Today it snowed! - and it is still October and my hair continues growing!

It has suddenly gone cold here in the UK and today it snowed. Perhaps the winter this year is going to make up for the mild weather last year.
It is a little annoying as I am in the middle of repairing my daughter's car. Last week, the day before her birthday, she skidded driving home from work and banged into the edge of the pavement/sidewalk. This resulted in the front wheel being pushed back some 4 inches (100mm) and a severely bent lower suspension arm. She arrived at my house three hours later on the back of a tow truck, safe but cold and suitably contrite. From what I can see she has been extremely luck with no other obvious damage to the hub, anti roll bar, suspension strut or front sub-frame. So I have fitted a new suspension arm but need to finish off and tighten all the bolts to the correct torque. To finalise I will get the tracking adjustment checked as it will almost certainly be out of alignment and need adjusting. For safety I am also looking to replace the alloy front wheel because it must have taken the full impact and the tyre was split. E-bay is great for this but it takes forever waiting for the auctions to finish when you want something tomorrow.

As I have said before, I find it very difficult to motivate myself to crawl under cars any more. It is not just because I am getting older, it is just not the role that I am trying to develop. The only upsides are a very happy daughter and when I have finished, a long hot shower to get cleaned up with a change into something nice and satiny.

As a special sort of milestone in my life, at the beginning of the month I completed 40 years working for the same company - through the various company ownerships as we were bought out and consolidated over the years. I have lost count of the number of redundancy programs that I have survived and I often wonder if I would have been better off if I had been forced to take alternative employment and start a new career. This is something that I will never really be able to evaluate from a career point of view, but I know for sure that if I had moved employer I would not have met a special friend as a result or bonus of my travelling to the headquarters in Stockholm.

Well my hair has continued to grow and is now covering my ears nicely (I now have to wear a hat when I am working on the cars!!) but is getting to the point where it needs to be tidied up again as it is getting a little ragged. At times it seems to be growing outwards more then it grows downwards. So, it is time to plan a trip to the hairdressers again - real feminine territory and another major psychological barrier to overcome. Learning from my last visit I will start by having my hair washed but then I will then run into problems as the hairdresser will almost certainly ask me what style I want - and I really have no idea. I just what to enjoy it long and feminine or at least androgynous. As my hair has grown I have gradually moved my parting up from the side of my head (which was very male) to the middle which less definitive. I think that this gives me more scope with the hairdresser in the future. My hair is very curly and quite wiry so with "man think" I am not sure what options are really open to me, but with "woman think" anything becomes possible. I would even consider a perm if a good proposal was made and I felt it was right for me.

Dreamer......................