Britney

Last month I went to a Britney Spears concert.

And had fun.

To those of you who know me well, those 2 statements are not as contradictory as they sound.  I'll explain in a minute. I'm not a Britney fan by any stretch of the imagination, but it turns out that my boss's Italian wife IS. She wanted to go to the Britney concert, my boss did not. His solution was to buy my ticket and beg me to go with said lovely Italian wife so she could enjoy the concert with someone.

But I'm getting ahead of the story. It all started when I was finishing up my shift, sweeping the last few dustballs from under a dorm bed when Adam called me. This was kinda silly, since he was just in the office and could have walked back to me.

ADAM: "Anna! You need to come to the office. Quick!"

ME: "Emergency?"

ADAM: "Nope, just come on!"

I approached the office to find Adam with a grin that would have put the Cheshire Cat to shame. Our boss was right next to him looking at me expectantly.

ME: "Uh, hey guys... what's going on?" *suspicious stares*

ADAM: "Reese has something for you." *cackle, giggle*

REESE: "Actually I have a favor to ask - will you go with my wife to the Britney Spears/Nicki Minaj concert tomorrow? I'll buy your ticket!"

I was trapped. Not only was it my boss making the request, but I could tell from Adam's gleeful expression (not malicious, mind you) that he'd already told Reese that I was free that night.

ME: ............. "Uh, sure. ...Thhhhanks?"

Adam found the whole event hysterical, because he knew it was completely out of character for me, but he also knew (shrewd, loving man that he is) that I'd get a kick out the whole concert experience and probably have a great time.

He was right. My boss's wife Nicki is a really wonderful woman, and I love getting to spend time with her (and practice my Italian!), and as first concert experiences go - this one was definitely eye-popping.  And there were plenty of very talented dancers to keep me enthralled.

All crowd events have a special energy to them - the energy of hundreds or thousands or millions of people who are all there for a communal reason, and focused on enjoying themselves. Makes for lots of noise, and high adrenaline levels. :)

Turns out that this was indeed a Girls Night Out, since all the artists on Britney's tour were female: we had sister DJs, a pop singer group, Nicki Minaj (who was a lot of fun to watch, though WEIRD) and Britney herself.

So, thanks to Reese, Nicki, Nicki Minaj annd Britney, for probable damage to my ear drums, but an overall enjoyable night.

Bella Nicki e io

DJ sisters

PACKED to the gills stadium

Eating our domino's pizza while waiting for Britney's appearance

Go girls, go!

WARNING: Post contains images of Obscenely Big Hair

For those of you barely holding it together for anticipation over the Pin Curl Debacle of '11, here are THE RESULTS (in photo format):

Freshly loosed from the pins

First thing: finger-comb the mane

HA HA HA HA HA - It was 6AM and I was giggling hysterically in the office at the beast I'd created after finger-combing

One side brushed out, the other NOT. Veronica Lake vs. Curly Sue

The previous images make this one look somewhat normal, but please believe me when I say my hair is still MASSIVE here - 3 times fatter and thicker than normal, at least!

Attempting to tame the giant locks with bobby pins...

I eventually gave up and threw a bandanna on, then pulled the rest back into a ponytail because I just couldn't handle ALL THE HAIR

The end result was far and away too voluminous for me to wear down - the hair mass was  overwhelming - but I ended up with a style I liked and might use for the wedding:  My bangs styled and waved across my forehead, and the rest of my enormous curls wrangled into a ponytail, showing off the soft curls, but not driving me completely bananas. (No photo of that, sorry!)

We'll just call this pin curl experiment an achievement of BIG proportions. :D

Dan the Man

This is a big autumn for my oldest bro, Daniel. Not only did both he and his girlfriend recently have birthdays, but in exactly ONE week, they're getting married! I'm so excited. Not only do I really love these two and want to see them happy/married/etc, Adam and I are also taking a week off of work (the 4th-11th) to be in Atlanta helping out with all the fixin's and trimmin's.

So: time with family, big party to celebrate Dan + Lily, no work, no stress, Wicked at the Fox Theatre, Adam's Atlanta family and cake - yay! Really, Dan's MORE than earned a wedding gift from us - this is practically a gift from them to us!

On a completely serious note, though, I couldn't be happier to be officially welcoming Lily as a Bellury sister and partying the two lovebirds into matrimony. It's gonna be realz, y'all.

And ... the fast-approaching wedding is the reason why my hair currently looks like THIS:

Call me crazy (no go ahead, call me crazy), but I got it in my head that I needed a vintage/retro hairstyle to go with my sweet little vintage bridesmaids dress. It's a '50s housewife inspired lacy thing that goes perfect with a pair of navy pinup heels.

What hairstyle would go along with this, you ask? More importantly, what LONG HAIR style could work on my thick, coarse head for this look? And the answer is: Veronica Lake's hair.

She was one of the few 1940s starlets to sport long hair, in a time when short was IN. My hair is well below my shoulders at the moment, so she was the obvious go-to for inspiration. Turns out, she used "pin curls" to get those soft, graceful waves. She, and every other woman in the 40s and 50s!

So I dragged my friend Nicki over for the afternoon, with promises of lemon bars and movies, and made her help me with the tedious process of rolling my hair into the precise pin curls that are supposed to produce such magical curls. I figured we needed to test this sucker out before choosing it for the wedding day.

However, I have my doubts that the curls in my hair will turn out MAGICAL. In this video, her pin curls are super neat and precise. My head, on the other hand, looks more like a jumble of mini bird nests. If something looking even remotely close to the woman's hair in the youtube video comes out tomorrow morning, I will be veeeerrryy surprised. :) But I had fun with Nicki, and lemon bars, popcorn and Snapple were enjoyed by all, so the evening was a success, regardless. The curls have to "set" for 8 hours, so I have to sleep on them before taking them out.

But will I look like Jayne Mansfield in the morning? Or something very scary? Neither you nor I will know until tomorrow morning, when I take the nests down and brush them out!

Check back tomorrow, and I'll post results. :D

Here I am, two-pronged clips and bobby pins stabbing my head in every direction (the price of beauty, non?), and a long night of sleeping as motionless as possible ahead of me.