A Less Goofy Lookin' Girl

It's been a while since you've last heard from me, Constant Reader, and I wanted to show you some of the changes that I've gone through, physically.

Almost a month ago, my dear friend Scott Liles had an entry where he linked to new haircuts of female journallers. Well, that made me want to get one too. And I did! My new coiffure. Doesn't look too much different from the old haircut, I dare say, but atleast it's not flopping around as much as it used to. Plus, it's "shaped". If I don't get a well-shaped haircut, my hair just dangles down and looks absolutely terrible against my head. The only downfall for the new haircut is its slightly more maintenance than my previous haircut, which was "brush and go". This one, in order for it to have its "shape", needs to have styling stuff (mousse, I think it is. The stuff that looks like shaving cream) worked into the hair and it needs to be blow-dried. I had to dig through my boxes to find my blow drier. I could just brush and go with the hairstyle, but it lacks body which is primarily what I got the hair cut to correct.

Soon afterwards, I got word that my new glasses (which I got at Costco for over a hundred dollars less than the popular eye places like Lenscrafters and Eye Dr) were in and I picked those up. Check out these snazzy frames.

They are not typical of the frames I normally like. As you can see in the first picture above, my old glasses are really large in terms of the lens surface area. I guess I've always liked big lenses, maybe because I can hide behind them better and they make me look even more geeky. These new glasses are definitely oval-shaped and are narrow. There are many reasons for the change in style...

1. The lower rim no longer hits my face. That means, no more skin irritation there! Hopefully, that means that I could return to the "skin of my youth". The skin on my cheeks have been in bad condition ever since I went back to wearing glasses in college (in late high school, I wore contacts but returned to glasses when I realized that I love the nerdier look).
2. The lenses are much much much smaller. This means that by the time my lenses are being supported by my cheeks (never by my nose. I have almost no nose to speak of that my glasses could rest on. My old glasses would touch my cheeks when they fell slightly from my eyes), I would have pulled them up to my eyes because the lenses aren't big enough. See, in my old pair of glasses, the lenses were so huge that, when they would drop and hit my cheeks, I could still see through them. So, I never bothered pulling them up. With the smaller lenses, I will have to.
3. The lenses are much much much smaller, part II. These is a smaller "sweet spot" with the smaller lenses. I could see out of the very rim of my older pair of glasses. I wasn't using the glasses to the prescription's maximum. This means I was straining my eyes to read things that, had I pulled my glasses up a bit higher, I wouldn't have the problem. So, by going to smaller lenses, the sweet spot is smaller and I am forced to lift them up and use the sweet spot.
4. Keeping them up, baby. My glasses always used to rest slopply on my face and pictures with my older glasses would look kind of awkward because my glasses would droop to my cheeks or the lenses would be cocked funny. With the smaller lenses, I'm forced to bring them up. When I bring them up, I adjust them properly so they won't rest funny on my face. A less-goofy looking Iko!

Other pluses for the glasses are they have a non-reflective coating (which is supposed to help with staring at the computer for hours. Exactly how that works is beyond me, but it's supposed to cut down on glare and night headlines (which bother me a great deal. Light sources and I don't seem to get along to well most of the time).

The best part about the glasses are... they are photochanging! Yes! When I go out into the sun, they turn slightly dark so I don't have to cringe and start having headaches from the blatantly white white of the sun shining off buildings and the like. Even in the photograph, you can tell that my glasses aren't quite clear. The first time I was out in the sun, I hardly noticed them changing but the second time, it was painfully sunny and I was with a group of my coworkers that were totally floored by the fact that they were photochanging lenses. It made me think about how they actually work. I started coming up with wacky ideas about a solid substance imbedded in the glass, upon exposure to UV light, turn into a gas that is opaque or something. Or maybe it was little beads that, when excited with UV light turn black. At first I thought it would be heat, but I've been in some pretty hot rooms and they don't change color. Anyone know?

So, now I look a lot less goofier than I did a month ago. The main impetus for the changes is that promotion I received last month. With that came new responsibilities (I am currently doing the management side of a small project for The Consulting Company That Shall Not Be Named. All of it. Yes, I have a project leader for it, but for the day-to-day handling of the associates and reports are all under me. Scary but very cool) and one personal goal is for me to actually try to look better in light of the new position.

Oh, one last bit of information before I bid you goodnight, Constant Reader. I got a job offer. The Creative Department at work offered me a job, same pay, "Senior Design Associate" position to transfer from the application development group. My pay raises won't be as dramatic in the Creative Department as they were in Application Development, however. In the Creative team, I can start working on developing websites from the user interface perspective instead of back-end design.

I don't think I have to tell you if I took the transfer or not.