so long, old friend. you've been a good companion.

for the past week or so, flying orange sparks preceeded by a popping noise have appeared sometimes when i do my hair. the first time it happened i thought the sparks had come from the outlet, so i unplugged everything, turned off the lights, had a small panic attack and then plugged my hair appliances back in one by one. everything worked fine, so i figured it was just a fluke.

a few days later the same thing happened again. i was in a different bathroom this time, so i knew it wasn't the outlets. my next theory was that some lint or other foreign object had gotten inside the hair dryer and was sparking from the heat. this is not totally unheard of and i decided it was nothing to worry about.

today i was using my hair straightener, the scalp master, when i heard the telltale pops. and then, all of a sudden, the scalp master literally blew up. in my hand.

all right, not exactly literally. it didn't blow up into a million little pieces. but, it did explode with flying orange sparks, right there in my hand, and i finally figured out what has been going on this whole time. the spot where the cord meets the base of the appliance had become detached somehow, and the copper wires inside the plastic cord casing were exposed and snapping, one by one. each time a copper wire snapped, there was a mini-explosion of orange sparks. since the scalp master kept working after each explosion, i never considered that it was the root of the problem. (scalp! root! joke!) but today's explosion sent the scalp master to its grave for good.

this is very, very sad news. i have a deep and abiding love for the scalp master. it had been a part of my life for a while and it had never let me down. until, of course, it started blowing up. its high-tech ceramic plates always left my hair sleek and, well, straight, it always heated up quickly and it was the most appealing shade of orange. my emergency, back-up hair straightener just isn't the same, i am sorry to say, and it certainly does not deserve the name "master," but i am afraid it will have to do for now.

and, though i wish i could say that was the end of today's bad news, i suffered another loss when i stopped by wendy's (don't judge me) and discovered that my favorite dollar menu item, the jr. cheeseburger deluxe, is no longer available. and a jr. bacon cheeseburger with no bacon just doesn't cut it.

sigh.

so long, old friends.