Blue Dots

Nail polish is something I've been obsessed with since junior high.  Since the days when there were very limited options as far as color goes. In those days, Wet n' Wild was the absolute only brand that made anything other than shades of red or pink; and even they didn't have many choices. I remember white, black, one shade of purple, and a few different glitters (one was confetti!). There might've been a green, too, but I don't think so,because in tenth grade I had to buy generic green polish from our local grocery store for St. Patrick's Day.

And just for the record, if nail polish bottles are closed tightly, many polishes can last a very, very long time. Well over a decade. I still have a few bottles of that old Wet n' Wild stuff that are perfectly viable.

Anyway, once we got Sally Beauty Supply stores in our area, there were more options. Things took a turn (in my opinion) when Uma Thurman wore that dark Chanel color (Vamp) in Pulp Fiction. In college, I had a shoebox full of polish, and I thought that was a lot.

I reorganized my polishes last week, and I pointedly neglected to count them, because I don't want to know. If I know, it might stop me from buying more!

New and exciting things to decorate nails have made my polish collection grow to laughably gigantic proportions in the last couple years. My friend introduced me to Konad (nail stamping), and since then I've invested in plenty of nail stamping plates from Konad and other brands.

I also recently ordered some dotting tools.

They've been really fun. The color combinations and designs you can do just with stamping or dotting, let alone combining them, are endless.

So. Much. Fun.

With that in mind, I took a picture of my first official "dotting tool" manicure and decided to post it here. I used Revlon for all three colors. The new ColorStay Nail Enamel is freaking incredible. It actually does stay! This manicure lasted for a full week before it started to chip, and even then there were only two chips that were almost unnoticeable. I lovelovelove this stuff! Usually Revlon actually bothers me, because it takes
F-O-R-E-V-E-R
to dry. Seriously. I can paint my nails at 3:30 in the afternoon, go to bed at 11:00, and wake up with hair and blanket impressions in my polish. I usually don't have time to let it dry, so I don't use very often, but if I do, it lasts really well without chipping.  The ColorStay formula takes a while to dry, too, but not quite as long. And it lasts even longer!

So, this manicure is:
Revlon Matte Suede in Powder Puff
Revlon ColorStay in Midnight
Revlon ColorStay (base color) in Blue Slate

I was really happy with it, actually. Powder Puff is white, but it's an icy white, with a tiny bit of blue iridescence to it.

I took this picture after four days of wearing it. And I didn't take it nicely with a light box or anything. I might have to do that later if posting manicures gets to be a habit.

Padababy

Gen and Jared had their baby this week. And by Gen and Jared, I mean Genevieve (Cortese) and Jared Padalecki. They’re famous people, in case you didn’t know. Jared stars as Sam Winchester on one of my favorite shows, Supernatural. They’ve only been married a couple years, and this is their first child.

I often know about impending celebrity babies, not because I care, but because people talk about it a lot (and also because one of my most embarrassing guilty pleasures is – I’ll admit it – reading Star). If I think about it at all, the thoughts are usually an idle curiosity about what the kid will look like in twenty years, or occasionally something more specific like “Oh good god, why is it even legal for Snooki to reproduce?”  I’ve never really cared or been happy for any celebrity who’s had a kid. I guess when I was a lot younger, I cared in that I was jealous of whatever woman was having the child of whomever I happened to be obsessed with at the time. But now that I’m older and I don’t want children of my own, I don’t have any of that jealousy. I’d say it makes a difference that I’m not “obsessed” with Jared (oh, I know he’s hot, but I’m so much more a Jensen girl), but it really doesn’t. The other celebrity couple I love is Liev Schreiber and Naomi Watts. I had a fit over him for a few months of last year, and I was envious of her, but not jealous. They both seem really cool, and I’m glad they’re together and glad they have children together. So I guess I’ve grown out of that.

As far as famous couples go, I also really like Gen and Jared. I don’t know much at all about them, but they seem like good people. Like actual humans. And they seem happy. So then, since they both seem so nice, I like them together, and they make me happy. And even though I don’t want a kid of my own, the fact that they’re happy about having a kid makes me happy, too. It’s a silly way to feel, but I know it’s common…or at least I think it is.

See? They're cute.

So anyway, they had a kid. And you know what they named him? Not Apple or Peaches or Haven or Blue or Kal-El or Kyd or Bronx.

Thomas

Colton

That’s it. That’s right: it’s a name. It’s not a noun or an adjective or a made-up word. It’s an actual name for an actual person.

Not to mention the coolness of the fact that they’ve asked their fans to donate to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital instead of sending them gifts. They’ve already gotten more than $40,000 of donations in their names, and they’re planning on matching the total.

Thanks for being – or at least seeming like – real people, guys.

And congratulations!

A New Post!

I wrote something a year and a half ago. It was interesting enough, really, but then I wrote this really long post about how scared I was to write any more posts, and then I stopped writing altogether. Scared myself out of it. Like anyone was actually going to read it.

My friend Angel once told me that the key to successful blogging is to pick a topic and (for the most part) stick with it. That makes good sense – the blogs I read on a regular basis are all consistent from post to post within themselves. For the most part.

So I kept thinking about that and trying to decide what subject my blog could be about. But you know what? I don’t have anything. And you know why? Because that’s not the kind of person I am. Not that I’m inconsistent. I pretty much like the same things all the time, even if it is in a kind of unpredictable cycle (more like the shape of one of those Spirograph drawings than a plain old circle).

Remember these?

But I like a lot of things, and they don’t always connect with each other very well. And I definitely don’t like any one of them enough to write about them every day, or a few times a week, or even once a week, most likely. In addition to that, I tend to have pretty weird and/or ridiculous thoughts, and wonder about and research pretty random things.

After putting some thought into all this, I came to a conclusion: if I want to write stuff, I will. And I shouldn’t care about being successful with it, because I won’t be. That’s not defeatist, it’s just the way things are. Little fish in a big pond, or whatever they say.

So whether it be to your delight or your chagrin, the only thing my entries will have in common from one to the next is that they’ll have travelled from my brain to my fingers to the screen.

Oh, and another thing: I’ll write whenever I damn well feel like it, be it ten times a day or once every two months. I’m crazy like that.

It's in the eyes

Bean was bored today while I was sleeping, so he turned on the TV. I watch more TV than he does, because I’m home alone in the mornings, and sometimes I watch the court shows on network TV. Yes, I’m well aware they’re ridiculous, but I can’t help that I like watching people tell stupid people that they’re stupid. Anyway, we never watch primetime anything, now that Lost is finished. Also, we don’t have cable. We’re "TV on DVD" people, which is really frustrating when the finale of the most recent season of Dexter was a cliff-hanger, and the new season hasn’t even started yet, so you know you’ll be waiting a full year to see what happens. Most of the rest of the time, though, it’s OK.

So, after shuffling out of bed and into the living room to plop myself onto the couch, I blinked at the TV in bewilderment and asked what he was watching. Turns out it was the original, 1979 version of The Amityville Horror. Fun! I’ve seen it a few times, but today Bean saw something that I’d never noticed before, yet with which I agreed immediately. I looked it up online and realized that Other People have also reached this conclusion, which just sort of proves how right he was.

Here’s the revelation, are you ready?

James Brolin (in the seventies) and Christian Bale look so alike, it's creepy!

James Brolin image

Christian Bale image

James Brolin image

Christian Bale image

James Brolin image

Christian Bale image

 

 

 

James Brolin image

Christian Bale image