haikus

inspired by emails
with besties, here are some quick
updates on amy


moving so tiring
house great, will be better when
everything settled

beauty area
so nicely organized! yay!
will post pictures soon

made fresh fruit and veg
smoothie for dinner tonight.
yum, but meal drink? weird

give me recipes!
i love to play with cooking
bread is delicious.




another friend died
leukemia came back, saw
him in hospital

was responding well
6 days later, pneumonia
killed him. what bullshit.




regular posting
when less blah and have more time
i miss y'all! your turn:

Hiatus

Hi! I know I've been rather absent lately, both here and elsewhere on the interwebs, and I just wanted to drop a note and let y'all know it will be a little while longer before I'm back to posting and commenting regularly. My brother and I are moving out of our family home into a lovely little house of our own, and I have a ton of stuff to pack and move––I went to college back east, but never actually cleaned out my rooms here, so I have 16 years' worth of stuff to wade through. It'll be nice to get rid of all the excess, but eyvah*, it's quite a task.

I have a number of posts in the works (lip balm comparison, several product reviews, makeup organization, various skincare and perfume posts, massive mineral makeup swatches, among others), and while it'll be a couple of weeks until I'm in a situation where I have the time and energy to post, I don't want you to think I'm gone for good!

*Turkish for "good grief", and suspiciously similar to the Yiddish oy vey, which is how I remember what it means. I thought they might both be from the same Semitic root: Yiddish, while primarily Germanic in vocabulary and grammar, has a number of roots of Semitic origin, and Turkish, a member of the Turkic family (and controversial macro-family Altaic), has borrowed heavily from Arabic, another Semitic language. However, it looks like if they are related, it's through Indo-European! The Yiddish likely comes from the German ach weh "oh woe, oh pain" (though Chabad traces it instead to Hebrew and Aramaic), while the Turkish is apparently borrowed from Farsi, which is, along with German, Albanian, Italian, Russian, Hindi, and a bunch of other languages, part of the big Indo-European language family. I'm not a historical linguist, have never studied Farsi or Yiddish, and don't do etymology, so this should really be taken with a lot of grains of salt, but still, it's kind of cool! Language is great.

Do you have any moving tips? I'll read them, even if I don't have the chance to respond right away!

Hakuhodo Brushes: My Fledgling Collection (J5523, J004G, G5512BkSL, Retractable BkA Flat PBT Lip)

Hi! Remember me? I used to write things sometimes. Then research and end of term stress happened (if it seems like I use that excuse a lot, it's because the UO operates on the quarter system and just as I've gotten over the stress of one finals season, another is upon me) and I kind of fell off the world. You may not hear from me again for another week or so, but it's a long post, so feel free to drag it out over a few days.

A couple months ago, I decided I was ready to upgrade my eye brushes. My brush collection is entirely affordable brushes, but I wanted something fancier for playing with my eyeshadow. MAC brushes are easily accessible, but they're not very cheap, and from what I've read, the quality isn't the best. Hakuhodo brushes, at least for the eyes, are relatively reasonably priced, and of very high quality, but they have to be ordered online. Fortunately, there's a number of very thorough guides online, and after I measured the brushes I already own, I was able to have an idea of what dimensions would work best for me (and will be adding size info to my complete makeup brush post once the term is over and I have more time).

Left to right: J5523, J004G, G5520BkSL, G5512BkSL, Retractable Push-up Lip Brush BkA Flat PBT

I ordered 5 brushes, four for eyes and one for lips. I wanted things I could use every day, so I opted for a variety of types: one base/laydown (J004G, second from left), one crease (G5520BkSL, center), one blender (J5523, far left), and one liner (G5512BkSL, second from right). I'll discuss them in the order I use them on a normal day.