8:38 PM |
Today I saw Wetumka on a sign. Apparently Wetumka is a place in Alabama. I know this because I looked it up. This is what Wetumka is famous for: Impact craters. I would be remiss if I did not provide you with the details, including an opportunity for you to see the crater, too.
Wetumpka Impact Crater Tours Set for March 5, 2011
The greatest natural disaster to ever hit Alabama was caused when a very large meteor hit near the area where the City of Wetumpka now sits. This happened over 84.4 million years ago near the end of the “Age of Dinosaurs”. It created quite an impact.
Now this may seem just outright funny, but I have to tell you the context of said craters. I left Rosemary Beach sobbing, heaving sobbing, wanting to kill someone but sobbing too hard. I went to the appointment that Jan-who-wants-to-sell-houses made me at the Aveda salon so that I could get my icky hair color fixed. I carry my formula so that it is a no-brainer. Brenna (what kind of a name is that, anyhow?) was my colorist. She has been doing hair for two years, but she cut the hair of her American Girl dolls and her mom was mad because they are a collectible. Expensive, yes. Collectible, no. I am alarmed that she is young enough to have had American Girl dolls. My niece had them when they first came out and she is 10. Anyhow, Miss Brenna was absolutely vacuous. Nothing there. Nothing. Can't have a conversation. Most of appointment in utter silence. You pay hairdressers, like bartenders, to talk to you. No matter. She giggled as my hair turned into a purple marshmallow and kept on getting bigger. The purple is no big deal. It's what you get when you want your hair taupey and not school bus yellow. It was the marshmallow that was the problem. I spent an inordinate amount of time at the shampoo bowl. Brenna is recommending a deep leave-in conditioner that will help repair damaged hair. That should have sent alarms, but hairdressers are always trying to sell "product" as the salon makes a ton of money from it, almost as much as hair dressing. If you watched Tabitha's Salon, you would know that. Tabitha is a very, very strange looking platinum blond in architectural black clothing. She is odd because her nose goes straight up from the turned-up nostrils and her eyebrows go to her hairline. It is so weird because you can't even figure out what kind of plastic surgery would do that. Anyhow, Brenna puts me in the chair where I can see myself. I am blond again. I am white blond, straight out of the peroxide bottle, Debbie Harry blond. She starts drying it. Huge chunks of hair are coming out on her brush. It is steaming like the dry cleaners. The girl at the next chair said that just shows there is water in it. Well, as far as I know I have always had water in my hair after I wash it and it does not steam while I'm drying it. That causes damaged hair. I frantically looked around. There is someone else's brown hair on the floor and another person's black hair on my lap. The blue stuff in the big lidless jar that they put their combs and scissors in to sterilize them is a cloudy brown/grey. My hairdresser at home puts the comb back in when he drops it even. His Barbacide is a lovely shade of aqua blue and it is sparkling clear. I told her to stop drying my hair right that minute. I went out to my car, grabbed my bottle of Moroccan Oil (which we aptly call Miracle Oil) and dumped half a bottle on. I usually use about two drops. My hair was still sucking it in. I put the rest of the bottle on and called my hairdresser at home in hysterics. No, it should not be steaming. No, it should not be white. No, it should not be falling out in big hunks. I will go to him and he said he will give me a nice layered cut and that I will look like a Victoria's Secret model. I did this on speaker phone. Brenna wants to give me a complimentary deep conditioner tomorrow morning. A) I am leaving in 20 minutes, and B) would you let Brenna do anything else to your hair? Nice looking mature woman at desk. Are you the owner? I'm the manicurist. I'll call the owner. I am leaving in 20 minutes you dumb fuck. She took my phone number and said he would call me. And then they wanted me to pay. Are you out of your fucking mind? My hair is quite long. It grows 1/2 inch a month like everybody else's. I am guessing three years. I have to live for three years with Brenna's experiment. I hit the first gas station with red puffy eyes and put it into a braid so that I wouldn't have to look at it.
Orp (remember Mork from Ork? He was a friendly alien who said Nanu-nanu at the end of the show every episode) and feel like I am in Area 51. Maybe this is Area 52. I will never know. Passed through Elba. Good place to exile bad national security officer.
More dark road. Finally traffic lights and I think I am in civilization again. I am. Hit another I-whatever and headed to Montgomery. Still aways. Headed to Birmingham, closer to the place with the fried green tomatoes I want to go to. 11 p.m. Need to find Holiday Inn Express. Find it. No rooms. No fucking rooms. There is a sign on the sliding glass doors at reception that the guy will be away for awhile. The sign is laser printed and neatly hung on suction cups. They must need to be away for a minute a lot. There is another guy at the doors, he said he is going the same way I am. I was going to ask him how he knew but then remember that Woody isn't exactly inconspicuous. Finally a guy looks out a bullet-proof acrylic thing like they use in bodegas in bad neighborhoods. He cannot tell us where the next Holiday Inn Express is. Other guy decides to try Best Western. I want Smart Coffee. Call Holiday Inn central reservations center. Where are you? I have no fucking idea. I am sobbing again. Never mind, I'll keep driving and I did. Midnight. No Holiday Inn Express and this is on an I-whatever. I decided to take next anything. Except there is no next anything for at least a half an hour. Finally found Hampton Inn. I get the last room. Chris has very bad plaque but he is a darling. This Hampton Inn has two Light House Awards from corporate, and it's only three years old. The vintage prints are up my alley.
Check this out: pictures on your door number. That's so that you can find your room like with the Donald One or Minnie Three parking areas at DisneyWorld. I wish I had known my picture in advance because I spent five minutes trying to get into someone else's room. When I finally figured it out, I sprinted down the hallway trying to get into my actual room before the guy wakes up with his shotgun. Just a coincidence that my picture is a lantern (for the imbecile who waits until midnight to find a room). It is my beacon. The clock radio had really cool radio choice buttons. Grecian temple for classical. Hurdles for sports. Tunnel with actual rock for rock, steer for country and stream flowing over rocks for soft rock. At least they picked the right advertising firm.
Mattress seems to be that foam stuff which is usually pretty comfortable. Mattress slides off box spring. I thought is was just one bed. Tried the other. Slides too. On further inspection, it looks like the mattresses are slightly smaller than the box springs. Maybe they got an outlet special on "irregulars." But I don't care because they left me a bottle of water and peanut butter crackers even though I don't belong to their frequent flier/preferred member program. TV doesn't have the normal gazillion channel lineup of cable. You have to go through their PPV stuff (including Recently Missed TV Shows) before you can get the standard 8 channels. Why does this happen to me the very few times I actually want to watch?
This is Linda. She is the only one I had the energy to photograph today, although I had many other opportunities. I didn't want to engage anyone, just get the hell on the road and away from Brenna. Linda does security for Rosemary Beach. She is from Michigan and has been here, not Rosemary Beach but Panama City, for 12 years. It took her 10 to get used to the heat.
Also in today's news outside Philadelphia. "Terrorism By Rodents". Some guy in a pizza place went into the men's room with a paper bag and he came out without it. Two cops eating there. Checked for drug deal. Found live mice. The guy owns the pizza place's competitor.
Oh, and I did have my coffee on my balcony like I wanted to. Family drama. You always, you never and so on. Set me off on the right foot. Maybe my sister called Brenna.
Check this out: pictures on your door number. That's so that you can find your room like with the Donald One or Minnie Three parking areas at DisneyWorld. I wish I had known my picture in advance because I spent five minutes trying to get into someone else's room. When I finally figured it out, I sprinted down the hallway trying to get into my actual room before the guy wakes up with his shotgun. Just a coincidence that my picture is a lantern (for the imbecile who waits until midnight to find a room). It is my beacon. The clock radio had really cool radio choice buttons. Grecian temple for classical. Hurdles for sports. Tunnel with actual rock for rock, steer for country and stream flowing over rocks for soft rock. At least they picked the right advertising firm.Mattress seems to be that foam stuff which is usually pretty comfortable. Mattress slides off box spring. I thought is was just one bed. Tried the other. Slides too. On further inspection, it looks like the mattresses are slightly smaller than the box springs. Maybe they got an outlet special on "irregulars." But I don't care because they left me a bottle of water and peanut butter crackers even though I don't belong to their frequent flier/preferred member program. TV doesn't have the normal gazillion channel lineup of cable. You have to go through their PPV stuff (including Recently Missed TV Shows) before you can get the standard 8 channels. Why does this happen to me the very few times I actually want to watch?
This is Linda. She is the only one I had the energy to photograph today, although I had many other opportunities. I didn't want to engage anyone, just get the hell on the road and away from Brenna. Linda does security for Rosemary Beach. She is from Michigan and has been here, not Rosemary Beach but Panama City, for 12 years. It took her 10 to get used to the heat.Also in today's news outside Philadelphia. "Terrorism By Rodents". Some guy in a pizza place went into the men's room with a paper bag and he came out without it. Two cops eating there. Checked for drug deal. Found live mice. The guy owns the pizza place's competitor.
Oh, and I did have my coffee on my balcony like I wanted to. Family drama. You always, you never and so on. Set me off on the right foot. Maybe my sister called Brenna.