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!

Things You Learn

I'm working on designing an experiment on phonaesthemes and frequency and monitoring and it's all very fascinating stuff (no, seriously, it's great), and I'm using the Corpus of Contemporary American English for frequency counts. It's proven very enlightening. For example, "glowy" only appears 21 times in 450 million words, a frequency of 0.05 words per million, which is tiny. And yet 21 posts (now, 22) on this blog contain that word, which means I've used it at least 21 times just on here!

Apparently, the sources for COCA don't include beauty blogs.

That's all.

Syntax Humor and a Mini Blog Sale

I'm hoping to have this written and posted in less than 10 minutes, so you'll have to forgive my relative lack of wordiness and the complete absence of photos.

Thing 1:

I have a few things I bought during Sephora's VIB sale that didn't work out for me, but that I don't want to return because then they'll just be thrown out and I would rather them find new loving homes, even though it means losing money (I'm such a makeup bleeding heart, Jesus). SO, I figured I would try seeing if any of you want them before I return them. All prices are negotiable, and we can talk about shipping if there's anything you want. I don't have photos yet, because I really have no time to do anything except OMFG WORK WORK WORK, but I can take photos if you are interested in something. (I know, this is the most pathetic/worst-organized blog sale in the history of ever. You're welcome, world.) Also, all "% remaining" estimates are underestimates, because I wanted to be sure I didn't promise more than is there, but consider them all to have (sometimes a lot) more than the stated amount.

NARS Smudgeproof Primer: I really liked this, but found something else that's cheaper and works as well, so I don't need both. I used it less than 10 times on bare, clean eyelids; 90%+ left. $16 (regularly $24)

SOLD Hourglass Opaque Rouge Empress: A truly fantastic shade for a vampy lip, and I love the matte finish, but it dried out my lips something terrible. Others have not had this issue, though, so don't let that scare you off! I wore it 3 times and swatched it once on my arm; 90%+ remains. $20 (regularly $28)

NARS Sheer Lipstick in Cruising: Lovely nude pink sheer lipstick, but it also dried out my lips. 85%+ remaining. $14 (regularly $24)

Too Faced Shadow Insurance: I used this for months, and it worked fine but didn't keep my shadows from creasing entirely. Have found another that works better, but there's still SO EFFING MUCH of this left. Like, I can't even tell I've used any, but to be on the safe side, we'll say 50% left. $6 (regularly $18)

Make Up For Ever Mat Velvet + liquid foundation in 20: A little too dark for me, didn't control my oilies much at all, and SHIT I ONLY HAVE 1 MINUTE LEFT. UM. This one I was just going to return but then I thought hey, maybe someone reads the blog who uses this and would love to get it for cheaper. 90% left, $25 (regularly $36)

Email me if any of these pique your interest, beyondjustbeauty at gmail dot com. And again, prices are negotiable. I hate sending makeup to its death. Warning, though: I definitely won't get these shipped until after the term is done, so no earlier than Dec. 7, and likely not until Dec. 10. All packages will come with yummy nuts and candy, though!

Thing 2:

I'm writing a paper on child acquisition of language (in particular, particle verbs in German), and came across this quote in one of the articles that just makes me giggle every time I read it:

"A boulder is a ROCK? ... TWO names?! <incredulous> ... Is 'boulder' a LAST name?" (Zack, 3;3, as cited in Goldberg 2005:93)

CHILDREN ARE SO FUNNY. (I get to spend my time coding transcripts from this little German child, and they are just hilarious. In one, she's like, "I want that cat to go away, and while I'm waiting on that, I'm just gonna take off my clothes and play in the mud." Logic, she haz it.)

Damnit, this took me 15 minutes. GOOD BYE.

Self-Imposed Hiatus

Alright, y'all, it's reached that point: I have to go into work hibernation. I have mind-boggling amounts of work to do in a depressingly short period of time, and I can no longer use online shopping as procrastination, because the sales are over, I need find no more Christmas presents, and Mint is very angry at me. I'm sure I'll be tempted to work on posts and not abandon you entirely, but I'm going to try to stay away––but don't think I don't love you! I do. And I will hopefully get all caught up with posting and being a more enthusiastic human being once this hellish term is over. Rumor has it there will be a giveaway to celebrate my survival, assuming I make it through, so don't go too far ;)

But, before I fall into the abyss, does anyone else think that "apothecary" ([ə'pɑθɪˌkɛ˞ɹi]) should be pronounced [ˌæpəˈθɛkɚɹi]? Doesn't that sound more awesome?

That's all. I MISS YOU ALREADY.