I find that I'm most inspired for blogging when there's pressing work to be done.

So I got my hair dyed last Saturday. I went in there (the salon) with a broken heart already, and I'm still not sure how I feel about it. See, I LOVE my natural hair color. I never wanted anything different. But over the last four or five years (since I started dating Timo, basically! Maybe he's to blame?) I've started noticing more and more white hairs, and you can only keep monitoring them and plucking them out for so long before you start going bald, you know? So I decided it was time to dye it all. I should consider myself lucky that I got to wait until age 31 to do it; my older sister started dying hers at 24 years old. Yes, we have a gray hair problem in our genes. One of my mother's brothers had almost 100% white hair before he became 25.

So anyway, I bought this supposed "ammonia-free" dye that is not permanent and is supposed to fade after... 28 shampoos. Ok, we'll see about that. Naturally I had to buy "light chestnut" because dark chestnut would have given a raven black result, for some reason. Well, I can't say I hate the result. It's not quite my color but close enough, and the essence of it is there: dark, but with a brownish shine to it. I just hope it'll be a few years before I have to dye it every couple of month because the root is all white. My only concern now is that my hair feels a bit more.. harsh than it was. Thicker, too, but not in the good sense. Hope that goes away :/

I have a wedding to attend on Friday night. My cousin's daughter's. My cousin is a weird woman, to say the least. It's like she has a list that she updates daily of the people who have offended her somehow, so she makes a point of showing her hatred of them to the whole world, by never visiting them, talking to them, inviting them to events like weddings and birth parties, and also never attending any event where they might be invited as well. So even though this is a family wedding, very few of my relatives are on the guest list. We got in because my mother is super nice to her. My favorite aunts and their daughters are not invited because when they had weddings of their own, they didn't follow proper etiquette in inviting this particular cousin (at least in her head they didn't) so she took offense in that. Also I heard that there was a minor problem between my cousin and her sister-in-law (husband's sister) and so she is not inviting her either. Her own niece's wedding, and she's banned. If she just wrote people off and moved on, I'd be fine with it, but it seems to me like all she does is nurse her wounds. Not healthy.

So anyway, as part of the few chosen ones I have to attend, even though I don't particularly want to. I have gained a bit of weight over the last few months and I can no longer wear my blue dress. And I'm certainly not going to buy a new dress just for this occasion, so I borrowed one from a coworker, and I guess it fits ok. Even makes me look slimmer than I am. So at least that's settled.

I'm more and more thinking of changing my Facebook profile to my real name. I've been using a pseudonym for years now and I'm a bit tired of it. Also I have recently created an "official" FB profile with my real name on it, and added family members and high school friends. I rarely post anything in there, but I felt it was safer, in case someone decides to look me up (and I know some people do that). It would deflect from my real FB account on which I have a zero tolerance policy for people from my country. I felt the need to create a second account after those assholes at FB disabled the option of being invisible (as in not appearing if a person you're not friends with looks up your name) but I have already set my privacy settings to maximum security (or at least I hope so) so even if someone accidentally finds my profile, it wouldn't tell them much about what I've been up to (namely traveling regularly to Finland, marrying a Finn, not believing in god and drinking alcohol). And anyway, I wouldn't exactly use my real name. Just my first name and probably my husband's last name. Oh well, I'm still thinking this through.

Our Vienna trip is in 37 days So close now! Haven't seen Timo in over three months. Of course it's nothing compared to other members (thinking of you, Moon ) and it's basically the norm in our relationship to see each other every four months or so. Anyway, I had started planning what we would do/see on each day and then I got lazy. Technically we'll only be there four days, and it's so little time for a city like Vienna. Hope there won't be any regrets.

Something rather crappy happened, regarding Vienna. I'm due to return on the 7th of April. First flight is Vienna-Paris, at 11:55, then the second one, from Paris to my city is at 16:30, supposed to land at 17:45. So I found out by pure chance while looking at my reservation online that the last flight has been simply cancelled by Air France. No reason why. I have been booked on the later flight, which leaves Paris at 21:15 and arrives at 22:30. Insane. I have never wanted to fly in so late, and I'm not quite sure how it would sit with my parents. Also you'd think that for such an important change, Air France would have called, texted or at the very least emailed me about it? Nope. I called them and they were like "Oh right, yeah." Then they said that basically I could change my ticket's dates for free (instead of paying 85 euros) as a result of their mistake. Which would have been awesome, I'm totally down to staying in Vienna a couple of days more. Except that Timo got himself an unchangeable ticket. So the solution would have been to buy a whole new ticket, for about 200 euros. He was willing to do it, but I just couldn't let him. It's a lot of money, and the first ticket would have been thrown away for nothing. Also he would have had to fly in a day earlier than planned, and we would have had to find a new hotel/apartment for the additional dates because our apartment is booked by other people for the very day we are supposed to leave.

So basically too much money, and too much of a hassle. I said we'd stick to the initial plan, and I've accepted my fate of staying at Roissy CDG airport for six hours in between flights. I thought maybe I could take the train to the city, but I'm not sure that's such a good idea. If the RATP workers suddenly decide to go on strike while I'm walking down the Champs Elysées, I'll be in real trouble (don't laugh, it's a real possibility!)

Anyway, I made a formal complaint to Air France regarding this inconvenience and asked what kind of compensation I would be entitled to, but so far I've only had apologies and "talk to your customer service" no, I'm talking to you, you ass-hat I'm not letting this go. I will get a first class upgrade out of this, goddamnit!

Enough rambling for now.