Solé hair and restaurant, and some updates

I generally don’t spend too much time thinking about or working on my hair. I have a short cut that suits its thin, straight essence, and a hairdresser who knows how to maintain that. “Styling” it takes only minutes.

But I’ve been getting so many comments on it lately. And that’s all because of the colour. A colour people naturally assume I deliberately selected for my hair. Which I kind of did, but it’s not so simple.

The hair is getting pretty gray now, but I’ve still been dyeing it. A while back, though, I switched to Clairol Natural Instincts, which has no ammonia. I figured that should be less harsh (and hopefully less likely to give me cancer or whatever). But it’s a semi-permanent colour. So it gradually fades away.

Clairol Natural Instincts Medium Auburn Brown box.

I selected Medium Auburn Brown. It looks lovely on the box. On me, when first applied, it looks more like, “Holy crap, that’s really red.” (Interestingly, I got some compliments at this stage, also. It was certainly vibrant!)

But then it fades to something closer to medium auburn brown.

Then it keeps going, to kind of a rose-gold colour, which I rather like. There are gray roots by this point as well, but they actually blend in reasonably well with the rose gold, which I also like. Because overall it means no big rush to dye the hair again.

But then it keeps going, and now I’m kind of… blonde? With more significant gray roots, which still kind of blend in. I don’t hate it, but I’m not sure what my end game is now.

Four people on patio table. Both women look blonde.
Not sure how evident my hair colour is in this photo, but it’s the only recent one I have.

Unless I embrace all-over gray next, I’m going to have to dye it again, but I’m a bit mystified about to how to approach that. Do I do the whole medium auburn brown cycle again from the start? Or do I start with something lighter in the first place?

I’m not sure how much “rose gold” hair dye there is on the shelf. And if I go with some sort of blondish brown situation, what is that going to fade to? Platinum?

While I ponder that, I will mention that the photo above was taken on the Solé patio on Canada Day. It was our first time at Solé since the ownership change (and our friends’ first time sitting on this particular patio!). We were all quite impressed with the place. It is perhaps the nicest patio in the region. But the food, in the past, could tend to be… uneven.

This time, everything was really great. Between us we sampled three appetizers, one main, and a dessert. High marks for everything, and I think Solé could be worth visiting for an all-out dinner.

The updates

My non-dairy quest has uncovered the most delicious vegan ice cream yet: Honey’s Premium rocky road. Made with “cashew cream”. And in-house marshmallows. Oh my, oh my. So creamy. So delicious.

Honey's Premium Plant Based Ice Cream: Rocky Road.

And while I haven’t heard back from any more Conservative MPPs—guess they’re pretty busy trying to keep Ontarians drunk—I did drop another line to Waterloo Regional Council for an update. I quite promptly got a detailed and personal response from Colleen James, the Kitchener representative who put forth the motion to try to get the federal government to invest in the wastewater surveillance system locally. She said they are consulting with the University of Waterloo as well. Here’s hoping something can be cobbled together, though I expect there will be some kind of data gap after the provincial system closes down in a few short weeks.

In the meantime, let’s admire this lovely local graph while we still can:

Waterloo wastewater chart for the last 36 months, showing peaks in January 2022 and 2024 and a currently rising trend.

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