of my energy into my hair life to the point that it is my relationship. Yes, I am dating my future career. So when I lost this contest, it was rejecting me, dumping me, breaking up with me. After doing three haircuts, two eyebrow waxes, and a hair color this afternoon, the devastating feelings eventually went away. If only I could get over getting dumped by a dude this fast and this easily.

I totally lost. I just cried in my room, sobbing cries, for an hour. How pathetic and sad am I? When it comes down to it, I feel like I was competing in a completely different contest based on who won. They picked three models that were totally wacked out all crazy with colorful hair. Last I checked, that isn't what people want when they want a make over. If they wanted us to do something creative and artistic, why couldn't they have just told us that? I'm also wondering why those that did do that, got one memo and me and the other make over people got another. I'm so pissed that I really want to quit school.

Today was totally nuts but the contest is over and we find out on Monday who won. I'm going to be in knots all weekend now. I'm actually not going to find out until Tuesday because I don't have school on Monday and I don't want to call the school or go all the way down there and find out that I lost. I don't think I could take the rejection like that. I would rather find out in a more subtle way where no one around knows when or how I'm finding out. I must say that my make over was incredible. She looked like a completely different person but in a good way. Everyone that saw the before picture was totally astounded at how good she looked. So I guess if I lose, I still won the satisfaction of making someone look more beautiful and to me that is a fantastic reward.

Ok so there is this contest at school to go to a hair convention in vegas at the end of july. They are picking three students to go. In order to win you have to do the best make over on a person. Initially I was told that we would have to cut, color, do makeup, and wardrobe in four hours. No problem. Now let's talk about how everything has gone wrong and then fixed itself at the last possible second.
My model cancelled on me. I have been scrambling to find someone that would allow me to do whatever I wanted on them. It's been really tough and very stressful but finally, today, two days before the contest, I have a model! You can't imagine the relief! I've been freaking out for 3 days, losing sleep even.
So I guess it would make sense that I almost broke down in to tears today when they told me that all Saturday students participating, would have to find a sub for them to cover the clients they would normally have to take on a Saturday. "We can't turn away paying clients for this contest." It's nearly impossible to find someone to sub for you on a Saturday...especially when you only have two days notice. Why didn't they tell us this earlier???? I told the front desk person that I was about to say the F word. I miraculously found a sub.
So they decided that we could do the color ahead of time if we wanted but there were no specifications on it. I found out today that the color had to be done ahead of time. I couldn't just do it earlier in the day, I had to do it at least one day ahead of time. Once again, it was a miracle that my model had a small window of time open in the day at the exact same time that I do tomorrow so we can color her hair then.
I am seriously on guard, wondering what horrible thing is going to happen next. I'm really worried that they are going to come up with something else that will prevent me from going forward on this.
I can't help but wonder if maybe I am not meant to be in this contest? Everything is going so wrong? Or maybe I need to look at the glass as half full and everything is going right and I need to relax now!

So the mentor graduated and moved back to Vegas. While passing through there, I stopped to have lunch with a friend that knows him. She decided it would be funny to text him and tell him that I was in town and wanted to make out with him. It actually was kind of funny but awkward at the same time. The other day he was doing her hair and he told her to text me and tell me hi. So it continues from afar. One day I'll move there and we'll have a torrid love affair.
I can't remember if I clarified this already so I'll do it again... There are two crushes that I have written about in this blog: The mentor is a student, one of several mentors I had when first starting school. MJF or Michael J Fox is a teacher that works at a nearby salon and teaches classes at our school once a month. So don't be confused--there are two and I go back and forth on having a crush on each of them.
School has been pretty slow lately: there haven't been very many guests in and a lot of the students are on leave for the summer. So I don't have very many stories because most days I sit at a station and roll perm rods on my doll head. I will say this, however: I hate it when new students come out on to the floor. They really don't know what they are doing and it's really obvious. I had to wait 40 minutes the other day to use the wax because this girl was doing an eyebrow and lip wax on someone. She kept stopping to look up at me and laugh like- I'm sorry I'm so nervous and retarded. I wanted to say just put on the wax and wrip out her hair already! Yes it's going to hurt her but she knows that! She put herself in this torturous position so just get it over with! But I didn't.

I did my first perm on a live human today and my fingernails wreak of perm solution still. She was an older woman--she had to be at least 85 and she tipped me $2. It took about three hours to do but it was fantastically curly in the end. She had me put on her 'fanciful rinse' in the end. Fanciful rinses are temporary hair colors for old ladies. They only stay in until you wash it again. These are the explanation for the old ladies with blue, silver, purple, or pink hair: colors that are very close to natural colors initially but look very fake and unattractive to the younger eye. They love it. They carry bottles of it around in their purses. It's funny how old ladies like permed, shampoo set, curled, unnaturally dyed hair. They have their own hair trend just like every other generation does. I can't help but wonder what they think when they look at younger women's board straight hair. I also wonder if they like 80's punk rock hair. What would they do if they had control of all of our hair? Would we be just a sea of greyish bluish pinkish teased out football helmets?

I keep having dreams about the mentor lately. In one dream, I flew to London in a car--kind of like the delorian--and I ended up in a bar somewhere with some people from school. There were magazines on the table we were sitting at and I began to flip through one. I found a really cool haircut in one and I started freaking out over it. The mentor was standing across the way and he wandered over and started singing the BeeGees to us. In the next dream, all I remember is him coming over to return something he borrowed. He was acting really wierd and shrugging his shoulders and lifting his arms up all funny. In the last dream, he came over to my station to help me with a hair cut. I had cut it like I wanted but I couldn't figure out how to style it so he came over to show me. He found some places that I had messed up on and so I all of a sudden blamed it on someone else and told them that it wasn't me that cut it and I was just trying to style it.
The end

I just realized that the mentor is like my own Jake Ryan(Sixteen Candles). Remember when they are at the dance in the highschool gym? She rehearses what she is going to say to him and walks over to talk to him. She is about to tap him on the shoulder but gets really embarrased so she turns around. After a couple of seconds she finds her courage to turn back around and he is looking at her with a friendly smile and he says hi. She just looks at him for a minute and then walks off. This is how I feel with every single encounter I have with the mentor. I'm so flustered by him that I just want to walk away. So far I haven't but I've gone through many red faces in fighting the fluster. I haven't felt like this since the 9th grade when I had a crush on Fred Brayton. I was with my friend Carrie and her mom at the video store and in walked Fred and his friends. I was still in my soccer gear from practice and I just looked a sight. I had to say hi though because we were friends. So I said hi Fred and looked down at some movies and played with my bangs before he even turned around. Carrie and her mom were trying desperately not to laugh because apparently since I had looked down so quickly, Fred was looking around all confused to see who had said hi. I'm starting to wonder if I'm reverting back to highschool me. The fact that I just compared this to a highschool crush is the reason why this is so lame.

Ok this is totally non beauty related but did I miss something? When did Carson Daly become a comedian? I'm sitting here playing my nightly solitaire marathon and there on the TV is Carson with a whole opening monologue full of lame lame jokes. He even has a desk with a mug and he is wearing a suit. I guess it's been a while since I watched his lame lame show. Last I watched he had a couple of modern looking chairs that were so low on the ground it was like they were sitting on the ground and he would wear jeans and a whatever shirt. He was never ever funny in his interviews--he was ALL business and his questions were almost always very surface and very boring. What is the world coming to when they put a radio dj turned vj turned late night talk show host into a comedic late night talk show host? Seriously, I don't get it. What is next?

I love it that my hot friend Jason came in for a haircut today. Everyone thought for sure that he was my boyfriend. Maybe they saw the incredible chemistry that we have. Now all we need to do is get rid of his sometimes x and sometimes girlfriend. Yeah, they are one of those couples that breaks up and gets back together everyday. Stupid!
On a different note, the Mentor and I have been head to head in service sales for the month of January. By service sales I mean how much people spent on us cutting, coloring, etc their hair. On Thursday I discovered that I was only $70 behind but unfortunately, I couldn't close the gap enough...I came in $30 behind. Dang.

Will someone please just let me shave lines on their head? I'm about to do it on myself just so everyone can see how cool it is. I was trying to convince one of my learning leaders today that he should let me shave lines on his head. I mean, he already has the perfect mohawk! The lines will add so much to it! He wasn't convinced and he was laughing and I buckled over in laughter just as someone was opening a drawer and I hit my head which made us all laugh even harder. Between that and the nasty pole dancing in the middle of the hair cutting floor, it was a good day.

Well, you just never know about people and what they do in their spare time. I was pretty thrown off today when I learned about my new gay friend's extra curricular activities. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined it but it turns out, I am in love with the fact that I go to school with a gay male synchronized swimmer. He is a member of QUAC: Queer Utah Aquatic Club. This guy is so out of the closet that he is completely outside the house. He embodies the Jack of Will and Grace or the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy hosts. It's like they are gay but they aren't hiding it to any degree and they aren't afraid to joke around about it. There is a complete security in their sexual orientation and no matter how many times they are called a homo or a fag, they don't care. They will agree with you wholeheartedly! I find it fascinating and I can't wait to see my friend gracefully swimming to Michael Jackson in his designer synchronized swimming suit.

They keep telling us at that as a hairstylist, we will hear it all. We even had a professional counselor come in and talk to us about how to deal with this. A stylist's chair has the same powers as a couch in a psychologist's office; once a person sits in it, they will unleash all of their deepest innermost secrets. I have to admit that I have experienced this a couple of times but I had no idea how it could work to my advantage until today. I have been hanging out with this dude and no one knows about it. Someone that knows him and a girl that he recently dated, sat in my magical chair today. It's amazing how much you can find out when you play dumb. I am Satan.

The other day we had a guest from the corporate office. It was supposed to be a class about color which is weird because she isn't a licensed hairdresser. She ended up talking about a seriously intense issue. Ok well it wasn't at all serious or intense to me, it was totally wierd. Apparently professional hair products are only sold in salons and if you see them in other places like a grocery store or walmart or whatever, it's a counterfeit product. Part of her job is to stop the selling of these products in non salon retail stores. The thing that's so funny is that it's not so much that the shampoo may be counterfeit because a lot of times, it's not. The thing is that these places like Target and Walgreens, are more times than not, buying the products from salon retailers. The salon retailer sells it to them at just above cost so that they make a small profit. So why don't they sell directly to Target and the like? Because they want stylists to educate their clients on the right product to buy and make the profit. So this lady was standing up there talking about all of this, swearing, rolling her eyes. I've never seen anyone more pissed off about shampoo. It was brilliant.

The other day we had a guest from the corporate office. It was supposed to be a class about color which is weird because she isn't a licensed hairdresser. She ended up talking about a seriously intense issue. Ok well it wasn't at all serious or intense to me, it was totally wierd. Apparently professional hair products are only sold in salons and if you see them in other places like a grocery store or walmart or whatever, it's a counterfeit product. Part of her job is to stop the selling of these products in non salon retail stores. The thing that's so funny is that it's not so much that the shampoo may be counterfeit because a lot of times, it's not. The thing is that these places like Target and Walgreens, are more times than not, buying the products from salon retailers. The salon retailer sells it to them at just above cost so that they make a small profit. So why don't they sell directly to Target and the like? Because they want stylists to educate their clients on the right product to buy and make the profit. So this lady was standing up there talking about all of this, swearing, rolling her eyes. I've never seen anyone more pissed off about shampoo. It was brilliant.

Ok so yesterday was fantastic. It was a dream or something out of a movie. We found out that our favorite hot teacher was teaching our afternoon class. Over lunch the girls were all commenting that they hoped he would teach us something cool that day. I said, "I just hope that he makes out with me." They were all silent and staring at me like they had never heard me profess my love for him before. So I sheepishly said "Uh...did I just say that out loud?"
In class we split up in to groups with a dollhead and scizzors. We were to come up with something that inspires us and then create a haircut according to it. So the teacher--MJF--cruised around the room to observe our progress. I was cutting the dollhead's hair when he came over to our group. He walked up behind me and watched for minute. Then he got behind me oh so very close and put his left hand on my back and right hand on my arm and adjusted my cutting position. It was so erotic. Just kidding. It was right out of a movie though--like he was Patrick Swayze and I was Demi Moore and we were going to start making out any second. Only instead of clay, hair clippings. Ew. I hope he doesn't die and come back to me in Whoopi Goldberg.

My friend has super super fine hair and she decided to bleach it from the red that we had just put in it two weeks previous, to a platinum blond. I deep conditioned it and when we were all finished I felt it and it felt like mush--the kind of mush that we've been learning about in classes. It means that your hair is toast. So in order to restore it to something, our instructor went and found something special to put in it. When he brought out the bottles, I jokingly asked if it was V05 hot oil. He looked at me as if I had swore at him. It was funny. It was actually protein. I know what you are thinking and no we didn't rub ground beef all over her head. Although that is what we were pretending to do and so we were giggling the whole time we were at the shampoo bowl. So the stuff kind of worked. Her hair felt 150% better but unfortunately it still wasn't enough. The damage was so extensive that when we blow dryed it out, the ends of her hair were falling off! So the moral of the story is, kids, use bleach with care.

Suspensions. You would think that once you were out of highschool, the fear of suspension would be dead and gone. Somehow this institution of hair has managed to keep it all very much alive. There is a large binder that they keep with a suspension history card for each student inside. Anytime you break a rule and get caught, your time card is pulled so you can't clock in for hours and you have to see a teacher to get it back. The teacher pulls out this binder and reviews your suspension history and then decides whether or not to suspend you or give you a warning for the offense. Someone stole the binder so no one has been suspended for the last couple of weeks thus resulting--how can I describe it?--maybe in backorders of suspensions? Apparently the suspension book had been recovered or recreated so today nearly half of the school had their time cards pulled. There was a line of students that wrapped around the building. I had to wait for an hour and a half--turns out I was ten minutes late on a Saturday. They would have had no idea had I not called in but silly responsible me called in to say I was late and I was punished for it. Sweet huh. I wish I could go through all of the ridiculous reasons that you can get suspended but that would take all day. My favorite one was: Curling another students hair. What??? Aren't we in hair school? Shouldn't we be practicing? I guess I understand why we are forced to assist when we leave school. We aren't allowed to actually do hair until we leave school.

So this guy from Scotland came in the other day to get a haircut. He was seriously soooo cool. We talked all about Scottish people and Europe. It was fun. He is married so its not like our relationship can go beyond client status but he made it sound like he is a pretty good representation of the Scottish people so I decided that I want to move to Scotland. What do I have to lose? They have fantastic accents, funny sense of humor, good taste in fashion, and they are genuinely nice and friendly. My favorite thing that he told me about was how people don't date a lot of people at the same time. If I guy was to go out on dates with more that one girl in a week, he would be considered a player! ha ha. Imagine if BYU was in Scotland!