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February 15, 2016

What Happens When New Hair Arrives?

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The receiver freaks out of course. The receiver in this case being me.  I was finally able to find out from the folks at ebonyline that they did in fact have the X-pression Ultra braid in my gray and black tresses so I placed an order after some randomness because the M51 is not on the website (which is down as of a few hours ago) right now.  Well we sorted it out, item gets packaged out to ship and then nothing cause USPS is sucking gigantic monkey balls right now.  I randomly checked the shipping status before work this morning and it went from pre-shipment to at the sorting depot in town with no information in the middle.  It also says the box won't arrive until tomorrow, ok fine nothing to worry about because hair is still done up.  I checked delivery for an item shipped and said hmm let's see if it's at least made it to the right part of the city and yeah it had--my front porch.  Thankfully this is a non teaching day so I grabbed the box and realized it wasn't nearly as big as I expected it to be considering I had ordered enough packs of hair to get me through the rest of my planned installs this year.  That's probably sounding a little crazy BUT I like to be prepared and not waiting until the last minute to try to order things because stuff tends to be out of stock when I want it.  There is still the possibility that I won't be able to find it when I need it this year in case I need more hair during each install than I did this first run through.  Regardless I'm concerned that they didn't send as much hair as I ordered so I check the packing slip and nope the numbers match so then I look at the hair.  The hair itself looks the same BUT the packaging is totally different.  You'll see in the photos that follow.  New package is made in Togo, old package is made in Bangladesh (super funny considering it's the one that says it's the African Collection).  The hair is packed differently, old package being wider so the hair appears to be thinner and new package is more compact so it feels kinda fluffy in the package but the texture is the same, the color is the same and the giant Xpression across the front seems to be identical.  However, I was still wigged out and started looking across the internet to figure out what had happened and if I should be concerned.  Most sites were not helpful like even a little bit.  Outre is who was credited with the new packaging but their official site doesn't have an M51 listed.  And remember ebonyline was down so I couldn't remember the brand they said they would send in addition to Sensationnel depending on color chosen.  So I went clicking around all over X-pression braid haven and finally stumbled on THIS SITE which included the following text:
You will receive either OUTRE X-pression Ultra Braid or SENSATIONNEL X-pression Ultra Braid depending on our stock.
They are exact same products in different packagings so please don't be alarmed when you receive two different looking packs!

LOL so my panic decreased but I just wanted to share my super crazy freak out moment.  How goes your hair care week?












February 6, 2016

Operation Serena Fine Saturdays

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Life is always funnier than I could script it I promise.  I unveiled the gray locks at work on Thursday and everyone is super loving them.  But as I was preparing to go the gym yesterday I stumbled on a twist that I had either managed to untwist without being remotely aware of it, or damaging the hair lol, or that had been overlooked in the Glory Be we're done with this child's thick hair moment that always happens at the end of my hair braiding sessions.  I went over to the shop after stopping by my office to do a few grown up things and hug on adorable child lol.  I showed one of the braiders the loose twist and was ready to wait a few minutes to have it done.  She got to work within a few minutes and instead of just handling one twist she went through my entire head to make sure no other little friends had been lost in the shuffle.  That one clearly not finished twist that brought me to the shop had at least five unfinished friends buried in various spots.  She was none too pleased with the person that had done my hair Wednesday afternoon, and who was standing right next to us,and told her so repeatedly lol.  Fifteen minutes later I was back on the road and ran by the one shop in town that has Xpression braiding hair.  I had asked her to find it in the M51 color I'm wearing and she said she'd get it for me.  Well she got M51 but it's a funky brand and off texture that after playing with this hair is not going in my head.  I'm having a tete et tete with Ebonyline who says they have the hair in stock but haven't updated the website.  I don't want to order a different color with a note to send me the right color because that depends on folks paying attention to notes and not the ordered product.  Either way I will get some more of that hair to at least get through one more install but if possible I will get enough to get through the rest of the year.

Ok back into the original purpose of this post.  Fitness Fridays are not happening for me.  Not because I'm not working out on Fridays but because I'm too brain dead to actually post on Fridays plus I normally have at least one more workout scheduled for the week which is today (Saturday in case you're reading this on another day lol).  Now I may not always get there but it's definitely scheduled.  Operation Serena Fine began as the year kicked off.  I promised myself that I'd get to the gym more regularly and consistently.  I have a goal of getting to the gym at least 150 times this year which means on average at least three times a week.  I have four workouts scheduled but yeah that's depending on life and what not.  I made it to all four scheduled workouts this week.  Well I moved the Wednesday visit to Thursday because of the hair escapade but other than that it was a good workout week.  Good mix of cardio and weights and woo movements that make my body stretch and bend and get more stable.  And I have done this consistently enough for the last month or so that I'm not ridiculously sore today.  I may be tomorrow unless I add in a gym visit but right now all is well.  I do need to find a snack so I don't overeat later but it's been a great day and OpSerenaFine is going well.  The scale and I are not friends lol but nothing is fitting quite right and it's not snug so go there stupid scale.

Hope you have had a good workout week folks.  See ya soon.

February 3, 2016

Woosah: Relax Relate Release

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It's been an interesting couple of days for the hair movement around these parts.  After being lazy, having too much to do, and desperately searching for M51 Xpression braiding hair (thanks ebonyline.com you were a life saver) I finally took my hair down this weekend.  Sunday to be precise.  I knew I wasn't going to spend much time at work on Monday because I had to make an airport run and the most I would likely do is run to the gym so it seemed like having the few recommended days down between installs would both be possible, good, and relatively easily.  Except yeah my hair never does easy lol.  It was fine Sunday and most of Monday.  Gym went great and all was well as I got home, made some fresh pasta, and then finally got around to washing my hair.  The minute the shampoo made contact with the different textures they began a struggle to the death.  It was ugly, it was long and by the time it was done I had little remnants of anything that could be considered straight hair lol.    When I woke up in the morning it was thick and annoying.  I was about 20 minutes away from slapping a relaxer in my hair but I remembered in a previous update that I said I would let my hair sort itself out and to be fair it completely did.  On the upside, the long time post relaxer meant I had at least an afro to work with when it was finally trimmed the next day.  In a variety of spots there was no more relaxed hair to deal with.  In the longest spots it was a loss of another two inches.  I tied it down last night and woke up to a slightly smushed afro and wasn't loving the product that was in it so I washed it then added some of the curly products I bought last night on the way home from the stylist.  I ended up with this look this morning lol.






Notice the copious amount of gray hair and the little bit of black holding on for dear life.  If I stretch it there's maybe another inch or so of hair but as my plan today was to get retwisted I didn't see a point in blowing it out or trying to straightening it.  I'm sure I confused some people as I had what amounted to a twist out on Monday and showed up to the office rocking this midday.  They will be equally confused tomorrow because I did this tonight lol.





I am super sad because I just went to see if there was more M51 left in stock to make sure I could keep this color as again most of my hair is white but they don't have any.  I need at least one more back based on what happened tonight.   I can go with the slightly lighter M44 which seems to be more readily available in lots of brands but yeah I like the super gray.  Meh if anyone sees any Sensationnel Xpression braiding hair in M51 let me know lol.

How goes life with the rest of you?  Back to the gym tomorrow after work since dinner is made for the rest of the week now.  Yeah for diets and trainers.  Night all.


The Wash Day Experience