I can give you recommendations as to what products to try, but you'd need to e-mail me as the list is 4 pages on a Word document. In the meantime here's some info for you... Water-soluble silicones are dimethicone copolyl (sp) & PEG-modified dimethicones. These are the only silicones 'good' for your hair. Drying alcohols are SD-40, 40-B, 23, & Isopropyl, for instance. A couple of the 'good' alcohols are steryl & ceteryl (sp). The main cleansers of shampoos are ammonium and/or sodium sulfates. They're pretty harsh/drying though. There are two books full of good information that you could borrow from your library on the subject of curly hair... Curly Girl by Lorainne (sp) Massey Curl Talk by Ouidad And there's a website dedicated to wavy & curly hair... www.naturallycurly.com There's a chemist & a shampoo, conditioner, & styling product-maker who post there, plus many other gals who are professed product junkies who've learned by trial & error. There's an ingredients dictionary, curl-411 guide, product lists/guides, articles, etc., on that site. It's free to join.

wish i had the commercial sized back up generator i should have bought in 2004 lol. we are in the orlando burbs and have gone as long as 24 days w/o power (aug 13 04). we go often enough that Progress Energy has a speed dial on my cell phone. we have a generator, just not one big enough to run the huge A/C unit, clothes dryer, fridge etc...all at one time. i own pretty much every accessory for going w/o power except for a new digital portable TV, have looked at them but for $200 for a 4" screen i can go w/o and use the internet. our other portable TV does not work now, of course. the state has already said that even in the event of a hurricane they will not be broadcasting in analog, so w/o a digital TV you will get nothing here. in 2004-05 we had an awesome thread going on the FL gardening forum on gardenweb that was 52 pages printed. i printed it but am at work right now. no one knows more about long-term power outages than floridians :-( one thing we do before hurricanes is cook ALOT of food in the stand-up freezer and i bake ALOT. baked goods are neccessary for bribing linesmen and help lol. good coffee also helps. we have 2 huge chain saws w/ 2 spare chains for each. in 04 we could not even get out of our subdivision because of all the trees down on the road in/out, everyone in the neighborhood had to chainsaw thru that. i always have plenty of plastic silverware, paperplates, plastic cups etc...on hand, along w/ foil pans. during hurricane season i do not let laundry pile up. a nice accessory to keep for short outages (1 day) is a power inverter and keep a spare car battery always charged. you can run several lamps, fans and 2 laptops on that lol. and atleast here in FL when it's all over and done w/ be prepared for significant increases ea yr to your power bill to cover repairs & upgrades in the state LOL last yr was 17% increase, this yr 25%, next is 30%....while expecting service to go down. until 3 hurricanes in 04 we'd never lost power, since then it's common and in 5 yrs the bill has doubled while useage has gone down to save $$. ~ liz

For too long. I have very thick, coarse hair with a natural curly/wave. I don't suit it very short - besides, I would need to have it cut every week - it grows like a weed. I greyed in my 20s and am now 63. The grey is iron grey and my complexion is yellow - but this is not apparent until someone holds certain colours against me - then it sure is. And of course my natural hair colour was auburn - I am of Irish heritage. Only colour that suits me - I have tried on wigs in other colours - awful. And red fades. I have my hair cut in layers and keep it a few inches below my ears (when my hair dries after being wet it curls "up" so I need to makes sure that I still have those few inches to peak out from under my hat - and I always wear a hat - red fades). It is very expensive to have it coloured in Toronto - and I do not have highlights - hair is so coarse it appears to be highlighted anyway. I do try and extend the colouring by wearing said hats and basically have it done every 8 weeks - unless I am going somewhere say at week 5 where I have to take my hat off. Not everyone can cut my type of hair. Unfortunately the best colour for me is Goldwell - not cheap. I recently (due to a funeral) had to go to a different salon since my colourist does not work certain days of the week. They used L'Oreal Professsional - which is a good colour product, but apparently I am now allergic to the current formulation. Wonderful. And to think I used to do it myself before the colour was d/c'd. And of course with so much grey now I would not want that tell-tale 2 inch patch of off-colour auburn. I do use a curl enhancement product - but it is hard to find one that is not for fine, thick hair. I need strength in the product.

I cut my long hair in August,now my hair takes me seconds to do. As for makeup-none on a daily basis. It just rubs off on my surgical mask at work. For a night out, or if I want to impress my makeup takes me 10 minutes but I rarely wear it. I am lucky that at 52 I have good skin. Still nice and tight (on my face that is). My only issue is brown spots from sun exposure while golfing, but that is easily covered. I learned my lesson and religiously wear spf 50 from oil of olay regenerist every day.