Magical Delivery of Surprise Presents #1

A couple of months ago I heard about this thing called BeautyFix, where you get a box of either sample or full size cosmetics and assorted unguents for $50 about every three months. I figured that since I like both surprise presents and cosmetics, it was a safe bet for me. Belonging to the program also gives you discounts on the products they send you, which is nice…you may as well help people pay for it once you’ve gotten them hooked, right? My first delivery arrived with a wide variety of pretty great stuff in it. The BeautyFix program seems to be relatively young and it does include a forum on their website that’s ostensibly to discuss the use of these products and others. At the moment it’s mostly people bitching about dumb crap. I would recommend this program to anyone, but the reality is that it’s a selection of products chosen to appeal to the widest possible base, not tailored to your coloring or particular taste. Listening to these people complain that the color of eyeshadow or nail polish they got didn’t work for them is irritating as hell, so I’d say it’s best to give it some time for membership to increase before relying on the forums.

Item number one was an aromatheraphy spritz from Kerstin Florian. I keep it at my desk and use a little spray when I’m getting tired or the heating is acting up yet again. It has a really wonderful light orange blossom scent, and the spray is fine enough that it won’t make your makeup run. As all of these types of products do, it swears it will tone your skin and make you glow radiantly, blah blah blah…look. It will give you a little boost of nice refreshing scent and add some moisture to your skin. It will not solve the world’s problems. I don’t think I would buy this, simply because refreshing mists for the workday are fairly far down my personal cosmetics investment list, but if it’s your kind of thing, then this is a great one.

Kerstin Florian Spa Face Neroli Water, $35 for 4 oz.

Item number two was a face serum from Lisa Hoffman that’s packed with all kinds of nice vitamins. This one, I would not buy. It does make your skin feel great, but the texture of it is really not that pleasant. It feels a little bit greasy and the absorption is kind of fussy – some of it will absorb well immediately, but then I kind of feel like it’s resurfacing throughout the day. If I use it at night, I will wake up with nice moisturized skin, but I’ve come to realize that I personally need any products I use on my face to work for both night and day, because I am lazy. If I bought this from Hoffman’s site, it would set me back $95 for an ounce, and for a product that works fine but not brilliantly and isn’t that versatile, that just won’t cut it.

Lisa Hoffman Night & Day Vitamin A&C Serum, $95 for 1 oz.

Item number three was a full size can of Jonathan hairspray and man…this stuff is worth the whole package price. I used it to style my hair for an opera recital this June. I was wearing a full length gown, so we’re talking big blowzy hair here AND on top of this, said gown was a day late from the tailor so I had to do my hair in the morning, go to work for most of the day, pick up my dress, change into it and then go to the recital. My hair stayed PERFECT and not at all hairsprayed-looking, and I should mention that this was my first solo performance in about…eight years, so I was nervous as hell and sweating up a storm throughout. The smell is great, the hold is great, it’s easy to work with and on top of this, the ingredients are vegan friendly. It’s a truly great product and even though I don’t use a ton of hairspray, I’m a convert for life.

Jonathan High Shine Flexible Hairspray, $30 for 10 oz. can

The fourth item, Glowelle beauty drink, is another victim of my laziness. I got a seven day trial kit and I did see a difference in my skin – it stayed better hydrated and felt nicer, but I have pretty good skin anyway and don’t know that it would be worth $40 every seven days for me personally. However, if you have chronic problem skin, you may want to give it a whirl. Lots of people on the forums recommended putting it in various smoothies, etc., which I think would be a big help – I only like drinking really cold water, so if I got distracted at work and forgot about it, it could be kind of a process to remember to drink all of it. Glowelle 7 day kit, $40 for 7 days

I got this Global Goddess eyeshadow in a different color. It’s a really lovely plummy red called Kajol. It applies well and stays put, which is really nice…I often find when you have something kind of gimmicky like this (it touts the inclusion of white tea in the shadow), it makes the product suck, but it is not the case here. I really enjoyed this one and have been able to combine it with a lot of shadows that I have. The natural color lends itself well to either natural or dramatic looks. Great find! Global Goddess I-Divine eyeshadow, $18

When I was a kid, Mom had this facial mask that probably did all kinds of great stuff but MOST of all was one of those peely masks. It was really fun. This Exuviance mask is a return to the fun of those peel masks, and it does make your skin feel really great. Perhaps more importantly, it does not do that stupid thing where teensy bits don’t get peeled and they adhere themselves to your hair so tightly that you basically have to treat it like bubblegum and accept that you’re going to have to hack a giant swath of your hair out. Very refreshing and moisturizing!

Exuviance Rejuvenating Treatment Masque, $26 for 2.5 oz.

I am pasty. This is my lot in life. My family is European Grab Bag with Scandanavian accents and seriously, I spend at least half the year translucent. For this reason I have tried many, many depastifying products, from tanning booths (good, but pricey over time) to going to the beach or pool (good, if I have time) to lotions (EXTREMELY well mixed bag). I generally shy away from straight up self-tanners because I’ve found them very hard to apply without streaking and they often turn me orange. When I got this box, it had been raining for about two weeks and I was getting married in another two, plus it had rained for like, four weekends BEYOND the two solid weeks of rain, so I looked at this Bella Bronze stuff and thought “well shit, it’s worth a shot.” It worked extremely well…easy to apply, even color, and most importantly, the color was very natural. It just looked like I had gone to the beach for a week. I will definitely be buying this product. Bella Bronze Self-Tanner, $26 for 4.2 oz.

The last item I got in this round was a 3Lab Ultimate Lift cream sample, which is actually a pretty nice product but its press is rife with all that FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH type bullshit that you expect from infomercials. It’s made from some damn Swiss apple (it does smell delicious and appley) and of course it makes you look ten! years! younger! and all this. Here’s the bottom line. It’s a nice cream that moisturized my skin and tightened it up without feeling uncomfortable like many tightening creams do. That being said, I am 26 and not in need of a ton of resurfacing so I will pass on this one for the time being, perhaps to revisit it at a later date. 3Lab “M” Cream, $250 for not nearly enough oz. to make it worthwhile for a college kid

Cannonball Read #37: The Vile Village by Lemony Snicket (Book the Seventh)

After the Harry Potter series ended, I was looking around for books with a similar feel to them. My aunt was a Reader’s Assistant at the Boulder Public Library at the time, and she recommended “the Lemony Snicket” books, which sounded like a joke, but since she’s rarely wrong, I went out and bought Book the First, The Bad Beginning. It was in the Children’s section, and it was short. I will take a moment here to congratulate the author and everyone else involved in the design of the book for it’s lovely, quality bindings with ripped-edge pages and sturdy board-and-cloth construction. It’s nice to see any book – much less a childrens’ book – bound really, truly well.

I waited until now to write about these because none of the books previously have topped the 200 page requirement (plus the pages are small, so it really would have felt like cheating), but I’ve read through book seven at this point and I cannot recommend the series heartily enough. I particularly like the tone of the books, which is lighthearted but still doesn’t pull any punches for younger readers. The stories follow the tragic misfortunes of a trio of orphans and do not shy away from admitting that yeah, it’s really sad that bad things happen to nice people and that there are bad people in the world. Moreover, Snicket does not dumb down the vocabulary for kids. I always think this is the best policy – baby talk is quite frankly a disservice to children, as they need adult speech to develop their own language patterns and vocabulary; you don’t need to be quoting Plato to two year olds, but you don’t need to be using non-verbal babble with them either – and Snicket has a good handle on it. When he wants to use a big word, he goes for it and explains it in a way that gives context for it, which I think makes the meaning clearer than can a dictionary definition.

The Baudelaire orphans’ parents died in a house fire while they were at the nearby beach, and since then, they have been in the care of an inept banker named Mr. Poe. (I’m sure that by now I need not mention that these books are rife with literary references.) The orphans will come into a vast fortune once they come of age, but until then, Mr. Poe is tasked with finding them a place to stay. In The Bad Beginning, they are placed with their odious uncle, Count Olaf, who after putting the children to work in his disgusting house attempts to trick the oldest child, Violet, into marrying him and thus getting around the age requirement for the inheritance. Through the combined wit of Violet (an inventor), Klaus (an avid reader) and Sunny (a baby who is fond of biting things), the three Baudelaires escape. Unfortunately, they are escaping to a string of similarly disastrous placements that Mr. Poe comes up with, and are chased at every turn by Count Olaf, who disguises himself as a variety of characters to get near the orphans and their incompetent guardians.

Lemony Snicket is the narrator, and what gets really interesting is the way the Baudelaire children’s story begins to blend into Snicket’s own. At this point in the stories, it’s beginning to be clear that Snicket is more than a guardian and transmittor of the kids’ story and in fact is involved himself. This adds a wonderful amount of depth to the tale, and is way more interesting than many kids’ books.

I have read through book seven and anxiously await the arrival of book eight. I think any parent should consider these, not only for their kids but for themselves, and even if you’re kidless, you’ll enjoy the hell out of these. They’re wonderful, inventive books with great imagery, terrific characters and unique depth. Each book comes in a nice little compact size, too, so it’s perfect for trips or the beach or rides into work on the train. Do yourself a favor and pick a bunch of them up, or even better, buy the boxed set. It’s only 95 bucks (each book costs about $11 anyway, and there are 13 of them, so it’s pretty much highway robbery to get the box set), and I guarantee you’ll want to rip through the whole series.

236 pages

How To Have A Wedding And Not Become A Mobile Episode of Bridezillas

I got a lot of comments about my sustained sanity during the wedding planning process, particularly as we got close to the date. I am not really sure why – in an era where one has access to both Excel and the internet – crippling stress should be mandatory. That being said, the perception remains that Weddings Are Stressful And Somewhat Horrible To Plan. I watched a LOT of Bridezillas while I was getting ready for the wedding (mostly to gloat about how unlike those women’s lives my own was) and though most of those brides clearly have some kind of personality disorder that predates the wedding, it seems particularly sad that they have bought into this marketed mindset that surrounds weddings. You all know what this mindset is – it’s your day, and you are a princess, so you should get what the Bridal Industry says you want no matter what it costs. I’d like to throw a few things I learned out into the Internetosphere in the hopes that they’ll be useful for someone.

First of all, here are some one-off items:

1. A wedding is about formally joining your lives because you love each other. If it stops being about that, you need to at the very least stop and reappraise the situation.
2. If you have become the primary planner of the wedding, your other half likely does not care about the details. It’s not a bad thing – it’s just that they don’t care about the zillion decisions that go into fine tuning a large event. Not everyone does.
3. Figure out what you actually care about, and let the experts help with the other stuff.
4. Keep things as simple as possible, and keep good records of those things.
5. Men do not have the same frame of reference for weddings that women do. Prepare to explain stuff that might seem obvious to you – it might not be to your significant other.
6. Constantly question the Wedding Industrial Complex’s rules about when things MUST BE DONE. If scary rednecks in the woods can hustle up a wedding dress before that baby arrives, so can you.

Now, here’s an overview of my wedding, with commentary.

• We held it at the Harding Allen Estate in Barre, MA. Not only is the Estate beautiful, but their services are comprehensive and accessible. We wrote them about four checks and in return they handled: set up and take down of both ceremony and reception areas, food, drinks, wedding cake, space to get dressed (AND spy on our guests! Huge bonus), all staff including Leslie and Chris the awesome wedding coordinator folks, reception table set up, our family pictures displayed around the Estate, tables, chairs, linens, silverware, flatware, glassware, set up of all our favors and whickety-whack, cake knife, card cage, and the run of the Estate all damn day. We paid an extra fee to have the day to ourselves (they often do two weddings a day on Saturday), and found it well worth it. My recommendation, re: preservation of sanity is simply to research venues and to book a venue that provides as many resources through a minimum of people as possible. Having Chris to communicate with and Leslie on the ground to manage all the details was absolutely essential to the success of the day. I also encourage you not to discount the importance of LIKING the people you’re working with. I felt at every turn that Leslie understood what I was going for and where she didn’t understand the specifics, she was open and willing to learn.
• I used Martha Stewart’s Wedding Planning Tools to track all the wedding stuff. I know many may be Martha-averse, but her planning tools are excellent, and let’s have it said…the woman is a creative mastermind. I got some great ideas from her site. The planning tools themselves let you track guests for any event, including bridal shower, etc. and get reports on them in any number of formats (print seating charts, by gift, etc.). There’s also a great budgeting tool and easy to use seating chart design. They really have you covered from top to bottom and I highly recommend them.
• We did a lot of do-it-yourselfing. If you can do this – or you have crafty friends and relatives – it’s a great way to add your own personal touch to the wedding. It CAN be a cost-saver, though I think it’s presented as a guarantee too often. Remember that your time has a value as well. If you are losing sleep and getting stressed because you have to finish a half dozen projects, it probably isn’t worth it. My Mom put together all of our flowers. Now, my mother is an artistic mutant and can do these kinds of things in her sleep (she was planning to whip up 16 table arrangements on the morning of the wedding), but even if you’re not a big flower arranger, Martha has lots of tutorials on how to do so. I also assembled the invitations using materials from Envelopments, ordered from CC Lowell. That was time consuming but not hard. I used one of Martha’s ideas to bring some of our colors onto the table with napkin bands, and I wrapped handmade, all-natural soaps from Stella Marie Soap Company as placecards (which ensured that people TOOK their favors). I also printed my own programs on cardstock. I’d recommend providing programs for half your guest list – we had a TON left over.
• I had a dress custom made. I went on a great trip to Kleinfeld’s in New York to look at dresses and found a stunning one that looked great on me…for $2700. No matter how beautiful it was – and it was – I didn’t feel comfortable spending that much on a dress, and I knew Rich would probably have a heart attack. It was also a relatively simple design. If it had been more complex, the price tag might not have been so startling but as it was, I thought I could do better. I had a copy made by Bargain Bride for $525 and because it was made to my measurements, my alterations only cost $75; it just had to be pressed, and the shoulders fitted to my own because it was a tip-of-the-shoulder dress.
• The girls’ dresses came from J. Crew, on sale, and they picked their own shoes. This didn’t really save ME personally tons of money, but it made it easier for my bridesmaids. We found some beautiful cotton dresses with pockets on J. Crew, and everyone was able to get them on sale for $100 or less. I think they will all wear them again and they all looked FANTASTIC. I wanted to be my own bridesmaid. I originally planned to have strong pink and orange as my colors, but with a little flexibility we added in the plum color, and it all worked out beautifully. The bridesmaid dresses were the second thing I picked out after the venue and that gave Mom and I a game plan for flowers. In order to pick the dresses, I first thought about the body types I had in my wedding party – I had one tall, skinny girl, one slightly-shorter-but-average-height and skinny girl, one woman with swimmer shoulders and narrow hips, one woman with hips all over the joint, and one woman with ninja butt – and identified the hip/rear region as our collective Dressing Challenge. The dresses were fitted in the top and then had a graceful pouf-out at the natural waist. Everyone looked completely tailored and chic. I just told the girls to find orange shoes they liked, and I was thrilled with the result, since you could see each woman’s personality in the shoes she picked.
• I used Etsy a lot. Etsy and The She Space have restored my faith in customer service. I was able to get exactly what I wanted for a variety of things, including hair accessories, bridesmaid gifts, and my hairpiece. It’s a great artists’ community, and I have found everyone – EVERYONE – on it to be completely helpful and willing to work with me to achieve whatever I wanted.
• I spent a lot of time harassing my bridesmaids and vendors via email. I checked in with everyone to make sure they knew what was going on, what was required and had more information than they might have needed. That way, everyone knew what everyone else would be up to, and I had to do much less last minute planning. It worked out well and we had an absolute minimum of chaos, which made room for more fun and laughter!
• I let the experts be experts. I have never been married before, so there’s lots of stuff that I either didn’t know or didn’t care about. The various people who I hired to help were hired because I trusted their abilities. Our cellist, Virginia Berry, probably still thinks I’m crazy, because I contacted her and told her I wanted the Prelude from Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 playing when we signed our Marriage Certificate and that beyond that, I was pretty ambivalent. She put together a beautiful arrangement of music for people to enjoy before and after the ceremony (there is no music in a Quaker wedding), and more importantly, she was playing music she was comfortable with, which will always be the best. Leslie and Chris do nothing but run weddings all the damn time at the Estate, so where I had gaps in knowledge or concern, they were able to suggest ideas based on common choices. Vet your vendors well and then rely on their expertise.

I recommend choosing a location as naturally beautiful as possible. This means you have less decorating to do and thus pay for. Really, how do you beat this?More scenery that was included in the package price of the Estate. See what I mean about not needing to do a damn thing to it?
Here’s our whole invitation. The center part is comprised of the pink outer envelope with the Kalideoscope paper, orange paper and white paper with text layered over it. In the pocket, we included an orange RSVP card and a Kalideoscope vellum direction sheet. I recommend providing a separate, easy to carry direction sheet so people can bring it with them.
Here is the center of the invitation so you can see how it’s put together – click for closeup.
My dress was a copy made for me by Bargain Bride and I think it came out beautifully. This is The Lucy and I goofing around while we got ready.
The men were dressed by Mr. Tux Men’s Wearhouse Tuxedo Extravaganza or whatever the hell they’re calling themselves now. The women are wearing dresses from J. Crew and shoes from various places. We did our own hair and makeup, and hairpieces came from an Alchemy listing with Pick Me Flowers on Etsy.
Rich and I are saying our vows to each other here. You can see my Mom’s beautiful flowers, as well as my veil from Something Bold and a hairpiece from Liason on Etsy (more on her in a moment).

It’s tough to beat my Mom, sorry. She put these bouquets together apparently through magic and they could not be more perfect. She used roses, alstroemeria, hypericum berries in both green and red, some green delicate stuff from her garden, and tied it all together with twine and wrapped it in ribbon. If you can find someone to wholesale you the flowers (try a gardener), you can get the stems for cheap and put them together yourself. I will need to get a report from Mom on what she used in my bouquet, because there was a LOT of stuff in there and I can’t identify all of it.
The centerpieces were based around hosta leaves from Mom’s garden and hydrangeas from our friend Mary Ann’s garden and also incorporated the hypericum berries. Again, I’ll need to get more info on what’s what in here, but one of the highlights was Mom’s use of curly leaves in the vase itself to add interest.
Finally, here is my hairpiece (also my cute husband), which was a magnolia clip from Katherine at Liason. Many of you may know that I love magnolias. I wanted to have them at the wedding, but they’re out of season by now even in the South, I didn’t want to ship in hothouse flowers and they straight up do not grow up north. I’d kind of given up on the whole idea until a minor veil snafu got me looking for hairpieces and I found this one. I had to have the “it’s not real?!” conversation about a zillion times, and the effect was just perfect. Katherine’s work is impeccable and sturdy, but I think the picture speaks for itself. Now, I can’t make you do anything, but I can tell you that if you don’t go and look at her shop, you are missing out. She makes these phenomenal headpieces inspired by the work of Alphonse Mucha and never, ever, ever in my life have I wished harder that I had $1800 earmarked for pure frivolity. Head on by and check them out.

Hopefully this provides some good advice that will help someone, somewhere preserve their sanity. As long as you simplify, clarify and plan well, there’s no reason to have your wedding make your life a living hell. I’m not suggesting that I was 100% calm throughout, but I also wasn’t in a perpetual state of panic from start to finish. As I told Rich, at the end of a day, you’re planning to feed and entertain a bunch of people (165 in our case) for five or more hours, which means you’re going to have a lot of moving parts and a lot of things to plan. If you first establish the important things and lock those down early on, the rest will be a breeze.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

For those of you not on Facebook and thus subjected to the innundation of my page in photos, Rich and I got married this Independence Day. It was a complete blast and a wonderful day!Huge thanks to everyone who made it out and made it such a stunning day. More to come later, but for now, please feel free to swing by the ole Facebook or check out our wedding blog for some information on the day.

The Latest Word in Stuff I Like

Ah, once again it is time to talk about cosmetics, because I love cosmetics and am also trying to clear out my online to do list before the wedding this Saturday holy crap.

I’ve been trying to figure out what I want to put on my face for the wedding, and in the process have come across some great products. The first one is Dazzleglass from M.A.C. cosmetics. M.A.C.’s stuff has always been fantastic, but I really love this stuff. I am super finicky about the texture of lip stuff…sometimes it’s too dry, sometimes too tacky, sometimes just straight up goopy. The kickass woman over at Apocalypstick Now recommended the product AND a specific color called Get Rich Quick. She described it as being “a glittery copper, and nobody in her right mind would think it would look good, but it magically turns into a long-lasting, super-glossy, plumpifying nude.” It really is alarming in the tube, but I am starting to think that whenever I see something horrifying in a tube, I should just buy it, because guys she is SO RIGHT. It looks like brown with the body glitter you used to slather on with reckless abandon as a teen, but it really does morph into the perfect color when you apply it. I am just going to assume it is magic. I also bought Local Color, which is the pink color below…it’s very pretty but I personally need to pair it with a strong eye.

M.A.C. Dazzleglass, $18

I also got a new round of stuff from Lush. I mentioned getting a sample of their solid shampoo with my last order, so when I went to order some stuff this time I picked up a puck of it. I don’t know what people’s priorities are, packaging wise, but if it is in fact something you care about, these little shampooey blobs are equivalent to about three bottles of traditional shampoo and have zero packaging but for a paper wrapper for shipping. You can also buy a little metal tin to stash it in if you’re travelling. All you need to do is run your hands over it – just as you would with soap – and you have a full head’s worth of shampoo. Guys could probably give their hair half a swipe and be good to go. It’s really fantastic, and I am loving it! I went with the Seanik shampoo and it has a great ocean scent…also good for manly men who wouldn’t want to smell all girly. Did I mention that most of these solid shampoos are under $9? I use either Selsun Blue Natural or Victoria’s Secret So Sexy shampoo otherwise, and it would cost me between $27 and $30 for three bottles of those.

I also picked up a foot mask for my horrid callousy feet. You slather this stuff on and wrap your feet in saran wrap, then let them chill out for 10-15 minutes. When you unwrap them, your feet will be SO happy. They will be super soft and your cuticles will be way less creepy and hard (I could cut rocks with my cuticles most of the time…I do not know why). It won’t moisturize your callouses to death, but it will significantly improve them and I would imagine that if you like using a PedEgg or callous shaver it would make the process a lot easier. I also tried their toner tabs, which are a nice little in-home spa adventure. You drop one in about two cups of hot water, then stick your face over the bowl and wrap a towel around your head. I like to really wrap myself in well so I get ALL the steam seeping into my face. After you steam for a bit, you take a cotton ball and swab some of that water/toner around your skin. I saw a huge difference in my skin right away and at $1.50 a tab I think it’s a total steal.

Seanik solid shampoo, $9.25; Volcano foot mask, $19.55; Toner tabs (tea tree, vitamin C, vitamin E), $1.50/tab, all at Lush USA

Those of you who read these posts on Facebook might have noticed that when I review makeup, a lovely young woman named Kym often pops up all “ummm hello crappy friend, have you looked at my makeup stuff yet?,” except she would never call anyone a crappy friend (even if it was true) because she may be the nicest human on the planet. In any case, Kym is an Arbonne representative, and we met up a couple weeks ago to scope out her products. They have a fabulous and very easily customized array of skin and body products, and their make up colors are just really wonderful and rich. Sometimes you see makeup and it’s that wishy-washy color that pretty much promises it’s going to wear off by the time you drive to work, and it’s just depressing, you know? Not this stuff.

I bought the Audrey eye look, which includes four eyeshadow colors and a liquid liner. The colors are perfectly matched and can be used a variety of ways to change the look as you prefer. The colors, though soft colors in their own right, are strong and have great staying power. I wore this set yesterday. Put on the makeup at about 6:15am, went to work, went out for my little work bachelorette shindig, got home at 11pm and it was still exactly where I put it. What the hell else could you possibly want out of your makeup? I also credit the Virtual Illusion Primer sample that Kym gave me for it staying put so long – I’ve used it with and without the primer with great results both ways. I will probably wind up buying said primer, because it does not have that creepy siliconey feel that so many other ones do and still establishes a great base for your makeup. I also bought a lipstick in Sunset, which is very nice but unfortunately doesn’t QUITE work with the Audrey set, so I’ll just have to wear them separately. A-ok with me! Again, really nice texture on the lipstick, and it doesn’t dry your lips out like so many other ones do.

Arbonne’s got a really great approach to beauty…it’s all based on doing fabulous stuff for your skin, not just putting nice colors on it. All of their products are natural and rely on fruits and vitamins to develop your skin and keep it happy. Please swing by the site and buy some glorious makeup or skincare from Kym! Don’t hesitate to contact her through the site either…she’s a straight shooter and will tell you directly about what she likes and doesn’t like and what she thinks would work for you. I’ll also likely be having a house party with this stuff soon, so you can come by and play with the stuff. I’ll keep you posted, but please comment or email if you’d be interested so I don’t miss alerting you!

Audrey eye kit, $56; About Face lipstick in Sunset, $16.50 at Arbonne

Finally, my sweet bay magnolia bloomed in the rain this past weekend on my parents’ anniversary and I very nearly cried out of sheer happiness.

Cannonball Read #36: The Gift of Fear, by Gavin de Becker

When I was learning how to drive, my Dad very nearly convinced me to just ride a bike for the rest of my life, because he was very intent on the Figure It Out For Yourself concept. This meant, amongst other things, trying to parallel park in downtown Worcester, failing, breaking out into panicky tears because I thought I was going to get hit by another car and die, and having my Dad sitting there going “just think about it, and you’ll figure it out.” This, somehow, was not that reassuring.

I did not die (surprise!) and now I can parallel park anywhere.

Gavin de Becker and my Dad would totally hang out and infuriate much of the world, but in the end, they would be wildly helpful and everyone would be able to appraise their fear and act on it effectively (and parallel park). De Becker’s book, The Gift of Fear, banks on the idea that nature has given us everything we need to understand when we are in danger and how to act on it. I would like to admit here that I am fully in the “we are getting a very long way from nature and that is not great” camp, because it does make a difference in how I perceive the book. Humans didn’t always live amongst cars and computers and phones, but we have always lived around other living things and hazards. Early on we evolved ways to cope with these hazards and other living creatures, evidenced by our, you know, being here. However, as we’ve progressed as a species, we’ve put more and more complications in our way, and begun to rely on reason more frequently.

All of us have done two things in our lives. First, we’ve gotten a bad, often scary feeling suddenly and for no immediately apparent reason. Second, we’ve talked ourselves out of a situation only to have it work out exactly how we KNEW it would. It’s upon these two common events that de Becker bases his book and his life’s work. He is in the business of threat assessment, taking him deep into the creepiest back rooms of the human psyche. In the book, he gives us a lot of advice on how to appraise situations and people, complete with helpful mnemonics and explanations, but I think the most essential part of what he’s telling us is that we know this stuff already. There are several scenarios in the book that demonstrate this, and what makes them so powerful is their relatablity. He talks about those people who are a liiiiiiittle too helpful, the pushy ones who intrude on your personal space, the tiny outliers in typical behavior that set up the red flags. We have to relearn the messages that these signals are relaying to us, and being able to weigh those signals appropriately will save us worry about unnecessary junk and allow us to focus on true fear, which signals the need for action.

There is some really fascinating stuff in here. You can certainly fall victim to reading into his advice a bit further than you need to, but on the balance, I think de Becker has put together a really invaluable manual for appraising fear in a way that can relieve the aimless anxiety so many of us suffer from.

334 pages

Cannonball Read #35: Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand

I have an old school copy of this thing. It’s printed on what I suspect is Bible paper and is in like…size 2 font, and I have carpal tunnel now, but you know what, that is okay. I swiped this book from my parents’ house several years back because I had heard about Ayn Rand and it seemed like A Book I Should Read. I promptly put it on my bookshelf for the better part of five years, until I was shopping on Shabby Apple and saw that they had a dress called Dagny Taggart, which needless to say I thought was a pairing of made up words. I thought the dresses were cute, so I linked Ashley to them because our friendship is based on enabling, at which point she got ALL excited and told me all about how I have to read Atlas Shrugged because I am Dagny Taggart and BOY HOWDY it’s a super good book. So much of my life progresses because of shopping. It’s odd, really.

In any case, I’m not really sure whether I should be offended or flattered by Ash’s comparison to Dagny, because this book is a hell of a lot to digest. What I appreciate is that Rand manages to highlight the failures of both extremes of the capitalism/socialism debate. Her brother is a weak, inept man crippled by his constant bowing to the imagined greater good, while many of her corporate allies are completely apathetic to their “fellow man,” giving themselves over wholly to the idea of the Rockefeller quote about his God-given right to make money, and to make more money, and to spend it as he sees fit. Dagny is torn between these extremes; she prioritizes her business above almost everything else in her life – in several scenes her expressions of humanity are presented as huge surprises to those around her – but she also has clear sympathy and concern for certain people along the way. She faces constant challenges to her business-centric attitude, but exercises Rand’s objectivist philosophy along the way to hopefully come out on top.

I find this particularly relevant today…our political discourse seems to swing between people saying we should drop everyone’s ass in the mud, and people who want to put everyone under the government’s wing. There is middle ground, but it’s being ignored by the Debate Makers of America, and that is a damn shame, because it’s the only way to sensibly patch some of our current problems up (to say nothing of the fact that 95% of America falls in neither camp). Rand wants us to pursue our own happiness regardless of anything else, and to have a government that only defends our right to do so. I’m not totally on board with this, primarily because I think we do have a human obligation to ensure that our fellow man is not starving to death, freezing in winter, dying unnecessarily. We should make sure that there is a basic standard of existance; not a posh house with a yard and everyone driving a Porsche and getting free money every month, but a system ensuring that you have a fair shot at maximizing your own potential. We can’t make up for natural, in-born inadequacies. However, if we make sure that people can get an education (an education, not babysitting services) and a basic ability to sustain their lives, that maximizes everyone’s potential to follow their own happiness. If we maintain a baseline standard of living – a low one, not a free ticket – then we won’t have to pay for things like lifetimes on welfare or skyrocketing healthcare for the uninsured or the general bullshit of dragging along people who exist on social services without ever lifting a finger to help themselves.

I think much of America’s recent problems have come from a lack of courage in our convictions. We’re capitalist, right? Capitalism rewards those who make a valuable, solid product (or at least who can sell it as such). This means that there is naturally an inferior product behind the leader. This is why I hate those GM commericals so much…don’t spend your fucking ill-gotten gains on telling me how Totally Freaking Sweet the new GM is, how about making a better fucking product? Invest in your damn R&D and perhaps in asking people what they actually want to drive periodically. Notice what the Japanese carmakers did? People wanted to blow less on their gas, so the Japanese companies made smaller cars that were more efficient. American automakers made SUVs. What the hell? Let those companies die that can’t survive. Instead, we’ve obligated ourselves to keeping these people on corporate welfare. They’re going to die someday, guys. They haven’t changed their business plan, they just upped their advertising budget. We can either blow a ton of money on prolonging the process, or we can let them fail, deal with the relatively short period of suck, and then rebuild something with the information we learned. I don’t know about you all, but I’d rather just let them fail so someone who makes something useful that works can take the new place on top. If we believe in capitalism, we need to let it work. I believe in true capitalism. I think the problem is when we freak out and interfere with its natural progession. Make decisions and stick with them.

So, okay, it’s a decent book. It’s not the best written – it’s pretty good, but it has a couple of my least favorite quirks, including some long ass speechifying (and from someone who just unleased a babble about Japanese and American car companies in a book review, I think you can figure out the level of speechifying we’re dealing with here) and repetitive description – but it WILL make you think, and I think it directs your thoughts towards particularly relevant matters for this moment in history. However, get a newer version that has font bigger than “fine print usually reserved for legalese.” And a wrist support.

1088 pages

Cannonball Read #34: The Culture of Fashion, by Christopher Breward

I have mentioned Harvey Mansfield a couple times in this space, particularly his essays on formalism, which as we know, Americans tend to hate with a burning passion. He explains that rather than being a cover up of some kind as we often think, our fashion highlights what we feel is important. Think about when you dress up…several events will be immediately clear – weddings, graduations, birthdays, Big Life Events. But even when you’re getting dressed for a Friday night out, you pay attention to what you’re wearing. You know that you’re headed out into the world, where most of the people there are not likely to know you, so you dress in a way that projects what you’d like people to know about you. This same idea carries over into your facial expressions, gait, posture, etc…it’s all in the service of showing people how you feel about yourself.

Christopher Breward is an English fashion historian, and in this fairly slim book, he rips through about 600 years of fashion. He follows changing silhouettes, fabrics, aesthetics and trends, winding a thread through it all and landing us in modern times (in context, the 1990s). Of particular interest is his focus on men’s clothing and on the recycling of forms and trends. As with so many other areas of our lives – art, music, literature – there is little that is truly new. The arts come from and connect with a certain basic humanity and from there it’s mostly a matter of interpretation. Though the big design houses and labels would have you believe otherwise, fashion is one of the few arts left mostly to the layperson; though the runways of Milan and New York may purport to lead the way, it’s the kids in the streets and the women sick of the same shapes and the men tired of the same damn tie that revolutionize fashion and keep it in perpetual motion.

Breward’s book is truly a history and he doesn’t address a lot of this more philosophical discussion, but if one is invested with a decent grasp of world history, it’s easy to line up sea changes in fashion with major historical events and political shifts. I find it interesting to see how dramatically fashion has shifted while still remaining somewhat the same, but for me this book is more of a platform from which to consider some of these larger issues. If you need evidence that we use fashion to project political and social images, one need look no further than the American 60s, but you can also turn on the TV and watch the way Iranians have chosen to express their dawning political dissent – by protesting yes, but also by tying green bands around their arms and heads. This is fashion in its roughest form, but it is essential to our understanding of how image, clothing and presentation affect the way we approach the world.

Not a bad book, not a complete book, but worth your time and a fun way to kill a few hours.

244 pages

Cannonball Read #33: The Golden Compass, by Phillip Pullman

I don’t really think of myself as a big fan of fantasy writing. I originally started out saying I am not a fan, period, but I think it’s more of a ratio problem; in fantasy writing and romance novels there seems to be an abundance of godawful tripe. My best guess is that works based on events, time periods, etc., are beginning with a story interesting enough to make at least one person write about it, so the key is making it accessible and presenting it beautifully. Fantasy novels in particular often involve whole new worlds, so you’re doubling your challenge – you have to make a coherent, well ordered world, social structure, etc., and THEN create a compelling story inside of whatever you’ve built.

The Golden Compass is a great read, and I like it so much because its universe is a sort of pivot table linked to our own. Much like the Harry Potter series, it simply puts a mystical overlay on our everyday environment, and this allows you to get into the world of the book quickly and thoroughly. You can easily picture the characters’ surroundings and understand their social behaviors. The use of this tactic made it very easy for me to get right over my normal hangups about fantasy writing and into the story.

Lyra is the heroine of the book and is just as relatable as the setting…you know this kid. She’s smart, feisty, stubborn and curious, and she finds herself at the center of a huge mystery that reaches far beyond her locale. In pursuit of the meaning of “Dust,” a strange substance swirling around and particularly visible near the Aurora Borealis, there is all kinds of academic research and squabbling, some of which is a set of very scary experiments which separate children from their daemons (Pullman’s literal interpretation of the soul). These daemons are humans’ companions and compatriots, capable of real action but always tied to their human’s thoughts and physical bodies. Children’s daemons can change shape, but at a certain point, everyone’s daemon loses this ability and assumes a permanent form. The academics and thugs engaged in these experiments think that this shapeshifting ability might have something to do with Dust.

Lyra teams up with a motley crew as she travels north to the site of these experiments. Along the way, she is menaced by various insidious characters and must face some troubling realities about what she thought she knew. Guided by the alethiometer – the golden compass of the title – she is able to see not just the future but the present. Her ability to do so hints at her personal significance, which does not escape the notice of her fellow travellers or their allies abroad.

You can’t really talk about this book without mentioning the CS Lewis connection and the atheist angle. I think the greatest tribute you can pay to this book is to say that the atheist bent is certainly there, but that the story stands on its own as an enjoyable, well wrought piece of fiction. You can say the same about the Narnia books…I loved those books when I was growing up, and didn’t know or care about the Christian message therein until I was much older. I should note, too, that I don’t find the atheist bent nearly as strong nor as offensive as many critics have. That can probably be chalked up to a certain kind of religious person who is constantly looking for affronts to their faith (Secret: Your faith is your faith. If someone else doesn’t believe the same thing, that does not hurt you.). That all being said, there are many supplementary books that have sprung up around The Golden Compass and the rest of the series, analysing the philosophy and religion of the books, and I plan to check them out. Pullman has produced an entertaining book that nonetheless is both broad and deep, and I’d be interested in exploring it further.

399 pages

Housekeeping Notes: Hockey Season

Hey all,

I’m adding three links to the already ridiculous blogroll over there on the right. Hockey’s over – go Pens – but this has been a phenomenal season for a variety of reasons. Let’s just do a little recap.

1. Got to hit up the Sharks/Bruins game when San Jose came out to Boston this season. You don’t get to see the Sharks and B’s play very often since they’re so far apart, and this game was even more exciting because at the time, the two opponents were number one in their respective conferences. We put up with a lot of trash talk from bandwagon fans, but were vindicated in a.) the fact that the Sharks beat the Bruins, and b.) the spectacle of a cop basically hurling one of said idiot fans into a wall for being obnoxious and bellowing “get outta here, go HOME” at him.

2. We also made it up to Montreal this year to see the Sharks play the Habs. There is nothing – NOTHING – like watching a game in the Bell Center, and being there in the Habs’ 100th season was truly special. We had such an amazing time in Montreal…thumbs up for Hurley’s, Sir Winston Churchill’s, McLean’s Pub, The Second Cup, Timmy Ho’s, La Cage Aux Sports, La Maison VIP, McDonald’s when McDonald’s is giving out mini Carey Prices, crazy ass taxi drivers of Montreal and above all, Spa Eastman. I go to Spa Eastman whenever we go up north and they do such amazing work. Not only are their aestheticians phenomenal, but their location is on the sixteenth floor looking out over McGill University and is so unbelievably relaxing. Moreover, I was up there with Rich and a kickass woman I’m gonna talk to you about in a sec.3. The AHL All Star Classic was in Worcester this year.After a ton of work and coordination, the weekend finally rolled around about thirty seconds after I’d returned from the Inaguration in DC. We made a lot of new friends, particularly as we were picking the players, executives and mascots up at the area airports.Making important business contacts

It was a spectacular event brilliantly executed. The hockey season brings its stresses, but at the end of the day, we all know that the folks in the front office of the Worcester Sharks are super goddamn talented. It was a real treat to see that become apparent to the entire AHL. They had a great party after the Skills Competition at beautiful Mechanics Hall, which featured U2 cover band Joshua Tree and the NHL Skills Comp on the giant screen.Now, I don’t mean to malign any of the people we picked up at the airport – they were all super friendly and fun to meet – but Rich and I got an even more exciting opportunity. We went to pick up the Stanley Cup and its escort, Mike Bolt, from Logan Airport.Saw Zdeno Chara and Marc Savard in bag claim along with San Jose Sharks GM Doug Wilson in bag claim; the Cup was coming back from the NHL All Star Classic in Montreal, so all these folks were coming from the same place.Here we are with the Stanley Cup in the back of the truck. Mike was a really interesting guy, even though he was completely exhausted. We can put the rumors that the Cup travels in its own seat to rest – it gets checked in a giant toughcase. I’m a little sad that all the pictures of me with the cup feature the most cracked out hair I’ve sported in the history of ever, but the fact remains that I’m right there with the Cup and that is the shit.
I loved the practice jerseys they worked up for the All Star season and of course I got Patrick Traverse’s. Our friend and community liason dude Mike Myers designed that kickass logo – how cool is that? He is so talented. Besides doing a million things in the Sharks’ front office, he also designs these freaking glorious goalie masks and bikes competitively. I don’t think he sleeps. In any case, let’s talk about the awesomeness on the loose that weekend, in the form of these fine bitches right here:That would be me, Trish (a school friend of whose awesomeness I was already aware) and Joanne. Rich kept running in to these two chicks from San Jose, and we finally all met up before the All Star Game itself at the hospitality room the Booster Club was running. Jenna and Joanne were out to cover the ASC for the San Jose community, and they were so goddamn fun it was hard to stand. Joanne might be my long lost sister, I’m not sure. So you’ve now got these two gorgeous babes on the loose, and even better, they’re smart as hell and love hockey. They really made the weekend.

The additions I’m making to the blog roll are their blogs, plus a friend of theirs’ who Joanne recommended. Joanne writes Ten Minute Missconduct and Jenna writes OverJennaRated. Check ‘em out and give ‘em some love.