An Accidental Manicure

You know those days that start out super weird, or even kind of terrible, and then end up being just so tremendous and fun? That’s exactly how this Saturday turned out.

Megan made her way up from Roanoke to go to her boyfriend’s holiday party and prissy girls that we are, we thought it’d be so much fun to get our hair did at the newly opened Dry Bar in Bethesda (not to be confused with my experience at the Georgetown location). Despite leaving an hour before our appointment time to drive the 7 miles from my apartment to the salon, we still ended up being 30 minutes late. While I knew we’d fight some traffic on a Saturday afternoon, I didn't realize Bethesda was located in the 7^th circle of hell!!!!!!!!!!!!

Like, parking has always been an issue there. Always. It’s a small part of town with a TON of retail space, none of which provides parking to its customers, so it’s pretty much a study in Darwinian theory and, to a large extent, urban planning gone completely awry. So, even though we called the salon to notify them we’d be a little late (and here it’s important to let you know that you can’t actually CALL a Dry Bar…you can only call their answering service located god know’s where and talk to someone who sounds like your grandma tell you that they just might cancel your appointment if you’re too late), it didn't matter. When we strolled in at 2:35 for our 2:15 appointments, after parking about a half mile from the salon itself, we were rebuffed. Our appointments? Gone. Non existent. Very much like the parking in that town. When I explained to the receptionist that we tried to call but couldn't reach anyone other than an answering service, she explained that they don’t have phones in the salon because they want to be more “social.” Um. Ex-squeeze me? Baking Powder? Did I just hear you say that in an attempt to be more social, you’ve forgone one of the most DIRECT WAYS WE HUMANS HAVE TO COMMUNICATE WITH EACH OTHER IN REAL TIME?!?!?! Hahahaha, that’s so cute.

So clearly, we were disappointed with that Dry Bar experience. Again, not to be confused with my Georgetown Dry Bar experience, which I intend to return to to use the free blow dry we got from the other location for cancelling us and refusing to find another way to make it work…Tim Gunn would not be pleased. But whatever, that was our experience, which really left us up a creek since Megan had an event that night that she specifically needed a blow out for. We were this close to throwing in the towel and going back to my place where I told her I’d just do her hair when we passed by Jolie, a spa salon offering, wouldn't ya know it, $35 blow outs. We walked in and managed to get an appointment. They only had one though and since Megan actually needed the blow out, I opted to get my nails done instead. 

Despite my ongoing and entirely accurate criticism of Emily from Cupcakes and Cashmere, she does still manage to come up with great manicure ideas, so I promptly copied her latest look and asked my manicurist Xuan for the same look. Not only did Xuan shape and clean up my nails immaculately, she also picked the perfect colors and did the entire manicure with just the brushes from the polish bottles and her fingernail! 

Megan and I were both really pleased with our services and celebrated our serendipitously fun day with sushi before going our separate ways for the night. I then sported my f’awesome manicure to the Grace Potter show at the 9:30 club that night and felt pretty rad about the whole thing.

I think this is what Bob Ross means when he calls something a  "happy little accident."

Do you ever have annoying days turn into super wicked awesome fun days?? Do you find Emily just as annoying as I still do?? And who else loves Grace Potter?!?!