The lipstick from the holiday party was DuWop in Private Red, which when asked about it at the party, I replied, "It's BeBop!" (I was on my third glass of wine at this point. Also, I am Old and Out of Touch.) One of my friends corrected me and said, "Do you mean DuWop?" I waved my hand and said, "DuWop, BeBop, something or other." Then I got it out of my purse and lo, she was right. Anyway, I put Smashbox sheer gloss over it to give it shine and together they really looked good. They were both from the Sephora Favorites box in this post, which I bought precisely hoping that it would contain a holiday party red lipstick, so score again Sephora! I've tried almost every lipstick in the box and found two that are just fantastic, like people stop me and compliment me, and one that's a little dark but not bad, and then the clear Smashbox gloss that can go over everything or be worn by itself, so I would call that a success. I'm still working my way through the moisturizer box. I've only tried two because the little samples last so long. The Korres, which I loved, was unfortunately too oily for everyday use on my skin. It smelled like heaven, though, so if you're not a total greasepit like me, you might give it a try. It is "wild rose" scent, and I promise you that it does not smell like anything your grandmother would wear. I thought it smelled like kind of spicy roses. Rock thought it smelled like red hot candies. (He's a romantic. No, you can't have him.) I adored it, but if I used it more than one day in a row, it made my face break out. I've moved on to Philosophy's Hope in a jar. Smells like butt; seems to work. This week will be its ultimate test. I've been using it every day since Saturday (no makeup for a whole week! WHEE!) so we'll see how my skin looks at the end of the week.
Happy New Year everyone! I will be partying it up! (By this I mean, eating too much and sleeping late, of course. See Old, above.)
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Happy Holidays!
I had a big long update planned for today, but now it's 5:30 and I need to run a few errands on the way home. So here's a brief update.
The endoscopy went well, but I'm waiting to meet with the doctor to hear the results. Could be some serious changes. I'm doing my own little "scientific" experiments. "if I eat this, how do I feel?" "if I don't eat that, how do I feel?" So far, it's been interesting. And yeah, has proven that I definitely did not attend medical school.
I finished reading The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, which I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED, LOVED. I will have MUCH more to say about this once I have more time.
Our office holiday party was last week and I finally found the perfect red lipstick after a four year search. I got so many compliments on it that I had to get it out of my purse to show people what brand it was. So you know it was good. In fact, here's a picture.
I'm thinking of sending out New Year's cards. I really wanted to send Christmas cards, but I've pretty well missed that deadline. So I think I'll just take a cute picture of the kids over the holidays and find a good card and send them out next week for New Year's. That's acceptable, right?
Happy Holidays to all! Today is my last work day for this week, so I'll be spending the rest of the week resting, doing a little last minute shopping, and opening gifts with my kids! Oh yeah, and eating way too much food.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Whiny Friday
So I have to tell you guys what's going on with me today so I can whine about it. I'm having an endoscopy done so that my doctor can figure out why I have constant heartburn and acid reflux. They're going to sedate me, which I hate, but then they're going to stick a tube down my throat and look around and I certainly don't want to be awake for THAT, so I'll take sedation, thankyouverymuch. I'm sure everything is fine, and I'll just have take Prilosec or the Wa!-Mart version forever or whatever, but I can only drink clear liquids until 11:30 this morning and after that I cannot have anything. I cannot eat anything at all today. No, let me whine about that in all caps, because I am starting to get hungry. I CANNOT EAT ANYTHING TODAY. Whine.
Okay, moving on to books because I need to distract myself. I've had a couple great emails lately from girls to whom I sent copies of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo who loved it! That is my favorite part of sharing a book with a friend - hearing that she loved it, too. Have you read anything great lately? Tell me about it!
Okay, moving on to books because I need to distract myself. I've had a couple great emails lately from girls to whom I sent copies of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo who loved it! That is my favorite part of sharing a book with a friend - hearing that she loved it, too. Have you read anything great lately? Tell me about it!
Friday, December 4, 2009
Probably Hypothetical Question
Would it be too much to ask for someone, anyone, who has not seen me in quite some time, to greet me with the phrase, "You've lost some weight!"?? Because I have, damnit! I am officially into the next size down in pants, which is two sizes down from where I started, because I wore the previous size until I looked like a stuffed sausage.
I thought for sure the nurse at the doctor's office would say something the other day, when I climbed onto the scale and my weight was actually measured and recorded RIGHT NEXT to last year's weight, and I'm not sure how much less than last year's weight it was, but at least ten and potentially even 15 pounds less, and that right there warrants a compliment or at least a comment, bitch.
And then today? I had lunch with a friend who hasn't seen me in two months. And did he greet me by commenting on my weight loss? No, no he did not. And while it might be a little irrational to expect someone whom YOU greet with, "God, you look scruffier every time I see you." to return the greeting with a compliment, I still say he could have pulled it off. (And he does look scruffier every time I see him.)
I thought for sure the nurse at the doctor's office would say something the other day, when I climbed onto the scale and my weight was actually measured and recorded RIGHT NEXT to last year's weight, and I'm not sure how much less than last year's weight it was, but at least ten and potentially even 15 pounds less, and that right there warrants a compliment or at least a comment, bitch.
And then today? I had lunch with a friend who hasn't seen me in two months. And did he greet me by commenting on my weight loss? No, no he did not. And while it might be a little irrational to expect someone whom YOU greet with, "God, you look scruffier every time I see you." to return the greeting with a compliment, I still say he could have pulled it off. (And he does look scruffier every time I see him.)
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Quarter Three in Books
What? Q3 only ended two months ago. You do not come here for timely news (thank God). So, here is what I read (and listened to, as that is quickly starting to outnumber the books I've read) in the third quarter and what I thought about them.
1. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See - Very atmospheric Asian novel about two little girls who are friends growing up, have a fight and stop being friends. Good, but kind of mild. The misunderstanding that led to them to not speak for so long was a little lame, in my opinion.
2. The Reader by Bernhard Schlink (audio) - Oh, the main character in this annoyed me to no end. And I saw the "surprise" ending coming a mile off. And now I really don't want to see the movie, which I very much wanted to see before, and I absolutely love Kate Winslet. I don't know that I would go so far as to say that I didn't like it. Well, yes, I think I will. I didn't like it. I didn't like the main character - I thought he was a spineless wimp who made some really inexplicable, indefensible decisions. And Kate Winslet's character was woefully underdeveloped. We do not understand why she does one single thing that she does. Ever.
3. Here on Earth by Alice Hoffman - Horrible, horrible book about a woman who willfully gets into an abusive relationship with a man she dated in her past. She leaves a stable marriage for this man! Against the advice of her daughter and all her friends. And then proceeds to totally not notice when he cuts off the phone and gathers up all the mail. Yes, she just DOES NOT NOTICE that the phone doesn't work at all and no mail ever arrives. Even though people tell her that they tried to call and that they mailed her invitations and other things. One of the stupidest books I've ever read. I'm sorry; I rarely criticize books that harshly, but it's true. I think I bought this book for a dollar from a vineyard on the farm tour last year. Yay, I'm so glad I didn't really pay for it.
4. A Place of Hiding by Elizabeth George (audio) - I had very high hopes for this because I loved What Came Before He Shot Her so much, but I was really disappointed in this one. It's a murder mystery, and it seemed to me that George really hadn't figured out who the murderer would be before she finished writing the book. Then, as she worked through the plot, she eliminated possible suspects one by one. Upon reaching the end, she realized that she had actually eliminated all possible suspects and had now left herself with no plausible murderer. At which point, she returned to her first, not really plausible, suspect and concocted a terrible not-at-believable motive. There is a good sub-plot with a friend of the murder victim and his aged father. That is this book's only redeeming feature.
5. When Will There Be Good News by Kate Atkinson - This is the third novel by Kate Atkinson to feature Jackson Brodie, private detective, who is an awesome and tremendously likable character, and this one is far far better than One Good Turn (the second book), which I thought was very disappointing. Like Case Histories, the novel that introduced Jackson, Good News weaves together several seemingly unrelated crimes and mysteries. Jackson's tangled and tortured personal life gets drug in, too, of course, as the poor man can't figure out how to have a relationship with a woman. I really liked it, as you can definitely tell.
6. The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman (audio) - And here is where I gave up on Alice Hoffman. Ice Queen is the story of a weird girl who wishes that her mother would die in a fit of anger one night and of course, her mother is killed in an auto accident that evening. Later in life, she wishes to be struck by lightning, and gets that wish as well. After that, she falls in love with a man who isn't quite what or whom he seems to be and works to alienate or not alienate her brother and sister-in-law, she can't quite decide which she wants. A very weird character and a very weird book. My final opinion of Hoffman is that she is a very uneven author who doesn't mind at all if her plots are heavy-handed or, y'know, believable.
7. The Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo (audio) - A cute and almost whimsical tale of a boy who is tormented by bullies at school, lives in a run down motel with his dad, then gets to stay out of school for a time, meets a little girl and goes for walks in the woods where he finds a tiger in a cage. Things kind of go downhill from there, but it's still a cool little story.
8. A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby (audio) - I absolutely loved this book. It was one of the few audio books that I kept. Four random strangers meet at a tall building on New Year's Eve, each planning to commit suicide. They talk each other out of it for that night, but what comes after that? Very funny, very human.
9. What Comes After Crazy by Sandi Kahn Shelton (audio) - Maz, daughter of a psychic, struggles to get her life together after her husband runs off to New Mexico. Then, just when she's getting it together, he comes back. And her mother comes to visit. A little too "zany". It's funny, it just tries a little too hard.
10. The Final Solution by Michael Chabon (audio) - I love Michael Chabon (author of Wonder Boys, and the absolutely fabulous, Pulitzer Prize winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay), so that means that what I'm about to say pains me greatly. The Final Solution is a mystery that features a very old, formerly very famous detective who is supposed to remind you very strongly of Sherlock Holmes. Maybe it's this, because I tend to find all things connected with Sherlock Holmes deadly boring (although I VERY MUCH want to see the upcoming movie - Robert Downey Jr. couldn't be boring if he tried!), or maybe it's just this book itself, but I was bored to tears. I had bought the book years ago, when it first came out, and read the first chapter or so, and couldn't get into it. So I picked it up on audio book, acknowledging the fact that I will probably never go back and read the actual book. The audio book is nearly as boring as the print book, I'm sad to say. It's about a lost parrot. And that's about it.
11. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson - Yes, I re-read it when the second one came out. What of it? I understood the financial stuff this time around, so who's laughing now? I still love it just as much as I did the first time around.
12. The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson - What? You're sick of hearing about how much I love this trilogy? Okay, okay. I will just say that the cliffhanger ending on this one just about killed me dead. And that at one point, I threatened to fly to Sweden, dig up Stieg Larsson, and kick his ass. Then, a few pages later, I forgave him. (I should really get out more, shouldn't I?)
13. Promise Me by Harlan Coben (audio) - Please, please tell me you all read Harlan Coben and I don't need to tell you how wonderful he is. This book was read by the author, which was a treat, because he has a warm, rich, deep voice with a nasally NE accent. He sounded like a big, New England teddy bear which was the perfect sound for his character, Myron Bolitar. In this novel, Myron makes two high school girls promise him that they will call him if they are ever in trouble and need a ride home. He will come get them, no questions asked, and not tell their parents. Which, as we all know, is a tremendously dangerously offer to make to high school girls. Of course one of them takes him up on it. And then vanishes. Coben tends to write twisty, turny, smart books. I've read and listened to four or five now and loved every one.
14. Who By Fire by Diana Spechler - Clever title, lackluster plot. Screwup girl goes to Israel to bring home her uber religious brother. Their mother gets taken in by a con man. Overall, a very forgettable novel.
15. The Last Summer of You and Me by Anne Brashares (audio) - This book hinged on one of those "if the two people had only talked for about 1.5 seconds this misunderstanding wouldn't have happened" plot points that absolutely infuriates me. I hated it with the fire of 10,000 suns.
16. Tara Road by Maeve Binchy (audio) - Out of the 19 discs, more of these were messed up than were not (I checked it out from the library.), yet I still loved it irrationally. It is a huge, sprawling novel that follows Rea over the course of her life, from young woman working in an office and meeting Danny, to marrying and having children, to well, you'd just have to read it, now wouldn't you? Along for the ride are her friends and family, all interesting and well-developed characters in their own rights. I so wish there was a sequel. That says a lot, doesn't it? 19 discs and I wish there was more.
17. Bridget Jones' Diary by Helen Fielding (audio) - Um, I know that this was the book that started the whole "chick lit" phenomena and all, but I really wasn't impressed. Way too predictable. Way to yell-y and loud. And I didn't really like Bridget all that much.
18. Loving Frank by Nancy Horan - Discussed here. If you don't want to click, mildly interesting history with a pretty shocking ending. Overall, disturbing.
19. Best Friends Forever by Jennifer Weiner - Smart chick lit. Really, really liked it. Two friends, road trip, what's not to like?
20. Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris - First of the Sookie Stackhouse/ True Blood books. Really fun, very campy. No heavy lifting here, but for mindless fluff, you really can't go wrong with the True Blood crew. Decent mystery, good characters.
1. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See - Very atmospheric Asian novel about two little girls who are friends growing up, have a fight and stop being friends. Good, but kind of mild. The misunderstanding that led to them to not speak for so long was a little lame, in my opinion.
2. The Reader by Bernhard Schlink (audio) - Oh, the main character in this annoyed me to no end. And I saw the "surprise" ending coming a mile off. And now I really don't want to see the movie, which I very much wanted to see before, and I absolutely love Kate Winslet. I don't know that I would go so far as to say that I didn't like it. Well, yes, I think I will. I didn't like it. I didn't like the main character - I thought he was a spineless wimp who made some really inexplicable, indefensible decisions. And Kate Winslet's character was woefully underdeveloped. We do not understand why she does one single thing that she does. Ever.
3. Here on Earth by Alice Hoffman - Horrible, horrible book about a woman who willfully gets into an abusive relationship with a man she dated in her past. She leaves a stable marriage for this man! Against the advice of her daughter and all her friends. And then proceeds to totally not notice when he cuts off the phone and gathers up all the mail. Yes, she just DOES NOT NOTICE that the phone doesn't work at all and no mail ever arrives. Even though people tell her that they tried to call and that they mailed her invitations and other things. One of the stupidest books I've ever read. I'm sorry; I rarely criticize books that harshly, but it's true. I think I bought this book for a dollar from a vineyard on the farm tour last year. Yay, I'm so glad I didn't really pay for it.
4. A Place of Hiding by Elizabeth George (audio) - I had very high hopes for this because I loved What Came Before He Shot Her so much, but I was really disappointed in this one. It's a murder mystery, and it seemed to me that George really hadn't figured out who the murderer would be before she finished writing the book. Then, as she worked through the plot, she eliminated possible suspects one by one. Upon reaching the end, she realized that she had actually eliminated all possible suspects and had now left herself with no plausible murderer. At which point, she returned to her first, not really plausible, suspect and concocted a terrible not-at-believable motive. There is a good sub-plot with a friend of the murder victim and his aged father. That is this book's only redeeming feature.
5. When Will There Be Good News by Kate Atkinson - This is the third novel by Kate Atkinson to feature Jackson Brodie, private detective, who is an awesome and tremendously likable character, and this one is far far better than One Good Turn (the second book), which I thought was very disappointing. Like Case Histories, the novel that introduced Jackson, Good News weaves together several seemingly unrelated crimes and mysteries. Jackson's tangled and tortured personal life gets drug in, too, of course, as the poor man can't figure out how to have a relationship with a woman. I really liked it, as you can definitely tell.
6. The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman (audio) - And here is where I gave up on Alice Hoffman. Ice Queen is the story of a weird girl who wishes that her mother would die in a fit of anger one night and of course, her mother is killed in an auto accident that evening. Later in life, she wishes to be struck by lightning, and gets that wish as well. After that, she falls in love with a man who isn't quite what or whom he seems to be and works to alienate or not alienate her brother and sister-in-law, she can't quite decide which she wants. A very weird character and a very weird book. My final opinion of Hoffman is that she is a very uneven author who doesn't mind at all if her plots are heavy-handed or, y'know, believable.
7. The Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo (audio) - A cute and almost whimsical tale of a boy who is tormented by bullies at school, lives in a run down motel with his dad, then gets to stay out of school for a time, meets a little girl and goes for walks in the woods where he finds a tiger in a cage. Things kind of go downhill from there, but it's still a cool little story.
8. A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby (audio) - I absolutely loved this book. It was one of the few audio books that I kept. Four random strangers meet at a tall building on New Year's Eve, each planning to commit suicide. They talk each other out of it for that night, but what comes after that? Very funny, very human.
9. What Comes After Crazy by Sandi Kahn Shelton (audio) - Maz, daughter of a psychic, struggles to get her life together after her husband runs off to New Mexico. Then, just when she's getting it together, he comes back. And her mother comes to visit. A little too "zany". It's funny, it just tries a little too hard.
10. The Final Solution by Michael Chabon (audio) - I love Michael Chabon (author of Wonder Boys, and the absolutely fabulous, Pulitzer Prize winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay), so that means that what I'm about to say pains me greatly. The Final Solution is a mystery that features a very old, formerly very famous detective who is supposed to remind you very strongly of Sherlock Holmes. Maybe it's this, because I tend to find all things connected with Sherlock Holmes deadly boring (although I VERY MUCH want to see the upcoming movie - Robert Downey Jr. couldn't be boring if he tried!), or maybe it's just this book itself, but I was bored to tears. I had bought the book years ago, when it first came out, and read the first chapter or so, and couldn't get into it. So I picked it up on audio book, acknowledging the fact that I will probably never go back and read the actual book. The audio book is nearly as boring as the print book, I'm sad to say. It's about a lost parrot. And that's about it.
11. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson - Yes, I re-read it when the second one came out. What of it? I understood the financial stuff this time around, so who's laughing now? I still love it just as much as I did the first time around.
12. The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson - What? You're sick of hearing about how much I love this trilogy? Okay, okay. I will just say that the cliffhanger ending on this one just about killed me dead. And that at one point, I threatened to fly to Sweden, dig up Stieg Larsson, and kick his ass. Then, a few pages later, I forgave him. (I should really get out more, shouldn't I?)
13. Promise Me by Harlan Coben (audio) - Please, please tell me you all read Harlan Coben and I don't need to tell you how wonderful he is. This book was read by the author, which was a treat, because he has a warm, rich, deep voice with a nasally NE accent. He sounded like a big, New England teddy bear which was the perfect sound for his character, Myron Bolitar. In this novel, Myron makes two high school girls promise him that they will call him if they are ever in trouble and need a ride home. He will come get them, no questions asked, and not tell their parents. Which, as we all know, is a tremendously dangerously offer to make to high school girls. Of course one of them takes him up on it. And then vanishes. Coben tends to write twisty, turny, smart books. I've read and listened to four or five now and loved every one.
14. Who By Fire by Diana Spechler - Clever title, lackluster plot. Screwup girl goes to Israel to bring home her uber religious brother. Their mother gets taken in by a con man. Overall, a very forgettable novel.
15. The Last Summer of You and Me by Anne Brashares (audio) - This book hinged on one of those "if the two people had only talked for about 1.5 seconds this misunderstanding wouldn't have happened" plot points that absolutely infuriates me. I hated it with the fire of 10,000 suns.
16. Tara Road by Maeve Binchy (audio) - Out of the 19 discs, more of these were messed up than were not (I checked it out from the library.), yet I still loved it irrationally. It is a huge, sprawling novel that follows Rea over the course of her life, from young woman working in an office and meeting Danny, to marrying and having children, to well, you'd just have to read it, now wouldn't you? Along for the ride are her friends and family, all interesting and well-developed characters in their own rights. I so wish there was a sequel. That says a lot, doesn't it? 19 discs and I wish there was more.
17. Bridget Jones' Diary by Helen Fielding (audio) - Um, I know that this was the book that started the whole "chick lit" phenomena and all, but I really wasn't impressed. Way too predictable. Way to yell-y and loud. And I didn't really like Bridget all that much.
18. Loving Frank by Nancy Horan - Discussed here. If you don't want to click, mildly interesting history with a pretty shocking ending. Overall, disturbing.
19. Best Friends Forever by Jennifer Weiner - Smart chick lit. Really, really liked it. Two friends, road trip, what's not to like?
20. Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris - First of the Sookie Stackhouse/ True Blood books. Really fun, very campy. No heavy lifting here, but for mindless fluff, you really can't go wrong with the True Blood crew. Decent mystery, good characters.
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