I bit the bullet.

Last night I mixed up that batch of henna I’d ordered, and set it out to release the dye over night… and this morning…

I got up and gooped it all over my long hair.

As I type, I sit with a big towel wrapped over a plastic cap over cling wrap wound around something resembling a VERY squished version of Medusa’s famous coif.

Oh, and there are various orangey stains on my hands (where the henna got through the rubber gloves) and a problematic patch of orange at my right temple which I find worrisome, because henna tends to DARKEN over a couple days, rather than lighten… yeah…

But it’s my first try… hence doing it before the weekend, so I don’t have to look proper for anything. I don’t care (too much) if people see me as a orangey/brown weirdo when I’m socializing… but trying to convince teachers and prospective employers that I’m a serious person while sporting random stains of unknown origin on my skin would be difficult.

So… in a couple hours, I’ll know if it was worth the effort, or if I’m Bozo the Clown.

Should be interesting. Especially since we’re meeting with an attorney today.

Oh, I do make myself chuckle with my zany antics.

From the wrapper of Three Musketeers:

“fluffy whipped up chocolate on chocolate taste”

Pandora.com

You put in an artist or song that you like, and it builds a playlist of songs by different artists that are similar.

So I purchased a pendant, recently… It has runes on it that are supposed to mean “female writer, scholar”…

While wearing it, I wrote something. I wrote that thing that got added to a well-known web site.

Hmmmm…

Ok, but the TRUE test of the hoodoo… is if I wear it to school tomorrow, and throughout this coming quarter… will I suddenly become enamored of my textbooks and spend hours poring over them and remember everything in them? Will I get outstanding grades?

Hmmmm…

Yeah. It’s probably not good to test the hoodoo…

But it sure would be nice if worked that easily.

My podling is smart.

I’m not saying she’s a genius, but to me, she is just pretty damned intelligent. Here’s why.

We went to the grocery store today. We passed the magazine aisle. We were looking at magazines… we both lunged for “Scientific American Mind”.

So I bought it. She started reading it on the drive home. My child steals my ‘smart people’ magazines. (How can I possibly be mad about that?)

At home, we’re poring through it together. In the back is a Mensa quiz. We look through the questions together for fun. I’ve never been terribly good at these things. I get too frustrated and can’t still my thoughts enough to really look at the question properly. She got more right than I did.

Here are the ones she got right.

Figure out the logic in the lines below and fill in the missing number.

9 3 3
8 2 4
25 5 5
16 4 ?

I got that one right, too.

The second looks like a word search, but you have to find an entire phrase coiled around within it. It took her less time to find the twists and turns of how the letters linked together.

We both missed question 3. Probably because it’s a math question. Though I think she has the skills to do it, it’s just… probably complicated enough that she shut down and didn’t want to bother. I know I didn’t.

Next correctly answered question:

A man goes into a hardware store and asks, “How much for one?” The clerk replies, “$1.” “Okay,” the customer says. “I’ll take 150. Here’s $3.” What did he buy?

She took less time to get this one than I did.

And the last she got right, I didn’t even try because I was too busy marveling at how MY offspring can reason so well. Here’s the question.

What is the five-digit number in which the first digit is one more than the second, the last is four fewer than the first, the second is more than the las, and the fourth is one more than the last? The sum of all the digits is 35.

She’s probably not a genius, but I absolutely love that she’s quick-witted, has a keen sense of logic and reason, and actually enjoys engaging her mind.

She also likes to beg me to play chess with her. I have a hard time saying no, even when it’s hours after her bedtime. She has yet to win, but she’s improving. And it will NOT take her long to start beating me, I think, because I suck at playing chess. At that point I’ll have to find someone else she can play with.

And she’s just come in and stolen the magazine again, now that I don’t need it to copy the questions.

Whew.

Probably not a film for everybody, but I was VERY entertained. I think it’s that angry, cruel streak in me.

Ok… it’s just on the web… but still.

I am now officially published on one of the most surfed bellydance information web sites around.

Check me out at Shira.net.

I’ve been using this site as a resource since my very first class, and I’ve referred all sorts of people to it. Everybody in the dance world, who’s online at all, knows Shira. It’s a great go-to site for people new to dance, or people with various questions.

And now I’m a part of it. It’s just cool.