montage part ii (2013)

Dear Internet,
Below is bits and pieces of entries I wrote and never posted for some reason. They are posted out of context because in some cases, up to years later, I don’t recall my train of thought that started or was to end them. Enjoy them, fragmented thoughts and all.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

localized resource files for this application could not be loaded
Our hot plans this weekend were to separate the whole house cleaning over the course of the weekend as well as do some other much needed errands that cannot get done for whatever reason during the week.
Instead of even loosely following that intention, we spent most of the afternoon doing tech support on my various equipment. To wit, my primary device, my Macbook Air, is seemingly falling apart after less than two years of life. What makes this sting harder is earlier this year, a month after my warranty had expired, my logic board died. Two choices: Pay $300 to ship it to the Apple Depot where they fix all the broken things for one price or buy a new Mac. We went with the Depot option since that was the obviously the cheaper route.
My secondary device has been TheHusband’s old Macbook Pro, which I’ve turned into a desktop ages ago. While it is going on six years it, it’s still functioning like a champ except for two things: It’s slow and the battery doesn’t work so I have to always keep it plugged in (hence why it’s been the desktop). Despite the improvements TheHusband has made to our wireless network since we’ve lived here, my office remains a strange black hole zone of creativity for all of my devices (including phone and iPad). Since the Macbook Pro was going to give up the ghost at one point, I decided that I would prep it to sell to Gazelle or Amazon Trade-In…

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

The minging of the red leather jacket
The feeling of almost overwhelming confidence. Bad ass and dangerous to know.
Association with the past and the properties associated with it (smell, feel, visual, and other associations).

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

invoking the 17 names of kale
On our way home from the cabin this weekend, we stopped to grab a few groceries before finally settling in for the weekend. I ran into a girlfriend I had once ran into before at another grocery store over a year ago and whose name I could never remember.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Eat, Pray, and Pomme Frites
In the last year or so, in conversations with friends who seemingly are also going through a crisis of identity, the one constant that seems to be threaded through all of these conversations is spirituality. Not necessarily a lack of, but that somehow spirituality plays a role, no matter how minute, in what they are currently feeling.
There are those that identify with a particular faith and use that faith as guiding post to get them out of their funk or there are those who have a facade of faith because they feel that outing out their true feelings would be disastrous to their community (family, friends) and there are those who are wandering around from faith to faith looking for one to fit their spiritual needs. There are those who just don’t know what the bloody hell they are looking for. I’m in the last category.
What is remarkable about these conversations is that what is revealed is revealed one on one. There is no publicity or declaration of faith (or lack of faith for the faithless). Some who follow what is considered to be alternative religions have said they stopped talking about their faith systems publicly because they were tired of being insulted and ridiculed, others don’t want their families or friends to know and yet others feel that their private life is just indeed that: private.\n\nI was raised Catholic, went to Catholic school and even graduated from a Catholic college for my undergrad. But I have not prescribed to the faith since I was an early teenager and I’ve rejected most of Judeo-Christianity faith systems since I was a teen. I would not go so far as to call myself an atheist, for I do believe that there is “something” bigger than us for it seems absurd to accept we are all there is in the universe. While I don’t go chasing UFOs, it doesn’t seem that ridiculous to believe that there are other worlds out there that exist.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Of Courtly Love and Bawdiness

King Arthur In Combat, By Robert De Barron (14th Century)
King Arthur In Combat, By Robert De Barron (14th Century)

Faithful defender as you are of those dependent on you, accept under your patronage this book which is published for your pleasure. Accept me, too, as your writer, so that, reclining in the shade of a tree which spreads so wide, and sheltered from envious and malicious enemies, I may be able in peaceful harmony to make music on the reed-pipe of a muse who really belongs to you.
Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain (1136 CE).

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Heritage under a Tartan
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/may/20/the-return-of-scots

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

In which we buy a cabin and the renovations begin
The plan for the summer was pretty easy: First, get TheHusband his summer beater so that he would have transportation while living in the cabin all summer during the renovation. Once we were up at the cabin, then we’d start on the work.

  • Rip up and replace the flooring on the main level and the loft
  • Replace the blinds
  • Replace the deck screen door
  • Replace the front and back doors and screens
  • Retile the foyer
  • Gut and redo the kitchen
  • Replace the appliances from 1972
  • Furnish the place
  • Gut and re-do the loft bathroom

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

That ye mow taken heede, And ben expert of this..This dicipline, and this crafty science
When you find out you have a THING, suddenly you become an expert. Item, topic, diagnosis, interest, hobby, whatever. Doesn’t matter. Take up skeet shooting?1 You’ve now also the gun club’s in trap shooting and sporting clays. Find out you have a malady of some sort? Doesn’t matter WHAT the malady IS, you’re the now the foremost expert even if you’ve never heard of the condition until 5 seconds ago and the doctor giving you the diagnosis has written books on the topic.
The THING is happening to you…

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

For the wont of great lips

  • Chantecaille Luminous Gloss in Lychee
    • Part of a BirchBox shipment, I was intrigued with the color but found against my skin the sample didn’t work with me. The gloss isn’t sticky, but the single time it was worn it did not last up to six hours as claimed. With a $34.00 price tag, I expect gloss to be a lot more than what this promises. The sample certainly wasn’t special enough for me to consider looking into this product some more.
  • Maybelline SuperStay14 in Ravishing Rouge (065)
    • Great color, but does not last 14 hours. Does not last 1/2 a hour. After conditioning my lips (sloughing off dead skin), I used a lip brush to line with the color and then filled in using the tube. Color looked great but was not moisturizing as claimed, so I added a layer of clear, light gloss to go over. My coffee cup looks like it was part of a blood bath and within 1/2 a hour, the color was almost completely gone.
  • Revlon ColorStay Ultimate Suede in Trendsetter (085)
    • A brilliant idea similar to the Sephora Ultra Vinyl Lip Pencil, the product is sold as food proof, will last all day, while it is moisturizing with matte color. The application I found to be a bit imprecise and the color, Trendsetter, which starts out as a great red ends up as hot pink after I was finished with my coffee. This definitely did not last all day, it barely lasted a cup of coffee. Because of the formula, after the initial color had worn off, I was stuck with nearly hot pink lips all day until I could use oil based makeup to take the remaining stain off.
  • Sephora Glossy Gloss Galore in Femme Fatal Red (7) and Glossy Gloss in Night Out (19)
    • I really, really wanted to like these since I tend to like Sephora’s eponymous products, but I could not get over the stickiness of the gloss and how thick it felt against my lips. Even with a thin application, I ofen found I was having to rub off a lot more than I was putting on. Even doing normal activities, like talking, rubbed the glosses off fairly quickly. They are fine if you just want to sit there, with your mouth closed, and maybe even some slight breathing.
  • Sephora Ultra Vinyl Lip Pencil in Fancy Red (2)
    • Another product by Sephora I really wanted to like, and now discontinued, the idea behind these pencils was to give you the control and matte of a lip pencil, the moisturizing of a lipstick, with a titch of shine like a gloss. Except that didn’t quite happen. If you’re lips were not ultra conditioned before you applied this product, your lips started chafing dried bits of pencil color off during the course of the day. And course, even with the promise of gloss built in, I had to apply gloss after immediate application to get the gloss shine and keep reapplying through the day. The pencil was also prone to feathering, which drove me insane.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2014, 2002, 2002