Maggie Rants [and Raves]

Home Alone

by Maggie Franklin | March 2, 2009 | Bookmark +

What am I doing here at home in the middle of my normally scheduled work day? I always advise other techs who are trying to fill space in their schedules to stay at the salon even when they aren’t busy. Get in the habit of being at work, be available to answer the phone, take a walk-in, convert a client who is in for other services, clean up, help out, or just practice those 3-D flowers, Minx nails, or make sure your own nails don’t look like you put them through a paper shredder.

 

Yet here I sit on this lovely Monday afternoon in the comfort of my own home. With sleeping dogs and a pot of coffee. Not taking my own advice at all.

 

Well, I was at the salon earlier, but I have a rare seven-hour break between clients today! And so many things on my to-do list keep getting put off. Plus, only two of us work on Mondays and Christine was MIA this morning. She probably came in later, but I was lonely all by myself.

 

I don’t use the salon phone, so I don’t answer it. I used to try to “help out” the stylists by answering the phone, but I felt so bad because I always ended up just putting the caller on hold while the stylist in demand finished rinsing someone’s color out or wrapping a perm. Turned out, I was actually adding stress to the poor stylists by answering the phone, so now I don’t bother at all. If you get the machine at Attitudes, it’s because we are busy!

 

Plus, Monday has never taken off for me. People just aren’t that keen on getting their nails done on Mondays. They all want in at 5 p.m. and preferably on a Thursday. If I had one of those fancy magic time-stopping watches, I’d make a fortune and only work one hour a week! Of course, I’d have to work that one hour over and over and over again — which means that I’d be pretty tuckered out, and no one would understand why because to them it would seem like I’d only worked for one hour. Hmmm, maybe I really oughta think this through before I lock myself in the garage and start monkeying around with the time/space continuum.

 

At any rate, I’m at home for most of the day trying to keep up with my Internet chores. I got my websites updated, and am catching up with the official blog. I’ve been told it’s time for me to get around to my personal blog too. I guess I better add that to the list. Next project is to print out my latest photos.

 

I’ve been keeping a photo album of my work since my first camera with a macro setting in the early ’90s. I’m a firm believer in that “a picture is worth a thousand words” saying, and it’s easier for me to snap a photo of my creations than it is to try to recreate it on a tip for display. I used to just print the photos out and stick them in an album, but this time I’m trying something different — I’m “scrapbooking” them. I’ve been scrapbooking digitally since my first disastrous attempt at traditional scrapbooking, which resulted in small pieces of paper stuck in my hair and a general mess. So it struck me that scrapbooking would be so much easier if I could do it the way I do all my graphics. So I gave it a shot and it worked really well! So that’s how I’ve scrapbooked my personal adventures for the last 10 years or so. Now, I’m trying my hand at doing this with my nail photos as well.

 

Scrapbooking my photos is cool because it lets me group shots together, because it turns out that people are generally unable to picture a certain design in another color. Go figure. So this way I can print out a handful of shots of the same design with different variations. I also get to caption the photos. I can give credit to the model and I can give the viewer an idea of what was involved with the nails they’re looking at. Are they “rock star” nails? Is it acrylic or gel? Is it handpainted? Is it going to cost extra? Stuff like that. It’s a great idea.

 

It just takes so much TIME. Already, I’ve been home for four hours and I’ve barely gotten anything done! The BF thinks it should take me 30 minutes a day to keep up with my Internet chores! HAH!

 

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