Pretty Sassy

With everything warming up I’m starting to notice that the pale limbs that had so easily stayed hidden in jeans and sweaters are peaking out and looking so shockingly pasty in otherwise lovely summer frocks.

I haven’t had much luck with self-tanners.  Between the smell of burning skin a few hours in and a deep-seated fear that I will miss a spot, skill and courage has not been on my side.

A few days ago I saw the Neutrogena foam and decided to give it a whirl.  The foam seemed easier to apply and the instant bronze seemed like it might give me a boost until the tanner kicked in.

I am essentially a self-tanner newbie.  After showering and exfoliating I applied the foam.  It’s light, fast drying and easy to smooth on and the bronzer makes application simply to see where it’s been.  It also doesn’t smell like permed skin, which is a benefit.

The two downers are that it leaves your skin sticky(like you forgot to rinse hand soap off) and the bronzer seems a bit orange-y and can streak a little making it look like your dirty rather than tanned.

I’m still waiting for the final color to develop and will post more when I know more.

Due to the sticky-ness I will probably opt to apply it at night and wash it off in the morning.  I plan on using it until the end of the bottle, but would love any recommendations for non-sticky, non-stinky self tanner.  I hear some good things about tan towels, but I’m always open for recommendations.

Totally loving International Delight White Chocolate Mudslide for it’s awesome way of making my coffee taste like a mudslide from TGI Friday’s..    Mmmmnnn.  We’re crunching at work, so I gladly thank anything that makes my day a little better.

Last week I upgraded to wordpress 2.5(which is very cool, but I wish I had waited for the next bug fixes to come in). 

If you’ve run into the bug where you can’t upload pics, http://sybarite.us/puertorico/2008/04/18/wordpress-25-mediaimage-upload-fix/

You’ll need to restart your browser and log back in to get file upload working.

If you haven’t upgraded, hang-on.  Give it some time to stabilize a bit.

.You know how it happens your leading your life just fine, trying to get your work done and wham, a song gets stuck in your head.  Images of the Goo Goo Dolls video Iris popped in the movie in my mind.  That night I went to YouTube to see the video and found that the song is very popular with 20-something rocker wannabes’.  I was suprised at the range of skills and styles.  Some performances seem reserved and ready for a church choir and others are ready to overtake the dolls.  I’m not sure why this is such a popular song to perform, but it’s kindof cool.  Like the Kevin Bacon Game or Wisest Wizard cool.

So here they are a very small sample of what was out in the youtube universe:

Sense memory is some seriously powerful juju.  The scent of artificial red apple throws me straight to age 5 with my apple scented doll from the Strawberry Shortcake line.   For me, Ivory soap calms me in ways  only an illegal drug should.

The folks at the Demeter Fragrance Library did something tangled in with sense memory.  They built a huge line of whisper light Fragrance dedicated to sense memory.  The whisper light element is great for work as the scents stay in a bubble that is only an inch or two beyond you.  They are the polite scents.  These are designed to be spot on scents, not artistic interpretations.  So the Frozen Margarita smells identical to what the bartender hands you, including aged tequila.  I was sipping a real frozen margarita and had forgotten that I had placed a spritz of the perfume on my arm and I thought I had spilt drink on me. I took the bottle to a party on Saturday night and the general concensus was that it was a little too real to a real margarita.  However, if you have some amazing memories around ritas’ then maybe this fits.

My hands down favorite of what I have smelled from the collection is Pure Soap which has modest staying power(esp. if you spritz on your clothes).  It smells like Ivory soap and is heavenly(if soap is your thing).

My next favorite is Thunderstorm which a few minutes after application smells like a grown up, more sophisticated Davidoff Cool Water.  On the cruise my Sister in Law noted that she liked the fragrance, but felt I might be the wrong gender to wear it(like that ever stopped me). 

Demeter has like a gazillion fragrances from Crayon to Wet Garden..  What sense memories are precious to you?

*Sniff Sniff* the last episode of season two Sam&Max, What’s Up Beezlebub, came out today for Gametap.  I played the review copy all week on my lovely cruise between fruity rum drinks(which probably explains why it took so long to win).

The trailer is awesome on top of awesome and should be shown to anyone who might be on the fence about playing.

 The episode starts at the gates of Hell right near the “Soul Train”.  Everything is a mess.  Good ole’ conspiracist Bosco is dead and his body is layed out by the tracks, you can’t get on the “Soul Train” because you don’t have a token because you haven’t died yet.  You’re just in a rotton spot.

When you do finally get to Hell, former Dark Lord Dungeon Master Jergen(above) has been placed as receptionist.  Oh no!  Hell has been corporatized complete with shambling corporate presence who plays Minesweeper all day.   The air is hot, the work is never ending and you face a wall of shadow boxes that portray all of the people you have sent to hell this season.  Can you save them?  Do you?

The episode had some really smart writers and people who are gifted at tying a lot of scattered plot points together.  As you would solve the mysteries, you would solve bigger pieces of the plot.  This episode is the TV equivilent of a best of show.  You know the type: all the characters of the show are stuck in a walk in fridge and they remember the good times.  It’s a like that, but with a lot less re-dishing the exact same footage.

This very well could be the best game in the season, but you really need to start at episode 1 or else it loses a lot of it’s power.

 The episodic game concept is great for adults who don’t have the time to devote a clump of 40 hours to a game.

This game has that same charm the Simpsons had circa 1994.  If you’ve been reading my posts and haven’t played yet…  Please, please, please download the free episode from Telltale games and join the Sam&Max cult. 

 I imagined that the TellTale games folks would be passed out on an island somewhere sucking down Pina coladas via an IV bag(a tough software cycle turns a normally wonderfull person into ubserd applesauce).  But with all this batty, wacky and wonderfull wii events going on, that sleep will have to be scheduled for another year.  The wii event is that TellTale has announced that it will put season 1 of Sam&Max on wii.  I am so there.

Then just to make me feel even more happy about life and wii, TellTale announced Strongbad of HomestarRunner fame will finally have an episodic adventure.  You don’t even know how much of a crush I have on StrongBad.  It’s not something I can really get into. 

I just wrapped up my 4th cruise and I wanted to put some notes down comparing my normal cruise line(Royal Carribean) and Carnival.  I’ve never been on any of the fancy lines(like Holland American).

I had always heard a lot of nightmare stories about Carnival being a horrid booze cruise of barely clad springbreakers competing with each other to dive further into drunken debauchery.

But it wasn’t really like that.  I went on the 4 day mexican cruise with my mom, husband, brother, sister-in-law and my 80 year old 100% Japanese Grandma who kept hoping the captain would invite him to his table(and maybe even his cabin for a wild night of Yatzee). 

The mister summed it best “Carnival got the broad strokes right, but missed the details”.

Here are my notes
1. In Ensenada you can buy 3 tubes of .5% generic Retin-A for $24.00 or the name brand .5% for $20.00 a tube.  In the states it’s an outrageous fortune.  You better believe Grandma bogarted one of my tubes.
2. The slot machines on the Carnival Cruise were waaay loser.  It took a lot longer to lose my money.
3. The breakfasts were dissappointing.  Sub-par sweet rolls and bad, powdered scrambled eggs.  In the end we just preferred to have a pot of coffee and a few croissants brought to the room.
4. The lunches beat the pants off of Royal Carribean.  They we’re standard american food-court type faire done really well.  Sure it wasn’t fancy, but it was done well.
5. No ice sculptures in the dining room or bands by the pool.
6. The dinners were very, very good.  The Hot Fudge cake is so good it will make you slap someone.

Overall we had a very fun, very rum-infused trip, but missed some of the extra pampering we get on Royal Carribean.  If we needed a Mexican weekend to decompress I don’t think we would hesitate to book either cruise line.  Of course that doesn’t mean we aren’t dreaming of going on one of those really fancy pants cruise lines.

This is a fancy dressed up lipstick.  It has a chrome tone to it that ends up making it look very sophisticated.  It comes in a lipgloss tube but is definately on the thicker liquid in the tube.  The extra viscocity in the cream gives it just the right amount of drag to make it easy to apply.  Due to the intensity of the chrome I would suggest you buy a shade lighter than normal for every day wear and buy around your normal shade for fancy events.

For everyday glamor I like the Fuschia toned Berry Flashy and I own Racy Ruby(a very, very dressed up red) for more fancy events.

The result of the lipgloss is drama and depth and intensity.  The wear is right around a nromal wear lipstick.  This may not be for everyone, but if you like deep, dark intense lipsticks then I think you’ll really like this.  This isn’t my everyday lipstick, it’s my drama lipstick.

The TV Show Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Graderis hosted by Jeff Foxworthy and pegs a normal adult against some really, scary smart kids.  Like the kids on the show obviously aren’t the paste eaters or the day dreamers.  I’m pretty sure they are the kids with attache cases who say things like “I think Alan Greenspan really needs to do a better job of adjusting for inflation” and actually understand what they are saying.

The video game runs $19.99 and is published by THQ.  The last gameshow-type video game I owned was the cellphone version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.  It was super low-tech, but I enjoyed playing it whenever I had a few spare moments.

My bar for this video games that are based off of TV Shows and movies have historically have a tendency to be made on a very tight budget with really tight time schedules(like this ET Game on a 5 week Schedule that now has it’s very own landfill).  You need to get it out before the craze dies.

So as with any game there are pluses and minus:

Positives: Great voices.  Jeff Foxworthy’s quotes are hillbilly awesomeness(even if there are far too few of them).  The little shout outs from the kids are pretty darn funny too.   The questions come from a massive bank of 3000 questions and we’re really fun.  The graphics of the classroom was pretty realistic and had a very fun style.  You can also pan your camera(the game word for “view”) from the front of the classroom to the back of the classroom where the kids are and there are a fair number of this to look at.  I also never ran into any major gameplay bugs or hiccups.

 Minuses: Look at those kids!  just a wee bit freakish.  The character modeling lacks some realism.  Also there are no two player modes which would have made it much easier for my husband to eat my lunch.

Who is this for: I think older kids would get a kick out of it as would die-hard watchers.  The Jeff Foxworthy quotes we’re really enjoyable and the questions we’re excellent.  The only real downfall is that I get the feeling that the character modelers were really short on time to make their delivery dates.     

Hey Everybody!

I just emailed the winners of the great blush contest(I bet they’ll be blushing soon)!  I used the cold, unfeeling random number generator at random.org to select my winners.  Thanks to everyone for entering and reading the blog!