what is the flight velocity of a european swallow

So there's the well-known saying, "Never trust a skinny chef". You may think you know where I'm going with this but this isn't a food posting. Two words: bald hairdresser.

I've been itching to get a haircut since I've been in Rome, hoping I'd find a place where I could get a really funky playful new style that isn't what all the New York hipsters are wearing. No conservative trims for me. I was amused to see a salon called "Contesta Rock Hair" around the corner from me near Piazza dei Zingari. This was what I'd been looking for, these are people who could slice into my hair without regards for symmetry or conventional layering. And they did.

I walked out of the shop with my curls frizzed out in all directions, about four inches straight up off the top of my head. The back is tapered to the hairline, long layers at the crown and just a tiny fringe at the neck. The long layers angle down towards my face, to my ears, where I have side curls almost like a Hassidic man. Then some shorter pieces of various lengths to set off my face. I rushed home to wet the mess down and get some calming products in, and it actually looks great when I style it. But my crazy bald hairdresser wanted me to have the biggest hair he could make. I was upset for a while, thinking he was playing a trick on me, but the cut underneath all the poof is so good that he couldn't have been malicious. Living vicariously through lots of hair I guess.

And now for something completely different: I was just having a rest in my bed, looking up through my windows at the swallows (European swallows, not African ones) diving after bugs thinking what fast metabolisms they must have flying like that all the time, eating up mosquitos non-stop. Hummingbirds probably have little hearts that go so fast they'd be hard to detect. What about all that sugar water that we feed hummingbirds? That can't be good for them. They're supposed to be eating flower nectars, which I'm sure have all sorts of vitamins and things. We're just giving them empty calories so we can watch them in our yards. Are we creating a health problem for hummingbirds? Are there little diabetic hummingbirds keeling over at an early age from too much red syrup?