HairBoutique Blog

Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) once said that squirrels are like rats, but with cuter clothes.  Of course she was right.  Sometimes squirrels are just downright cute.  Except when they eat the birdseed you put out in the feeder for your favorite blue jays or robins.

(Image of Red Squirrel – Image courtesy of Haap Media, Inc., – All Rights Reserved)

Yes, squirrels will climb up bird feeders and pig out.  I’ve even seen the hanging up in the air and swinging to knock at the feeders so food would drop up.  Not only do they have cuter clothes, they know how to get the goods.

Squirrels will also gnaw their way into your attic, or even worse, your house.  They find a lot of ways in and once they get settled, your house becomes theirs.  Squirrels are loud. (more…)

Yes, it’s true I have spent the last 25 years consumed with all aspects of hair.

Although my original college studies were not in the hair, beauty or fashion worlds,  I’ve gone to two different wonderful cosmetology colleges here in Dallas, received a license to do hair and continued to take ongoing hair classes, both for certification and to continue advancing my hair and beauty education.

(Image of Conair hair clippers – HairBoutique.com – All Rights Reserved)

Someone recently commented that this blog was only about hair.  Actually that’s not true at all.  If you visit on a regular basis you already know that.

While the HairBoutique.com site has literally thousands of articles specifically about hair, hair loss, hair styling, hair trends, this blog is not specifically limited to hair.  (more…)

Well the title for this blog felt right, but certainly I am not an expert on Alexa. Even though I have owned and run a number of web sites since the mid 1990s I’m a babe in the woods when it comes to understanding the true mechanics of this amazing ranking system.

I guess my website ownership history makes me one of the old ladies of the web having been working on HairBoutique.com, my primary website, since 1997, on a daily basis.  I will confess I have been eating, sleeping and obsessing about HairBoutique.com since the very first day.

What I find about Alexa Rankings, which I personally value for a traffic analysis viewpoint, is that the more I think I know, the less I actually know.   Which tracks with my knowledge of SEO, Google words, Twitter traffic patterns and other mystical, magical things that as a web businessperson I need to know.

Yes, it’s true there are many Alexa, SEO, Twitter, Social Media gurus out there and I follow as many as I have time and eyeball energy to do.  I have two in-house web experts who have worked with HairBoutique.com since the very beginning of the site.  However, I have learned that the buck stops with me and if I don’t at least try to figure some of these things out, I am the one who loses.  (more…)

The LA Times reported today that two F-15 fighter jets escorted a commercial flight bound for Hawaii back to Portland International Airport after a passenger became disruptive.

A spokesman for North American Aerospace Defense Command says the fighter jets intercepted Hawaiian Airlines Flight 39 at about 1 p.m. Wednesday, shortly after the pilot decided to turn around.

Keoni Wagner, vice president of public affairs with Hawaiian Airlines, says the passenger failed to cooperate with crew. He did not elaborate, and additional details on the disruption were not immediately available.

The plane was carrying 231 passengers and a crew of 10.   Wagner says the plane landed safely in Portland and the passenger was removed. The plane was then refueled, and the flight departed again.

I for one was happy to read this LA Times Blog because a experienced an abusive passenger and her male companion on an American Airlines flight from Dallas, Fort Worth to Palm Springs, California in July of 2009.  I was traveling to the NAHA hair awards in Las Vegas by way of Palm Springs. (more…)

A former friend of mine who recently resigned as an editor of a major magazine was chatting with me today on the phone about her ongoing quest to find good free lance writing jobs which pay a fair price for original, high quality journalism.

I was commiserating with her about the constant Web write around “authors” who target long standing articles and “rework” them in order to publish them on the legions of pay-for-content sites all over the web.

It used to make me angry when I would see my own long published content “reworked”.

Now it just makes me sad the free lance industry has been basically destroyed by anyone who can find a good quality article on just about any topic and then “steal” it, rewriting it enough to avoid legal action in exchange for a quick payoff of a few bucks.   (more…)