Letting go of the past

I hate spending money.  Well, I hate spending money on things that are not fun to buy.  Tires.  Washing machines. An oven. (The last oven we bought?  Was this double oven number with a smaller, pizza oven on the top and a regular sized oven on the bottom.  The stove top was the flat, black kind...not the coil type.  I was bitching about spending $700 on the stupid thing and my sister was all, "But it's a beautiful oven." No, no it's not.  There's no such thing as a beautiful oven.  It's an appliance.  It just is what it is. And $700 is a nice long weekend on the sugar sands of the Gulf Coast for me.  Stupid oven.)

I'm actually always pissed when I have to spend money on any type of appliance. (The exception, I guess, was when I bought my Dyson)  I don't even like buying small appliances like hair dryers.

See this?

That's a Vidal Sassoon hair dryer.  Most of the "Vidal Sassoon" has been rubbed off.  Also, the back thingy that held the mesh filter was lost long, long ago.  I operated this hair dryer entirely by feel because the Low, Medium and High settings were entirely gone.

This hair dryer and I have much shared history.  I used this hair dryer to fix my hair for my senior prom.  In 1987.  Do you guys remember how we used to stretch our bangs straight up, spray it with Aqua Net and then grab the hair dryer and turn it on full blast so that the hair was instantly shellaced in place?  Then you'd do the same thing to each side of your head so that it made "wings"?

I know, as far as 80s hair goes, I was pretty tame...but considering how VERY, VERY, VERY straight my hair is naturally?  You're looking a A LOT of spray and blow drying to get that much poof to it.
Anyway...despite the long history of togetherness with this blow dryer...it wasn't nostalgia that had me hanging on to it.  It's my loathing of spending money on stuff that's no fun to spend money on.  I should have replaced this poor, suffering thing a long time ago, though.  I have been noticing for a while now, a scorch-y kind of smell when I used it.  I'd get my little cleaning brush out and scrub the lint out of the mesh (where a filter should actually be as well) and soldier on.
Last Thursday, during the middle of my morning grooming session, my hair dryer burst into flames.
THAT'LL wake you up in a hurry.  I quickly snatched the plug loose (nice job ground fault interrupter socket, you piece of crap) and flung the dryer down on the counter where it sparked and spat and smoked and fizzled for a few more minutes while I shut the door and turned the exhaust fan on before I set off the fire detector.  I'm lucky I didn't burn the house down or electrocute my fool self.

Meet my new blow dryer:

1. I don't know why "Ionic" is trademarked.  I always thought "Ionic" referred to a type of chemical bonding between two oppositely charged ions.  Did not know it was something that Revlon could trademark.

2. Tourmaline's a type of gemstone right?  I think they are trying to make this blow dryer way sexier than a blow dryer could ever hope to be.

It does have a folding handle and a retractable cord, which I dig.  I would have probably gone back with another Vidal Sassoon dryer (if they're still in the blow dryer business...I don't even know) but I tried this very blow dryer out when we went on our last girls trip and my friend B had this model.  I was really impressed by how quickly it got my hair dried (I've seen leaf blowers with less umph).  So I'm not TOO piqued that I had to part with the $19 to purchase my own.

Hopefully, this is the beginning of a long, lovely relationship.