Just one of those random life posts
* I friended some new people, on both IJ and LJ. (Hi, new people.) My friending policy remains random and haphazard, and there is certainly no need to friend back if you're not actually interested in reading my rambles. I just friend whoever looks interesting.
I'm still moving to InsaneJournal; LJ's " clarifications" are too little, too late, and they've already proven themselves untrustworthy.
* Today I'm wearing BPAL's Dorian, which I absolutely love. It smells like tea with milk and a hint of spice.
* I did some crazy shit to my hair. A few weeks ago I got pissed off and cut it, like Buffy in Gone, only without getting it fixed in a real hair place afterward. (There are so many things I'd rather waste my money on than haircuts.) Luckily my hair is wavy and I'm a pretty straight cutter, so it doesn't look *that* awful. People keep telling me either that it looks great or that it looks hideous, so I have no idea.
Anyway, and then I made the mistake of dying it with Feria. I tried Feria many years ago and found it completely lame, but the color on the box was so pretty that I decided to try again. Bad idea. The box was brilliant multifaceted red; my hair came out mouse brown. Damn you, Feria! Never again!
So this weekend I bleached it, then dyed it with a mix of drugstore "raspberry" and my traditional Special Effects Blood Red, and left a few blonde streaks in. When I woke up, my hair was pink (the crappy drugstore stuff--why do the boxes always LIE?) and yellow (the bleached parts). So I put in a lot more Blood Red, and mixed it with Garnier 100% Color Intense Auburn, which is a deep red that turns brownish after a few washings.
This, finally, seems to have done the trick--my hair is a mix of bright and dark REDS, not pinks or oranges. Although god only knows what will happen when I wash it.
* This weekend is going to be crazy. I don't know what the hell I was thinking.
I'm seeing the Colbert Report on Thursday... which means I'll have to leave work early to go get in line. I can probably finagle this by coming in early, but it still looks terrible when I leave the office two hours early.
Then I'm seeing Alice in Chains and Velvet Revolver on Friday, at the PNC Bank Arts Center in New Jersey. It looks like it's going to take at least two hours to get there... and I just found out that AIC is going on around 7:30pm. That's way too fucking early. I get off work at 6pm, and then I'm going to have to get to Penn Station, take a train for an hour, and connect with a bus. Argh. Another day of leaving work early.
On Saturday I'm seeing AIC and VR at Jones Beach, which is a pain to get to, but it's a Saturday so there's plenty of time.
Then on Monday I'm seeing VR and AIC in Camden. Which once again means LEAVING WORK EARLY if I want to actually SEE Alice in Chains. I paid ridiculous money for these tickets. *sigh* This one is also weird because the last train leaving Philadelphia for New York is around midnight. I don't know if I'll have enough time to leave the arena and get to the train station, because I'll have to take a ferry across the river, then find a cab or something (???) to get me to the train station, which is three miles away. And if I miss that train, the next one isn't until around 5am, and I have to work the next day.
Damn it, the world is not made for people who rely on public transportation.
* Oh yeah, and I went shopping, in preparation for these concerts, and DragonCon, and the fact that all of my old Goth clothes now seem way too tight and skimpy. (I'm getting ooooooooooold.) I just don't get fashion, though. Apparently the new thing is for women to dress up in toddler clothes? The stores are full of these cutesy little jumper things that would look perfectly in place on a three year old, but are absolutely ridiculous for a grown woman to wear. Unless she's being ironic, I guess, but it seems more likely that these things exist because of some kind of creepy subconscious sexualization of childhood (Exhibit A: JonBenet Ramsey; Exhibit B: Bratz).
Obviously I didn't buy any of those. However, it seems that the other thing in fashion right now is these long shirts/dresses specifically designed to make a woman look round (or, if already round, more round). Basically they cinch right below the bust and then billow out. Why? Who decided that this is attractive? It looks like you're wearing a burlap sack.
Anyway. I fully admit to knowing nothing about fashion, except that I can't stand it, and that my idea of what looks good is based almost entirely on whether it's black and/or red and/or sparkly. But still. Stuff that doesn't make me look like a balloon would be, y'know, nice.
* What else...? Oh yeah, I finally read that story that jaydk recommended. Beyond the Veil. Remus goes through the veil to save Sirius. It was entertaining enough, but ... eh. Didn't hit any of my story kinks, and I can't help it, Remus is boring. I'm all about Sirius.
Oh, and I read Ouroboros by miggy, which was quite an interesting story about Harry and Draco. I'd definitely recommend reading it if you are interested in either of those characters (particularly in Harry and his potential dark side). Unfortunately I find it nearly impossible to be interested in the child characters.
jaydk and I were commiserating about this the other day, actually--it seems like the previous generation in the HP books were allowed to have HUGE flaws that led to actual life-or-death mistakes (Snape, Sirius, James...) whereas the kids this time around are pretty tame and one-dimensional. Yeah, they've got some flaws (maybe Ron has the worst, given the events of HP7) but they get over them and everything turns out okay in the end. Sorry, also boring. I want my characters to fuck up immensely and suffer for it--that's what makes a character interesting. ('Course I'm the freak who regards Jaime Lannister as one of the coolest characters ever, so maybe my definition of "interesting flaws" is a little skewed. All he did was throw a seven-year-old out a window!)
I'm having trouble getting into any fiction lately. I can still enjoy stuff I've liked before (I'm re-reading the HP series and it's very interesting to pick up on all the clues and foreshadowings and resonant little character moments that I'd missed before). But nothing new is grabbing me. :(
I sort of blame this on the general depressed state that I've been in since, oh, April. (Seems like big real life emotional experiences tend to dull the fictional ones.) I'm hoping things will get better this fall, especially with all these concerts coming up, and then DragonCon.
[Cross-posted to my InsaneJournal]
I'm still moving to InsaneJournal; LJ's " clarifications" are too little, too late, and they've already proven themselves untrustworthy.
* Today I'm wearing BPAL's Dorian, which I absolutely love. It smells like tea with milk and a hint of spice.
* I did some crazy shit to my hair. A few weeks ago I got pissed off and cut it, like Buffy in Gone, only without getting it fixed in a real hair place afterward. (There are so many things I'd rather waste my money on than haircuts.) Luckily my hair is wavy and I'm a pretty straight cutter, so it doesn't look *that* awful. People keep telling me either that it looks great or that it looks hideous, so I have no idea.
Anyway, and then I made the mistake of dying it with Feria. I tried Feria many years ago and found it completely lame, but the color on the box was so pretty that I decided to try again. Bad idea. The box was brilliant multifaceted red; my hair came out mouse brown. Damn you, Feria! Never again!
So this weekend I bleached it, then dyed it with a mix of drugstore "raspberry" and my traditional Special Effects Blood Red, and left a few blonde streaks in. When I woke up, my hair was pink (the crappy drugstore stuff--why do the boxes always LIE?) and yellow (the bleached parts). So I put in a lot more Blood Red, and mixed it with Garnier 100% Color Intense Auburn, which is a deep red that turns brownish after a few washings.
This, finally, seems to have done the trick--my hair is a mix of bright and dark REDS, not pinks or oranges. Although god only knows what will happen when I wash it.
* This weekend is going to be crazy. I don't know what the hell I was thinking.
I'm seeing the Colbert Report on Thursday... which means I'll have to leave work early to go get in line. I can probably finagle this by coming in early, but it still looks terrible when I leave the office two hours early.
Then I'm seeing Alice in Chains and Velvet Revolver on Friday, at the PNC Bank Arts Center in New Jersey. It looks like it's going to take at least two hours to get there... and I just found out that AIC is going on around 7:30pm. That's way too fucking early. I get off work at 6pm, and then I'm going to have to get to Penn Station, take a train for an hour, and connect with a bus. Argh. Another day of leaving work early.
On Saturday I'm seeing AIC and VR at Jones Beach, which is a pain to get to, but it's a Saturday so there's plenty of time.
Then on Monday I'm seeing VR and AIC in Camden. Which once again means LEAVING WORK EARLY if I want to actually SEE Alice in Chains. I paid ridiculous money for these tickets. *sigh* This one is also weird because the last train leaving Philadelphia for New York is around midnight. I don't know if I'll have enough time to leave the arena and get to the train station, because I'll have to take a ferry across the river, then find a cab or something (???) to get me to the train station, which is three miles away. And if I miss that train, the next one isn't until around 5am, and I have to work the next day.
Damn it, the world is not made for people who rely on public transportation.
* Oh yeah, and I went shopping, in preparation for these concerts, and DragonCon, and the fact that all of my old Goth clothes now seem way too tight and skimpy. (I'm getting ooooooooooold.) I just don't get fashion, though. Apparently the new thing is for women to dress up in toddler clothes? The stores are full of these cutesy little jumper things that would look perfectly in place on a three year old, but are absolutely ridiculous for a grown woman to wear. Unless she's being ironic, I guess, but it seems more likely that these things exist because of some kind of creepy subconscious sexualization of childhood (Exhibit A: JonBenet Ramsey; Exhibit B: Bratz).
Obviously I didn't buy any of those. However, it seems that the other thing in fashion right now is these long shirts/dresses specifically designed to make a woman look round (or, if already round, more round). Basically they cinch right below the bust and then billow out. Why? Who decided that this is attractive? It looks like you're wearing a burlap sack.
Anyway. I fully admit to knowing nothing about fashion, except that I can't stand it, and that my idea of what looks good is based almost entirely on whether it's black and/or red and/or sparkly. But still. Stuff that doesn't make me look like a balloon would be, y'know, nice.
* What else...? Oh yeah, I finally read that story that jaydk recommended. Beyond the Veil. Remus goes through the veil to save Sirius. It was entertaining enough, but ... eh. Didn't hit any of my story kinks, and I can't help it, Remus is boring. I'm all about Sirius.
Oh, and I read Ouroboros by miggy, which was quite an interesting story about Harry and Draco. I'd definitely recommend reading it if you are interested in either of those characters (particularly in Harry and his potential dark side). Unfortunately I find it nearly impossible to be interested in the child characters.
jaydk and I were commiserating about this the other day, actually--it seems like the previous generation in the HP books were allowed to have HUGE flaws that led to actual life-or-death mistakes (Snape, Sirius, James...) whereas the kids this time around are pretty tame and one-dimensional. Yeah, they've got some flaws (maybe Ron has the worst, given the events of HP7) but they get over them and everything turns out okay in the end. Sorry, also boring. I want my characters to fuck up immensely and suffer for it--that's what makes a character interesting. ('Course I'm the freak who regards Jaime Lannister as one of the coolest characters ever, so maybe my definition of "interesting flaws" is a little skewed. All he did was throw a seven-year-old out a window!)
I'm having trouble getting into any fiction lately. I can still enjoy stuff I've liked before (I'm re-reading the HP series and it's very interesting to pick up on all the clues and foreshadowings and resonant little character moments that I'd missed before). But nothing new is grabbing me. :(
I sort of blame this on the general depressed state that I've been in since, oh, April. (Seems like big real life emotional experiences tend to dull the fictional ones.) I'm hoping things will get better this fall, especially with all these concerts coming up, and then DragonCon.
[Cross-posted to my InsaneJournal]