I need a haircut.

Any ideas?

I get bored at this time of year. The stress of exams coupled with the awful weather makes me feel like I'm stuck in a rut.

Usually this feeling comes on around mid-November and doesn't wane until about the end of February. This is the time of year when I usually go and chop off all my hair. Right now it's just at my waist, my bangs look horrid, they've grown down to my chin and I'm most definitely loosing the battle against split ends. I'll probably head on over to Pacific Mall and let aiya's hair stylist work his magic, the man's a genius.

Throughout the years I've employed various methods of pulling myself up out of the funk.

There was my bout of entrepreneurialism that resulted in me making close to a $1000.00 one Christmas on crocheted scarves. (What can I say, the waitresses that worked for aiya at the now defunct Red Drink Boutique weren't the sharpest tools in the shed.)

It was around this time of year that I first started tutoring high school brats in French. Stressful, and probably not really worth the pittance I used to charge for 45 minutes of my time.

I got my humanitarian on as well, one year I volunteered at a small but very well known NGO and ended up wanting to kill myself.

It was hard to juggle writing close to 1500 Christmas cards and then coming home and trying to study for university exams and doing assignments. Still high off the smell of black Sharpies all I could manage to muster was "Seasons greetings from all of us at The NGO. Hope your New Year is ____ ." (At this point I was allowed to fill in the blank with either "wonderful," "spectacular," "awesome," or "amazing" depending on who the donor was.)

Didn't really do much to help me out of my rut. However the experience came in handy much later on, because I decided that I never wanted to start at the bottom of the pile in a Canadian NGO ever. Yeah, sue me, somehow I think I'm a little above photocopying, getting coffee and writing Christmas cards. (My experiences in Sri Lanka were a million times better)

Interspersed between all of the above were random bouts of hair cutting disasters. Generally I go the haircutting route every 2 years, because it needs to grow back to butcher again. The last "haircut" I got was actually a trim, at the Cutting Station in Colombo (the only decent haircut I've ever had in that country), that was in mid-June. Time for a haircut. Stat.

What's in store for me this year? Turns out I've got a teaching gig.

That's right. You read that correctly.

I'm teaching French at an elementary school. To small children. In January. You guys know that I had a hard enough time dealing with two dogs a classrooom full of kids is just going to epitomise "fun."

Let me recap.

Before I went to Senegal I got the brilliant idea to do some work with inner city ghetto kids. My reasoning was, hey, I'm going to teach psychologically damaged street kids how to read and write in French, might as well get a head start with messed up kids in Toronto. (Incidentally this arrangement also took place at around this time of year.)

I didn't last very long. Why are kids so damn annoying? The kiddies I had in Senegal were angels compared to anything I've ever had to deal with here.

So yeah, I'm really hoping that Chinese guy will come through with the haircut. Otherwise I think I'm going to be totally SOL.

Yes. I am that shallow.