Years ago, during a serious political talk, the speaker’s pronunciation of beaurocrat sounded to me like “burro-crat”. The image of a donkey in a tie grabbed my brain and just stayed for years, so I finally made an image.
Burro-crat
Rain + Brain
The phrase “brain, brain, go away, come again another day” popped into my head last night, so I made it into a graphic.
[image description: an illustrated brain with rain drops falling from it. Above the brain are the words “brain, brain, go away” and below the brain are the words “come again another day”]
Dusting off the old blog
I’m planning to spend less time on social media in the next couple of weeks to avoid panic spiraling about the election, so I decided to revive my blog so that I still have somewhere to ramble on the internet. Apparently it’s been nearly 6 years since I last wrote over here. The last 6 years have been, uh, eventful.
In approximately chronological order, here is just a small selection of what has happened during that time:
- Had kid 1 (who just turned 5!!)
- Bought a house
- Red, my cat since college, died
- The 2016 presidential election, uh, situation
- Got a second dog
- Had kid #2 (who is now 2.5)
- My mom died (approximately 6 weeks after kid #2 was born)
- Burned out on managing, moved to an individual contributor role and a new company
- Covid-19 pandemic
We also travelled a number of fantastic places, ate and cooked a lot of great food, had lots of good times with friends, and a lot more I’m not remembering.
Review: Overtone Color Depositing Conditioner
I’ve had my hair dyed pink at the ends for nearly 2 years now so I was incredibly excited when I heard about Overtone in August. Overtone makes “color depositing conditioner” — they combine hair dye with conditioner, so every time you condition your hair, you add a bit more color.
Overtone makes two types of conditioner — Daily Conditioner and Deep Conditioner. I have Extreme Pink in both.
For the Deep Conditioner, they recommend you use it weekly and leave it in for 10 minutes. I prefer to use every 2-3 weeks, but leave it in for a couple of hours. My color doesn’t come out quite as intense as when I used Punky Color by Jerome Russell, but the Overtone conditions better and makes less mess if I accidentally drip some on the bathroom counter. I apply in sections with tint brushes and gloves and comb through to get good coverage.
For the Daily Conditioner, I use it basically as directed. I find I get the best results if I condition my hair in 4 or 5 batches instead of trying to get everything at once. When I tried to condition my hair without sectioning, I was finding I wasn’t getting full coverage.
I initially tried the Vibrant Pink, as I was worried by the recommendation that you should use gloves when applying. I knew there was no way I’d want to use gloves every day in the shower. I ended up switching to the Extreme Pink, however, since I found that the Vibrant Pink wasn’t quite keeping my hair as bright as I wanted — it was more pastel rather than the Bright Fucking Pink I was going for. I’ve been happy about the switch — my hands are a bit pink right after I apply the conditioner, but by the end of my shower, they’ve gone back to normal.
For both types of conditioner, I make sure to thoroughly cover the bleached parts of my hair. I don’t worry about it, however, if I end up covering other parts of my hair — my natural color is dark enough the pink doesn’t make a huge difference.
So, here’s what my hair looks like, freshly cut and relatively soon after using the Deep Conditioner:
(haircut & pics by Jessica Claude, who always does a great job with my hair)
As a comparison, here’s what my hair looks like shortly after using the Punky Color in Flamingo Pink:
(Photo by the awesome Stuart Jones)
The Overtone doesn’t come out quite as bright as the Punky Color, but it’s much easier to use, so my hair stays brightly colored much more of the time than it did when I was using the Punky Color. This makes Overtone the winner in my book!
Also, thanks to Offbeat Home, where I originally heard about Overtone.
(This review is in no way sponsored by anyone — I just wanted to write about a cool product I’ve been using)