Ordering Eyeglasses Online and Beauty School Bargains? Risky Business, Friends.

After consideration I decided on three boxes of lenses (at least one year's supply) plus glasses... online. They're going to FedEx the order to my office, so hopefully I'll get them sometime this week. The total was about $195, maxing out my benefit without requiring any real cash input.

The contacts will be no problem but I'm a little jittery about the glasses. I had to measure my own pupil distance. What if I'm inaccurate and what if the frames are totally huge on my face? They had an online "upload your picture" feature where I theoretically was able to test out what it should look like.

I also checked the online waiver form - nothing too draconian.

If it works out I know I can just order glasses off the internet, if necessary, and have them FedExed to me. That's pretty darn convenient. The glasses are more of a back-up in case of eye infections or spending too many hours with a screen, whereas the dependable contacts are my primary, so I'm optimistic.

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Next week I'm getting a $10 pedicure at a local college having a fundraiser. I'm sometimes ambivalent about nail care. I've had everything from the China Town manicure to the expensive spa pedicure and it's not something I enjoy (although I can never French my own nails properly). However, my feet have taken a beating due to a penchant for not wearing shoes and ocean life, and a solid bit of care would make me feel less the outcast in yoga. So unless I back out next Saturday it's on.

The other reason nail care sometimes sketches me out is sanitation. I went for the $25 Yonge Street special last time I was in T.O. and the aggressive overworked beautician cut me. It was gross and put me off having anyone else go near my feet for a long time. I'm actually more inclined to believe the sanitation at the beauty school is better than at the average inexpensive spa, or at least that's what I'm telling myself.

Often, people suggest going to a training school. My own esthetician goes to the beauty college for nails and waxing. I would definitely go to an Aveda school for cuts and color, but everything else... I'm not sure.

I have a friend who swears by a beauty college in the city we went to school with for cheap scalp treatments and sometime blowouts. I went with her once:

PROS: the scalp treatment worked in the middle of winter, my blow out held up all night, inexpensive
CONS: not a relaxing setting, my hair looked like every girl in beauty school, longer time required than a normal salon, egregious use of back combing for volume and wet straightening of my friend's curly hair

I'm not sure I'd ever let them do anything permanent to my hair. I judge a salon by how the hair of the people working there looks, not only because it gives you a sense of the style they're likely to default to but because it suggests if the people working there have a simple understanding of necessary concepts like proportion and face shape. The men and ladies of beauty school sometimes aren't managing their own hair, so what guarantee do I have they're not going to hack and fry mine?

That Grease song about Beauty School Dropouts? That's not just musical theater, people.