Drinks at the hairdresser?!

My wife went for a haircut this evening. It was also her last day at work before our trip to Europe on Saturday. I humorously suggested that she could begin celebrating her holiday time by asking the hairdresser for a glass of wine while she was having her hair cut. I mentioned those places that have been popping up all over that offer casual painting classes while you drink wine, thinking that the idea of a hairdresser that offers wine would be amusing.

My wife said, “They don’t have normal wine, but they do have champagne.”

I couldn’t tell if she was joking or not. I thought she must have been joking, but she was extremely deadpan. I said, “You’re not serious. That was a joke, right?”

And she said, “No, all the hairdressers do it.”

Okay, so she was doubling down on the joke and making the story even more implausible. Not just her hairdresser was unusual in offering champagne to clients, but lots of hairdressers do this.

I said, “Okay. Now I know you’re joking.”

But she said, “No! I’m not! They have tea and coffee too, but yeah, they have champagne for while you’re having your hair done. There’ll be a lot of women there tonight and in the evening some will definitely be having it.”

I mentioned this to my friends in our Discord chat, and they were all, “Yeah, didn’t you know about this? Some barbers offer beers too.”

🤯

I have never ever heard of such a thing: hairdressers or barbers offering alcoholic drinks to customers. It actually kinda makes sense if I think about it: stuck there for 30 minutes, and hour, or more, with nothing to do, and you’re paying quite a bit of money. May as well turn it into a pleasurable experience to keep the customers happy. But yeah, this is totally new to me, and so surprising that I genuinely dismissed it as a joke at first.

Today I had my regular online classes, both in the morning and evening. In between I went to pick up Scully from my wife’s work again. She hadn’t planned to take Scully in today, but her boss said he was bringing in his won dog and wanted the two to meet and play together at the office. So Scully got another half day at work before I picked her up and walked her home.

We used our last fresh vegetable for dinner tonight, a zucchini, and some eggs to make a frittata, topped with the last bits of pizza cheese. Running out of perishable food just before a long trip always means some creative and unusual dishes the last couple of days. We don’t have to cook tomorrow, because my wife is going out for dinner with some of her friends, and I can do my own thing before online board games night.

Toddling free

I did my first class on Fashion with the older students today, and it went really well. The class had two boys and a girl, and I could almost see the boys rolling their eyes at the beginning when I introduced the topic, but the way I approached it and the questions I asked got them engaged and giving thoughtful answers pretty quickly. It was a lively discussion and I think they all enjoyed it and got some good thinking material out of it.

At lunch I took Scully for a longer walk, over to the Italian bakery. I got a slice of pizza and a piece of ricotta cake for lunch. Scully really likes the ricotta cake – I give her a tiny piece of the sweetened ricotta filling.

While we were sitting on the bench and eating, a couple of what I assume were grandparents walked by with a toddler, a girl maybe three years old. Then a few minutes later the toddler came running back past us, followed by the grandparents, desperately yelling at her to stop. The kid blissfully ignored them and ran around the small plaza, deliberately dodging their elderly attempts to catch up and grab her. The kid ran towards the adjacent car parking area, which understandably freaked the grandparents out even more, but she stopped short of entering it. If I was near enough I would have grabbed the kid before she could get into the car park, but I was sitting on the far side of the plaza. Fortunately there was no incident, and after a few minutes the kid gave up and the grandmother grabbed her.

At home today I mostly worked on story planning and writing new strips for Darths & Droids. Oh, I also planned a few new topics for upcoming weeks in my ethics classes. One I’m planning for the older kids is “The End of the World”. That should be fun!

Weather-wise, we’ve had revisions to the forecasts for the next few days. Tomorrow was supposed to be hot, 26°C, and has been revised tonight to a degree higher at 27°C. But then a cold and stormy change is coming in. Saturday will be rainy, and Sunday very rainy. The forecast which had been sitting at 30 mm of rain for Sunday has been revised to 60 mm of rain!

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