The Absurdist Beauty Scenario Tag

I should be doing corpus stuff, but instead, I'm gonna do this tag. Look at me, posting again! (Don't count on it to last, though.) You should read Larie, Liz, and Lily's answers, too.

1. You have to get rid of all your foundations and only keep one high-end and one drugstore; which do you keep?

Welp, there's no drugstore foundations that match me, and I've yet to find a high-end one that matches, either. Right now I mix NARS Sheer Glow Siberia (too yellow) with MAC Matchmaster 1 (too dark) and it's mostly okay, though mixing is kind of annoying. If someone were sadistic and cared way too much about restricting my base makeup choices, I would probably take my chances with a white foundation (I've got my eye on Manic Panic's once the NARS runs out) and the MAC. Though I'm hopeful that the new NARS Luminous Weightless Foundation in Siberia actually matches the Radiant Creamy Concealer in Chantilly, as it looks like it does based on Temptalia's swatches, and doesn't slide off my oily face, because one-and-done would be ideal (minus the fact that it's $48 fucking dollars and it doesn't even come with a pump, goddamnit NARS).

And, as usual, I manage to say too much without actually answering the question. Buckle in, y'all!

Lately

So it's been 3 months since my last post O_o How time flies. I've obviously not really been feeling the whole blogging thing, and don't know if that will be changing anytime soon, but wanted to check in and say hi anyways. Hi! Lately I have:

–Been learning Python, using How to Think Like a Computer Scientist (highly recommended; it's the only tutorial thing I've tried [and I've tried several of the big ones] that scales up difficulty at a manageable pace while still explaining a lot of different concepts)

–Been running subjects, and coding subject data, and teaching undergrads how to code subject data, and checking their coding, and working on conference abstracts and running models and trying to write a program to find phonaesthemes in Turkish (I've been running into problems with it taking up too much memory, blagh) and reviewing R and all the other fun things that experimental linguists get to do

–Continued translating a Turkish fairytale (Sevdalı Bulut, by Nazım Hikmet) with the help of my Turkish teacher. We hope to finish the line-by-line glosses by early spring term, and then I'll work on translating it into more natural, poetic English. Having never done anything translation-y before, it's very different from just learning a language! There's a lot of artistry in it, and it's been an interesting challenge. Our plan is to recruit someone(s) from the art department to illustrate it, and then work on getting the rights to have it published. Whee!

–Finished teaching another term, with another great set of students. Teaching is great, guys. If only it paid, like, twice as much.

From one of my students

Holidaying

Happy holidays, everyone! I hope you're all having a marvelous season. I've been absent around here for awhile, as usual, but here's some pictures of what I've been up to.

Final day of the (8 day long!) strike

Lions from a visit to the Oregon Zoo

Hi

Fact: it's been a month since my last post. It's not a lack of things to write about that's caused the hiatus––I've got product reviews, comparison swatches, list posts, and assorted miscellany to share. But the boy and I broke up a few weeks ago, and even planned, mutual, amicable breakups still fucking suck. Add in teaching, research, classes, and general life stuff, and you have a very tired Amy.

I don't know when I'll be back to posting (regularly, or even at all) again, but I wanted y'all to know that I'm still alive and relatively well. I miss you! And even though I'm the most lax commenter in the world, I'm reading and enjoying your posts.

Now I'm off to drink some tea and do some grading. I hope you're all enjoying the changing leaves and the consumption of the hot beverage of your choice :)

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!

Sephora Sale/Spring Wishlist

Sephora's 15% off sale is coming up sometime in the next few weeks, and I have a number of items I would like to pick up. I don't tend to gravitate towards spring collections, because I find pastels boring as fuck (I may be a little tipsy writing this––I got an A+ in my final required grad school class! SCORE! So I'm feeling pretty down with indulging in some wine before heading to dinner with my mother). I'm on a lippie kick, as you may have noticed, so even though there's a number of lipsticks I haven't yet reviewed, I feel the itch to pick up more. Never too many lipsticks!! But after going on a swatching frenzy at Sephora here in Portland (I managed to not get lost in the Washington Square Mall this time! Mostly because I had a map, but still. I am clearly a champion.), I have a number of other products I want, too. Feast your eyes, my pretties, and let me know if you've tried any of these and what you thought! Especially if you hated it. Then I will have one less thing to covet!

I haven't purchased a new blush in, like, 8 months (no, seriously, the last one was in Germany, and I still haven't reviewed it, oh my God I am a terrible blogger), and I am feeling the urge. I wear blush every day, because otherwise I look like a sick ghost, but it doesn't have the same appeal for me as lippies and even eyeshadow do. (Also, I would be remiss if I didn't mention I got a blush from Awesome Larie last fall, LMdB's Echo, which also hasn't been reviewed, so I have no need for coral/warm pink blushes.) (Which is not to say there's not still some of those on my wishlist. I'm not a saint, okay?)

This one is not Polyvore, because Polyvore didn't have Diffused Heat.

Clockwise from top left: Hourglass Ambient Lighting Blush Diffused Heat, Hourglass Ambient Lighting Blush Radiant Magenta, Clinique Plum Pop, Tarte Blushing Bride, Make Up For Ever HD Blush 215, Rimmel Stay Blushed! 001 Pop of Pink

Term Nonsense

The end of the term is nigh, and as I am actually taking a class this term (my final required course! The UO linguistics program requires 2+ years of course work for the Ph.D., because...getting out in 5 years is for squares, amiright?), I have a term paper and am currently swimming in semantics data. So I have been/am going to be even more absent than usual until Thursday the 20th, which is when my paper is due. Not that you'll probably notice anything unusual, given how sporadic I am at posting, heh.

But I actually have a point to this post! I'm requesting music recommendations––I work on perception, not production, in part so that I can listen to music while I'm analyzing data. (I did production work in the past, and even though production is, honestly, generally more interesting than perception, it is an absolute nightmare to work with the data. #overlyhonestmethods?) I like things that are upbeat, but am open to any ideas. Some things in regular rotation at Amy'nin evi include: Vienna Teng (her new album is fun!), Florence and the Machine, Oh Land, Wolf Gang, Bastille, ZZ Ward, Phildel, Bitter:Sweet, and Ke$ha (no, I have no shame). I like things that have clapping (the songs Bedroom Hymns and Working Man come to mind), banjos (cheerful bluegrass, which I know is a total oxymoron and blasphemous etc etc., see afore-mentioned lack of musical shame), and harmonicas (Timber!). I also love Disney songs, some of Adele's more bombastic stuff, and oldies––I was raised on Springsteen (and Jimmy Buffett, but that was always somewhat unwilling on my part). So please! Throw your suggestions my way!

Other random things:
It's been sunny and 65 here and it is amazing but I can't work outside because computer screens don't like sunshine, and now that classes are over, I don't even get to walk around on campus between classes. (I'm going to try and force myself to walk around outside every couple hours, though. I'm always really grouchy when I'm interrupted when I'm working, but it can be really good to take a break and think. I guess I'm learning something after 19 years of this school thing?)
I finished teaching for this term today, and you guys, I already miss my students so much. I had such a great class this term.
I literally just realized that "vapor" and "evaporation" are related words. Native speakers don't need to decompose vocabulary, apparently, or else I'm just an idiot. Both are possible.
I have both Sara Bareilles' Brave and Katy Perry's Roar on my Grooveshark right now, and they just played back to back and I finally fully realized that they are the same song. I mean, I'd heard that they were before, but my musical memory is not great. One of them ended and the other began and I was like, wait, is this a repeated song? BUT IT WASN'T! Whoaaaa.

That's all for now. Gimme your music! And your random facts!

Skincare Saturday: Rainshadow Labs HCLC Super Skin Rejuvenating Creme

We're currently in the midst of a freezing rain storm, which is awesome.

30 Days: Day 22

I applied for the Critical Language Scholarship for this summer to study in Turkey, and recently heard that I didn't get it. Not particularly surprising, given how competitive it is, but still. It's never fun to hear you're not good enough for something! So I'm going to make myself feel better by doing the 50 Random Things tag (and making it part of 30 Days, because why not), as seen on Eye Heart It [and Rocaille Writes, though I wrote this before I read hers!]. I'll try not to repeat too many of Larie's, though I may have been primed...LET'S DO THIS.

1. I'm lactose intolerant.
2. But I loooooove dairy. I use lactose-free alternatives when possible, and yogurt with live cultures is okay, but there is no good replacement for cheese. So I buy lactase in bulk from Costco and live with the occasional upset belly.
2. I have a history of nigh-unsolvable illnesses. Migraines in middle/high school due to TMJ, CFS from high school on, and now a very uncooperative digestive tract (IBS, which means "hell if we know why you're in pain!"). Not to mention anxiety and depression of varying degrees...needless to say, I am very pro-medication.
3. I love babies. Like, way more than is normal.
4. I hate birds. Goddamn crows.
5. I teach English to international students. And I love teaching slang!
6. Sushi is fantastic.
7. So is tea.
8. Caffeine upsets my stomach, but I sometimes drink decaf coffee, as it still has some energizing power. Black tea in smaller doses tends to be okay, though.
9. I hate buying clothes. I do most of my shopping online, but even that is somewhat unpleasant. And returning the clothes that don't fit is a pain in the ass.
10. I like music that's upbeat and/or involves harmonicas, banjos, or clapping. Slow, sad music makes me sad, and I don't usually want any help in that department.

Chop it Off

I cut my hair again.

Snowy Sunday

Another day snowed in (it got down to 0 here! And below 0 elsewhere in the city, which is super weird because it's always colder here than downtown...), another day to play with makeup! Larie requested more colorful eyes, and I can do nothing but oblige :)

I decided to do a look based on snowy trees, specifically the big firs outside my bedroom window. Dark brown trunks, dark green boughs, white snow, and bright green boughs where the sun shined through. I didn't feel like doing pure white again, so it's not as close-to-inspiration as yesterday's look, but I like it anyways. It's bolder IRL than in pictures, as tends to be the case, so it's not something I would wear every day, but it was lots of fun. I also decided to do a red lip, even with the bold eyes, because why the hell not!

Not sure if you can tell here, but I am freezing. It is 15 degrees. And breezy.

Snowy Saturday

We got a foot of snow yesterday, and today it is 18 degrees, so it's not going anywhere. I took the opportunity to do some snow-inspired eye makeup and tromp about in the sunshine (and wear my purchased-for-East-Coast-winters long down coat and shearling snow boots, which was like welcoming back an old friend, ha), and here are some pictures!

Snow is sparkly and reflects blue, so I did a shimmery blue and silver-taupe eye.

First, in the shade 

Ignore the stray mascara, thanks

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope you all had a wonderful day! We had the usual family fest at my house, complete with 10+ dishes and enough food to feed the whole neighborhood, which was lovely as always. I like to take any occasion I can get to dress up, so I did my makeup autumnally: Sleek Original khaki in the crease, copper in the outer half, and Tarina Tarantino Fantastical beige in the inner third, with Prestige Intense Olive eyeliner on top and bottom. Lancôme Hypnôse Star (which I love) on my lashes, NARS Deep Throat on my cheeks, and lip balm finished the look!

I opted out of a lippie both because of the bold eye, and because I knew I would be eating a lot and didn't want to bother with reapplication, ha. I indulged in all the delicious foods, aided by a plethora of digestion-related pharmaceuticals (muscle relaxants help a ton, but they relax everything, so I took a pretty epic nap afterwards!); my belly will probably be angry for the next day or so, but it was nice to be able to join in all the yummies.

Since we are now well into the land of holiday beauty deals, here are a few promos that you might not have heard of but that are definitely worth checking out!
–20% off all orders at Meow Cosmetics with code GOBBLE; 20% off and free shipping for orders over $40 with code lightup; I love their powder foundation, particularly the Pampered and Flawless formulations
–30% off at The Body Needs, home to MAC lipstick, pigment, and paint pot samples, today and tomorrow with code SAVE30; 25% off on Saturday and Sunday with code SAVE25; 20% off on Monday with code SAVE20. I'll have reviews and swatches of the rest of the shades I purchased a couple of months ago up on Sunday, but bottom line: if there's a MAC lippie you've been wanting to try, this is an excellent way to sample a ton of colors!
–10% off at Chagrin Valley Soap and Salve with code CYBERCVS13 Friday through Monday; I probably won't have time to post full reviews, but I really like their Rosemary Mint shampoo (volumetastic!), Goat Milk Honey Oatmeal soap (completely got rid of the eczema on my arms!), and plan to pick up a bar of the latter and the Rose Shea, which is just insanely creamy and wonderful. You can see my reviews here and here; this sale is the only one I've seen them have in the 6+ months I've been following, and it would be a great way to try out their sample bars for a slightly discounted price.

Nouveau Cheap has a fantastic round-up of other sales and deals for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, as does Beauty Look Book, if you have extra money lying around ;-)

What did you do for Thanksgiving? Any sales you plan on taking part in?

Chins

Today, I had a rather unpleasant experience at my local Sephora inside JCPenney. So unpleasant it inspired me to send them an email, and I now await their (hopefully very conciliatory) response. I'll write a post about it once it's been resolved one way or the other, but suffice it to say, it made me grouchy. Fortunately, my bad mood did not last long, as I immediately headed north to pick up my new pets: two chinchillas!

I'm still not sure which is which, at least in pictures. Hutch is slightly smaller,
as the males tend to be, and Lou Lou's ears are proportionally larger. But I can't
tell which is which here! Maybe in a few days.

They're about 5 years old, and their former owner is moving and no longer had the time for them. For some reason, she decided I would be a good owner (I mean, I will be, I'm just not sure what made her think so, too), so after getting Lou-Lou spayed, they are now mine! And they are SO CUTE. And SO SOFT. It is amazing. Hutch was originally part of a pair (Starsky and Hutch, natch), but Starsky died young, so Lou Lou was purchased to be his friend.

Outtake: Beauty Shopping in Turkey

The boy and I found a store with makeup in Bodrum, a week and a half into our time in Turkey. There were certainly stores before then, but it was the first we actually stumbled upon, and he gamely joined me in my browsing exploits. I picked up a number of nail polishes and swatched a lot of lippies but ended up only buying one (review to come!), but while I was playing the boy took some photos with my camera.

No makeup = ghostly Amy. This face = "this gloss is such a pretty color, but
why does it have to have glitters?!"

Off We Go!

I write this sitting in the Portland airport, waiting for my (redeye, ugh) flight to New York. I had the best of intentions for writing a pre-trip post, complete with all the beauty supplies I'm bringing with me, but ran out of time to take photographs (the whole thing is written, though, darn). I'll try to get to it sometime next week!

In case anyone doesn't already know, I'm going to be in Turkey and Berlin for a few weeks with the boy––sightseeing and researcher visiting in Turkey, conference presenting and birthday having in Berlin––after a week in NYC. I'll be back home August 14, but until then, I'll be keeping a travel blog, Still A Hungry Linguist, which you're welcome to follow if you're so inclined, though I'll be posting anything beauty-related on here. Reviews and such will probably slow down a lot, but I will try to post whenever I have something relevant! I'm just giddy at the thought of all the new brands I'll get to explore...

What are your travel necessities? Have you been to Turkey/do you have any suggestions for places to go? 

The Requisite Goodbye Reader Post

Alright, you've probably all heard about how Google Reader is dying on July 1 (that's Monday, and HOW IS IT ALREADY JULY). So many of my feeds have posted about its imminent demise, but I figured I should mention it, just in case one of you has managed to avoid all prior notices. If you don't use Google Reader, 1) how do you keep up with your websites?!, and 2) disregard this post.

You've probably already decided on a Reader alternative, and there are tons of posts out there that give the options, but my personal favorite is Feedly. It's cross-platform and works equally well on my computer, iPad, and Android phone; you can customize how it looks and works; it has its own cloud and can connect to a lot of other services; and the user interface is really, really nice. Bloglovin' apparently also has a full feed service, as does The Old Reader. If you only read feeds on a mobile device, Flipboard was my former favorite, but Feedly can be customized to be quite similar. There's others I'm forgetting (such as Reeder, for Apple, which costs money and which I don't like as much as Feedly anyways), and what works for me might drive you batty. Stupid Google discontinuing Reader (she says on her Google-run blog). Oh well...

Do you use a feed reader? What's your favorite Reader alternative? 

I May Be Sad, But These Dogs Are Happy Enough for Everyone

It's down to the last 2 weeks of school, and to say I am woefully behind is a massive, massive understatement. I've been dealing with a resurgence of PTSD, contributing to the whole massively behind thing (and the whole "I don't want to do anything except stare at a wall" thing), but none of that matters when I look at this picture:

via Buzzfeed, from a slideshow full of happy-making photos

AAAAAAAAAAAH! I'm caught between squealing with glee and laughing maniacally. It's a great place to be.

Now I must go conduct a corpus study in a language I don't yet speak. Oh God. Just think of the doggies, Amy, think of the doggies...

Do you have any favorite cute pictures/slideshows/videos? 

Giveaway Winner, and Preview of Things to Come

Firstly: The winner of the giveaway, as chosen by Random.org, is Lizzy––which made me snort up my tea, since she won the anniversary giveaway last year, too! What strange coincidence, heh. Thank you to all who entered! And stay tuned for an end-of-the-year giveaway in a few weeks :-)

Secondly: I've managed to acquire a number of new lippies recently––a combination of depression and sales led to some cheer-up purchases, and no, I don't regret it: they're all gorgeous, and nothing makes me happier than a pretty lippie (save a holo/duochrome/sparkly nail polish, I suppose!). It may be shallow to enjoy the snap of a luxury lipgloss being closed, but I don't care. I will find joy in whatever small things I can: shortbread cookies, tea, comfort perfumes, and, yes, makeup.

To that end, let me share my new pretties! There will be full reviews and FOTDs of everything in the next few weeks, knowing how slow I am at posting, heh.

Clockwise from top left: Shu Uemura PK 375, BG 935, Becca Berry Twist, Giorgio Armani Flash Lacquer 608, Becca Lip Priming Perfector, Korres Lip Butter Quince, Le Métier de Beauté Framboise Crème, Chanel Savage Grace

I've apparently become a bit of a gloss person, weird. Any you're particularly interested in hearing about? And how have y'all been?