Everyone’s first words to me: “Oh! you got your hair cut.”

Left, how it looked afterwards. Below (photo taken by Jeff, at the vista above Thornton Beach, near our house) is how shaggy it already was looking back on July 30! I’ve got lynx tufts to match Alex’s.

And below was the inspiration photo; I wanted to get something close to the guy’s hair in this photo I shot over Labor Day weekend. I have a wicked widow’s peak (my hair isn’t receding; I’ve had those high temples all my life), though, that makes his exact haircut a physical impossibility for me. I’m also not that handsome. Still, the stylist did a really fantastic job, I think, getting as close as possible.

I felt really sorry for my stylist. Not for any reason having to do with my hair, but she had quite a story. She’d moved down to the Bay Area from Humboldt County in January, and within the first two months her car insurance had been cancelled, her car then had been stolen, she broke up with her boyfriend, and she had to have surgery for a brown recluse spider bite on her face. She has to work two jobs (after her shift cutting hair she waits tables at the Denny’s across the street), lives in a tiny in-law apartment in San Bruno, and has to get up two hours before work in order to get the bus (since she no longer has a car) to the salon. Whew.

I gave her a really big tip.