This morning, I finally took the time to bleach my hair.

For those of you who have followed my postings, you will know that I had my beard professionally whitened by Gary Belo, in Highpoint, NC, back in March.  Because it was just for my photo shoot, I didn't do my hair.  So for the last three months, I've been wandering around with medium dark brown hair, and a more or less white beard.  This wasn't a huge change for me, since while my hair has remained dark, my beard had been going grey for the last few years. 

It was always my intent to get around to the hair sometime before the Christmas season.  It could have waited for a few more months, but I decided to proceed with the change now because I was hoping to do a presentation at my Toastmasters club that white hair would lend credibility to.

I have been studying the process of self bleaching hair care.  After reviewing a number of sites, I have concluded that the easiest and safest method was the one developed by Shannon Settles, who works up in Wake Forest, NC.  I purchased the Trionics developer and Prism Lights bleaching powder recommended by the process over the last month.

I won't describe the process here.  Shannon goes into excellent detail in his PDF.  However, I will say that I mixed up a small batch, and slathered it all over my head.  I then used some plastic wrap to cover the hair, to prevent drying and reduce fumes for the 20 minutes or so I let the bleaching occur.  Then it was jump in the shower and rinse, shampoo, and conditioner.

Is my hair white?  Not exactly.  There's still a little bit of a yellow tint, and I can see that I didn't have complete coverage, resulting in a little dark patch near one temple, and along my neckline.  This isn't totally unexpected, since the professional who did my beard said my hair would probably take two treatments.  I will repeat tomorrow morning, and hopefully things will come out whiter.   Then I just have to redo my beard, which is showing the dark roots.  But for those of you who have been in this game for a while, you probably know the process better than I do, unless you are so fortunately that you don't need the boost.