As you work your way through the game, you get to learn new spells and make potions. Once you have learned a spell, you get to use it throughout the game. You get to play different characters during the game. You can be Harry or Hermione or Ron or Hagrid (you get the idea). Most of the characters have something that is unique to them that helps you in different places within the game. These unique abilities stay pretty true to the characters as you already know them.

Looking at the game title you would think that it is a kids game. And it is true that kids can play these games without too much frustration. It is also true that the games are challenging enough for the adult player. I wouldn’t say that these games are for the hard core gamer, but they are definitely worth playing for most game playing levels.

I haven’t had a ton of time to play this since I bought it, but I did make it all the way through the first year’s story. Once I make it through the entire game, I will go back in the free play mode and collect all the extra stuff I couldn’t grab on my through the first time. This is one of the best parts of the LEGO games. You play it once for the story and then play it again to get all the good stuff and find all the hidden items. Its like a treasure hunt - so much fun!

1. Neglect, neglect, neglect: I have posted very rarely since the beginning of the year. Actually, rarely may be a bit of an understatement - what I should fess up to is the fact that this is my third post here since January. I have lots of ideas for posts - I just need to start getting them put into an actual written form. I have reviews of all kinds floating around my head. I have things to gripe about. I have funny stories (okay some of those are work related and can’t be posted here, but I still have them). I have stupid conversations to share with you all. I have actually managed to go a place or two this past year that you might like to hear about. But have I written anything about any of that - no!
2. Poorly written posts: As if it weren’t enough to have to admit that I have only posted twice this year. The things I have written are not up to my own personal standards of well anything really. I went back and read them and I was not impressed. One of them was a re-hash of old material and the other was just me griping. Definitely not the best writing to read.
3. Serious lack of images: I like pictures. I like seeing an example of what it is someone is talking about. I think digital cameras were invented for one really good reason. That is to instantaneously give us access to those moments captured in time. I could really use a few images back here. There have been no images at all on my blog since last year. And there is not a single image on any of my front page posts at all. I have a digital camera or two floating around my purse and I think it is about time I started using at least one of them again.
4. Broken promises: I clearly recall at least promising to myself that I would be a little more consistent this year about putting something worth reading out here. I have broken that promise to myself and to anyone out here that is still reading. I promise, right here and now, that I will not promise anything else… Okay, just one promise: I promise to try to do better in the second half of this year than I did in the first half. Now I know that really isn’t saying much, but it is the best I can do right now.
5. Lack of balance: My life is currently out of balance. Not that my life is bad. It is actually really good. But the balance that I used to have between work and life has really gotten out of whack. I work too much and I know it. I keep up with my family and friends via social networking sites instead of direct contact methods.

I’m not writing this as an apology or to give any excuses for my lack of writing. I am writing this to remind myself of how things are right now is not a reflection of how things need to be in the future. I know that the first step in any road to recovery is always to admit your previous mistakes. So as I work on my road to recovery of my writing space, I will look back at this post as my guide of what not to do on a blog. At worst, at least talking about all this gives me more than two posts for the year.

It seems like tv is everywhere. You go out to a semi-nice restaurant and there is a tv. You go to the mall and there are lots of tvs (ok those are for sale, but they are still there).  There are tvs in almost every room of almost every house. I’ve even seen a few tvs in bathrooms (it will be a cold day in h*ll before the tv shows up in any of our bathrooms). I keep waiting for tvs to show up in my favorite bookstore or the local museums. They are always on, even when nobody is watching them, and they are always distracting.

This wouldn’t be such a big deal, but it seems like they have replaced talking. People don’t really talk when the tv is on. They have these semi-conversations that pause and never seem to get very interesting. Now, there are times when a tv can spark a real conversation or two, but this is the exception rather than the rule. The tv isn’t just background noise like music, it is a truly distracting object that is bigger than almost anything else going on in the room.

The television itself isn’t the problem, it is the fact that it is left on while people are trying to have a conversation. I wouldn’t even bring it up here, but it is happening more and more frequently. We go out to dinner with friends and everyone starts watching one of the many tv sets that are strategically placed around a restaurant. We go over to any number of our friends houses and the tv is on (not all of our friends do this - our best friends don’t, but more do than don’t). Seriously people - turn the tv off for a couple of hours! Have a real conversation!

I’d love to see in the comments if everyone else feels the same way or if I am just completely off my rocker. Do you turn your tv off when you have company? Do you think every restaurant should have a tv? Do you have a tv in your bathroom?

1. Women of the Underworld Series: This, by far, was my most popular post of 2009. I had many searches for it and many more people who read it (or at least stuck around long enough to have read it - according to the statistics). Granted not one of the thousands of people who read the post ever managed to leave a comment (or send me an email) telling me that I had the name of the series of books posted incorrectly in the title. No people, it was not intentional - it was a mistake! Either everyone was being very polite (thank you for being thoughtful), or they had the name of the series wrong as well. The series is really called The Women of the Otherworld by Kelley Armstrong (fast becoming one of my favorite authors). I did manage to get the name of the series correct in the post itself - just not in the title. I think that the popularity of the post means that I will be creating a follow-up post to the original sometime this year (especially since the series has grown quite a bit since I first posted it).
2. Gummy Banana Slug: Seriously, how many people are putting that into those tiny, little search boxes intentionally? Well, I don’t know (although I do appreciate you doing it). But I do know that lots and lots of those people showed up here as a result of those searches. I’ve said it before and I’m not afraid to say it again: Eeeewwww!!!!!
3. Sock Monkey Dress: The dress to wear to those black-tie evenings that you just must look your absolute best! It is a sock - no wait. It is a monkey - no wait. It is a dress? Yep, it really is.
4. T-Rex Superbike: By far one of the coolest bikes available! If I ever replace my scooter, this is definitely on my list of replacements. When I bought my first bike it was mostly just to combat the rising costs of gas, but I have found that I ride it now for pleasure and don’t use it for the commute to and from work. Taking the bike out clears the cobwebs out of your head and puts a smile on your face (just make sure to keep your mouth closed to avoid sucking on the bugs).
5. Dog Helmets: I think people must be taking their dogs out on their motorcycles more often (or they are dressing them up as bikers for Halloween). They must be doing something because this post was very popular last year. I never have taken my dogs out on the bikes - I’m too afraid of them jumping off the back while out on the road. I have seen one or two dogs riding in a sidecar every now and then but they weren’t wearing a helmet.
6. Star Trek: A Movie List: A very nice list (if I do say so myself) of all the Star Trek movies in my order of preference. I wonder if watching them in order of worst to best on my list would make more sense than watching them in their original order?
7. Top 10 Lip Balms: Another list on this list is all about lip balms. It was an is a very informative post all about different lip balms. I have a confession to make about that list. I no longer use any of the lip balms mentioned on that list at all. I have completely switched to Burt’s Bees Honey Lip Balm.
8. The Price of Beauty: A pretty popular post that I am not sure was really what the people searching were hoping to find.
9. 10 Uses for Your Old iPhone: A new iPhone has arrived on scene pretty consistently since the first one was released. Each year the new version is cooler than the previous version. Each year as you drool over the keynote speech you have to decide what to do with your old iPhone. I only listed 10, but I can think of a few more…
10. Sexy Female Professions: What can I say about this list? I think it just speaks for itself…

That’s it for the list this year. Thanks for reading my stuff! If you keep coming along to read it, I will keep on writing it (no really that is not a threat).

If you had of asked me what I would be doing in my spare time last week, I never would have said anything about working on the house. As a matter of fact, I probably would have said something about blogging at least one post sometime before the last of my faithful readers gave up on me. I might have said something about reading a good book or calling my mother before she really believes that I ran off and joined the circus (no mom, I’m not really going to do that). I definitely would not have said anything about home repairs.

My house, overall, hasn’t needed much in the way of work in the many years we’ve owned it. It isn’t the greatest house in the world, but it had a great price (really cheap) and was mostly move-in ready at the time when we needed a new place to live. It has severed us well and we don’t have too many complaints. Last month we saw that we had a little increase on our water bill - it was about $5-$10 higher than normal. We decided that since there wasn’t much of a reason for this (no leaky faucets and no time to do laundry) that we would call out a plumber to take a look under the creepy, crawl space under the house. We made the call and set an appointment day and time. When the plumber arrived early one morning, we pointed him in the direction of the 1 foot tall by 2 feet wide hole in the wall that served as the entrance to at least 900 square feet of house covered dirt (house is part slab and part raised - its an old house so there has been lots of strangeness done to it over the years prior to our owning it). He opened the little door that keeps the spiders under the house (where they belong) and started to crawl inside (or would that be under-I never could decide). He made it in to his armpits and said the words that you NEVER want to hear a plumber say, “I think you might have a little problem.” in case you have never heard a plumber say anything like that-let me translate. That means you have a giant problem that is going to cost you loads of money to fix and if you survive the estimate that he is going to give you, you will still wish you had let the “little problem” all alone until it caused a problem big enough to actually be covered by insurance!

So, back to the story, he crawls back out from underneath the house and says there is about 2-3 inches of water in the crawl space (translated as about 900 square foot of house). He says there is probably a leak somewhere so he is going to crawl back under there while we turn on and off some faucets (which we do). He determines, from what he can see from one end of a dark hole, that we have a leak in the shower. While it doesn’t make much sense to have that much water from just one shower, we take him at his word and move on to next steps. After all that, he says he’ll be back in a couple of days to pump out the water in the crawl space at $75 per hour. I am not kidding about the $75 per hour charge either.

Now if you think a couple of card carry members of the Home Depot are going to wait around for some guy to come back in his own sweet time to move a submersible pump around under the house for hours on end, then you might want to think again. I immediately pulled up submersible pumps online and found a place in town that rents them for, get this, $25 a day. My sweety got on the phone and started calling every person we knew who was small enough to fit in the hole and would be willing to go swimming in the dark. She found a willing family member and we went and picked up the pump. Her nephew arrived within a couple of hours and set the pump.

In the meantime, we head to work on the shower (because that’s where the plumber says the leak is). We open the access panel and check the pipes and determine that they are almost as old as the house (which is almost older than both our ages put together) and could stand a replacement, but they aren’t leaking. We check the faucet, shower head, drain, etc and see that none are leaking. After more of this checking and re-checking and process of elimination we find out that the leak is between the shower wall and the tub. Oh good, we just need to go about re-caulking the tub. We start ripping out the old caulking and see that there is, of course, a little more to it than that. There was a large gaping hole in the tile that was being covered up by various layers of caulking that you could stick your whole hand and arm in if you had of wanted to feel for the drowned spiders underneath the house, I didn’t.

After much cussing of the previous homeowner and discussion about whether to cover it back up for the next poor slob to discover, if we ever sell the house, or fix it right. We decided to fix it right (next time I’m taking my chances with karma and cover it back up). Since the hole was too large to patch and the original tile no longer being available, we decided it would all have to be torn out. Just so you don’t get the wrong idea, tearing out tile in a 60+ year old house is not so much tearing as it is hammering, chiseling, cutting, and scraping. We started this process out with a regular hammer and chisel which only removed two tiles after two hours of heavy hitting. We then graduated to a sledgehammer, the kind you normally see splashing watermelon guts all over audiences (if you don’t get that reference, then you may not be old enough to read my blog). This was much more effective, but did manage to make the dogs run for cover while making us wonder how solid was the house really built. Solid enough apparently to withstand hours of pounding with only a few nail pops appearing in adjoining walls.

Two days later, the tile has been removed, the water has been pumped out from under the house (you thought I wasn’t going to mention that again-didn’t you), a giant fan has now been placed at the entry hole, and the plumber is back. He crawls back under the house to verify the leak and says those magic words again, “I think you might have a small problem under here.” this time we were better prepared, we had already had the nephew take a look at the pipes while he was under there. Basically, we had a cast iron pipe running almost the full length of the house that is used for draining water (not sewer-thank goodness). The pipe had rusted out in several places and would need to be replaced. The pipe was not connected to the bathroom at all - figures. The plumber didn’t have everything he needed to be able to fix the pipe while he was down there, so he sets another appointment to come back the next day.

Early morning the next day he comes back with a helper. One guy crawls back into the hole in the wall and the other guy starts feeding what looks like miles of pipe into the hole. The pipe is PVC and they measure and cut and glue and make a huge mess, but eventually they get it all finished. He still charged $75 an hour plus parts, but at least it was for something more than pumping the water out of a hole in the ground.

Meanwhile, we are still having hours of fun in the bathroom putting the shower all back together. We decided to go with a 3 piece shower wall insert instead of re-tiling. It seemed like it would be much simpler than getting all those tiles back onto the wall. Boy were we sadly mistaken. While shower inserts are a good idea in theory, they are a terrible choice for an old house. A shower insert works well if you have square walls - our house is 60+ year old (in case you forgot) and has nothing resembling anything square (or straight if you are keeping track). Somehow we did finally manage to get those walls to square and level. It took several weeks (we have full-time jobs that really don’t understand when you don’t show up because you have to fix your bathroom), but it is once again functional.

So to answer my original question of how many times can you hit your hand with a hammer before you break your hand? I’m not exactly sure. Both of us managed to keep all our bones in one piece through this whole mess. So I have to say, I can hit my hand at least 20 times with a hammer before I get irritated enough to send the hammer on its merry way sailing high into the sunset. But hitting your hand at least 20 times with a hammer will cause extensive bruising to your hand that will last for at least a week causing others to ask silly questions about your bathroom activities.

After all, these are dangerous, perilous times. I know this because the other day I got a huge gash in my thumb. Okay, not a huge gash. More like a slit. A deep slit. Well, more like a shallow slit. But it still bled. Lots. Um, a little. But it was dangerous. And perilous. Because what if I got some of that flesh eating bacteria under my skin?

And since I sliced open my thumb, it’s nearly impossible to do the dishes. And make dinner. And clean the house. That’s why I haven’t done any of those things, lately.

But I can still blog, so I’m hanging in there, despite my trials.

And do you want to know how I cut my thumb? I sliced it on a little piece of foil that was still attached to the top of an empty plastic can that I was cleaning. That’s right. I cut my thumb while I was washing garbage.

If you go and read the original post, you may notice something. It is dated January 2009 (which is a very important part to my story - keep reading I will eventually get to the point or maybe I won’t you will just have to keep reading to find out). Anyway, life in my house has been pretty hectic this past year. It has been crazy, non-stop excitement from start to almost finish - which has left me with very little time for my own beloved blog. After reading such a tragic story of misery, I wanted to help. I wanted to be able to give back to a writer that can actually write and I always enjoy reading whatever she manages to write whenever she has the time to post anything (and unlike myself - she does not string together multiple sentences into one big , long run-on sentence, so sometimes I even learn something when I read). Where was I? Oh yeah… helping others and saving the world.

I somehow managed to keep the story in the back of my mind as time went by and it stayed with me even as I went about my very busy life. Several months after reading the post I was presented with a way to help. I seized the opportunity and made a purchase that could help to solve the situation. I ordered her a smooth edge can opener (of course thinking it would save the world or at least make it a little less bloody). I even started a post about it (this one - which has been in various stages of draft since I made the purchase). After the can opener arrived, I set it aside with every intention of passing it along at my earliest convenience. Time continued to move along even though I hadn’t had a chance to get that darn thing into the mail. I kept intending to mail it, I even intended to send it along with a note and a box of bandages (just to be funny), but instead it sat and waited for me to get around to it. Last week - I finally made it to the post office (if you are counting that is 11 months after the original post). I didn’t send a note and never got around to purchasing a box of bandages to put in with it. After mailing it I had every intention of sending an email over explaining the gift, but I never got around to that either (I am very proud of myself for getting it into the mail at least). But since my information was on the mailing label (I somehow managed to do that much), I did receive a very nice thank you email. And in case I don’t get around to emailing back: You are very welcome! Please don’t cut yourself on any more cans!

A short list of why I haven’t been around lately (in no particular order):

• The iPhone 3 GS launched: I spent a great deal of time reading all the rumors before the launch; watching the keynote about the upcoming launch; waiting for my new iPhone 3 GS to arrive at my doorstep; and playing with the all the nifty new features.
• Conference Calls: A conference call is where at least 2 or more people willingly call the same phone number and then immediately regret having called. I get to do this at least 6 times a day.
• Email and Instant Messages: When I am not on conference calls I spend time writing and answering emails. I handle an average of 2,000 work emails a month. Which may not be much to some people, but to me it is a bunch when I spend at least 6 hours a day on the phone. If you are doing any calculations around this, then you see that I only have two hours a day to answer right around 92 emails (if we are assuming an 8 eight day).
• Crying over my external hard drive Early this year I had an almost completely fatal hard drive crash (fatal for the hard drive and almost completely fatal for me). The hard drive was an external backup drive that I had recently used to back up at least 3 computers to prior to wiping their drives. After I finished wiping the drives of those computers the hard drive decided that it couldn’t be bothered to mount on my desktop anymore and died. The drive was mirrored and both of the 500GB drives (equally 1TB total) decided that they couldn’t be bothered to mirror themselves or maybe they were doing their job and mirrored all the corrupt files (I just haven’t decided which one it was). Either way - they are dead and there is a whole draft post sitting around on just how horrible it all was/is.
• Watching the Harry Potter movies: I went to the 12:01 am showing of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. It was awesome! But to get ready for the premier, I had to re-watch all of the prior 5 Harry Potter movies (at least twice). As of today, I have seen the HP6 twice (once at midnight at once at the IMAX) and plan to go at least once more before it leaves the theaters. I will then be taking time away from my dear, loyal readers to buy the DVD when it becomes available and watch it at least once more.
• iTunes: Since my hard drive crash, I have spent many hours trying to recover my media files from my iPod. Apparently, this is something that Apple decided was not something that they would support. It was convoluted to say the least, but I have now successfully recovered almost all my media files and put them back into iTunes (after writing that last sentence, I have realized that I truly am a masochist [spelled correctly on the first try - thank you very much :-)]).
• Eating, sleeping, and showering: Time that I didn’t spend on one of the above activities was probably spent on one of three activities - it takes a lot of time to eat and sleep and shower. I never really realized just how much time they take until I didn’t have any time to spare anymore.

Hopefully, things will get back to normal sometime soon and I can resume my regular irregular posting schedule.

I’m sure at this point you are asking why we didn’t just go on opening weekend. The answer is a simple four letter word - WORK! We had plans to go and when were ready to go and purchase the tickets, I found out that I was going to have to take care of some previously unscheduled business.

I have seen every TV episode of Star Trek and every single movie (no matter how painful it was to watch). So I thought this would be a good place for me to make known my list of favorites and in what order that they are my favorites. I might even add the reason for each here and there.

And now for the list of Star Trek movies in my order of favorites:

1. Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (STII - 1982) - This was by far my favorite Star Trek movie ever. It had everything a movie should have and more. I could do without the creepy bugs that still haunt my nightmares from time to time and gave me a deathly fear of earwigs, but otherwise it was and is one of my favorite all-time movies. And the best one-word line in a movie ever: “KHAN!!!!”
2. Star Trek (STXI - 2009) - I definitely rate this as one of my favorite Star Trek movies. I rated it below Wrath of Khan, but it was a hard decision. I thought the new actors were hilarious trying to imitate the original actors - I particularly liked the young Scotty and young Bones was laugh out loud funny. I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone who hasn’t already seen it, so I will end my comparisons there as far as characters go.
3. Star Trek: The Search for Spock (STIII - 1984) - Okay, okay, okay, this movie could have been better than what it was. It had so much potential that it didn’t live up to, but I still loved this movie.
4. Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country (STVI - 1991) - I really debated about where to put this one. There are parts of this movie that I really loved and there are parts that never did sit right (maybe they weren’t meant to), but either way it ends up right here.
5. Star Trek: First Contact (STVIII - 1996) - I know you are supposed to hate the enemy in these movies, but I loved the Borg Queen in this one.
6. Star Trek: The Motion Picture (STI - 1979) - I almost had this one at number four, but it played out more like a long episode than a movie. It would have been one of the best STTOS episodes ever though had that been the choice for it on my list.
7. Star Trek: Insurrection (STIX - 1998) -Don’t get me wrong, I liked this movie. I loved Data running amuck in it and singing. I movie was humorous and well acted, but the plot was full of holes and the movie seemed like just another episode of the show.
8. Star Trek: Nemesis (STX - 2002) - Good movie - bad ending.
9. Star Trek: Generations (STVII - 1994) - STTOS cast members + ST:TNG cast members made for a likeable movie overall, but nothing really stood out for me with this movie. It was a movie made to give us the transition from one crew to another and it worked.
10. Star Trek: The Voyage Home (STIV - 1986) - There are people that liked this movie, I am not one of those. There were some great one liners that have managed to stick in my brain even after all these years, and that is about the nicest thing I can say about this one.
11. Star Trek: The Final Frontier (STV - 1989) - It is last on this list for a very good reason. If you have seen this movie, then I am pretty sure that you agree with my placement on the list. This almost rated a one-word review from me: “Ugh!”

Note: In case you didn’t already figure out the cryptic numbers after the movie titles, they are the original order number and the release date. Also, if you are interested in getting the whole collection (1-10) on DVD in one whack, you might consider taking a look at them here.

Now back to my original topic, the new Star Trek movie… Now that I have seen the movie I wish I had checked out some of the spoilers and/or bits of online information. Apparently there were some guest appearances by some other actors from some of the various TV series that were hidden within the film (kind of like how Steven King and Alfred Hitchcock would show up in their films). Which means that I want to know how many I missed while I was just watching the movie. I will go see it again just to see  where it was that I missed them (not that I really needed a reason to want to go again).

I have been sitting at my laptop for hours trying to decide what to write about. Of course I checked all the usual inspirational places: YouTube, StumbleUpon, and Amazon (hey, you gotta start somewhere). And then I went to the not quite so obvious inspirational places: Archie McPhee, ThinkGeek, and Threadless. Of course, they all had some very interesting and entertaining things, but none of them had anything that spoke to me to write about (of course several of them did get me to part with a few bucks here and there and several sites sent me in directions of other sites that didn’t have anything I wanted to write about either). So of course I just started surfing around trying to find something more interesting and entertaining than the thoughts that I had rattling around in my head: “Did I send that email with the meeting notes?” “When is payday?” “Did I actually have anything to eat today?” “Crap, I forgot to feed the dogs.”. You know, all the usual stuff that noone else wants to hear about. So then I started to wonder if I should start browsing through all my books to find something that would spark a random thought or two that would result in a posting. And that was when I noticed something interesting enough to post - my battery indicator on my laptop had turned red.

10 minutes remaining (it takes time to make links)….

I get the red battery whenever I have 30 minutes or less left in battery life on my laptop. Now most people would go hunt down the nearest outlet to give the poor thing some juice. Me? No, of course not. I can’t have a full battery. I get around 4 hours of life out of my battery when it is fully charged, so why would I need to keep the power cord handy? And when I am busy I just ignore that poor little battery light. Not to mention that the power cord and the outlet that it is almost always plugged into, reside in a room that is not the same one that I am in with my laptop most of the time. Yes, I know - it is a laptop. I can travel with it to the other room and plug it in. But where would be the fun in that and besides how else would it lead me to something to post about? When the indicator turns red, I can check to see how many minutes I have left before it goes to sleep to save itself (it had 22, hence the countdown at the top). At 10 minutes I get the warning that I am about to enter the aforementioned power save mode.

5 minutes remaining…

See ya!

This plan was working out just fine until I realized that I had a rather important meeting to attend and didn’t think that having two+ inch roots showing was going to look all that professional, so I made an appointment to get my hair colored (one color all over - even though I really am dying to get some pink highlights). The appointment day came and off to the stylist at 7:30 am (the only time I could find in my crazy schedule) I went. I sat down in the chair and explained that I just needed a trim for my haircut. I also explained that I needed my hair colored back to match my natural shade of blonde. Since I had two+ inches of natural colored hair already showing, she did not seem to think this would be a problem.

The stylist, who has been doing this for around 20 years, mixed up the permanent hair color mixture and started painting my hair. The haircoloring stuff looks a lot like the color of mashed plums, but the pre-color never looks like the end color so I thought nothing of it. She finishes her masterpiece of a paint job and off I head to sit under the dryer. While I sit and wait I read all the work emails that I have missed in the 30 minutes of sitting in the chair. The next step, of course, is to wash off all the extra mix from my hair (which she does most effectively) and then head back to the chair for a trim.

We get back to the chair where there is a mirror and OMG my hair is red! Red! A color not even close to anything natural for me. It is not fire engine red, but it definitely has fire like characteristics. And it is definitely not anywhere close to my natural color. The stylist sees my face and she runs off to mix up a new batch of goop, so we can start the process over again. Paint… Bake… Wash… She gets it closer this time. But not my natural color and my hair wouldnt survive a third treatment. The end result is that my hair is no longer red, but it is also no longer blonde. I am now a brunette with the ever so slight tint of a redhead (which may explain a lot).

What did I learn from all this?

Next time I’m just going to go ahead and get the pink highlights.