Tag: Abhorsen

all that jazz?

Tuesday, 17 June, 2008 at 12:56 am

I decided to start a new entry [from the “exactly relative sizes” one], since the last one went longer than I expected. (Why do I always do that?!)

Next up … I can’t remember the order. ._. I’ll just go with Burt’s Bees Beeswax lip balm.

I saw this ad in a Vanity Fair issue (I bought it for a class, but I can’t recall which one) decrying lip balms for using petroleum-based ingredients, and to make sure what you put on your lips is all-natural and not refined rotted dinosaur remains. I don’t remember what product the ad was for. But it definitely hit a mark.

I decided, since I needed more lip balm, to try a natural one, i.e. Burt’s Bees Beeswax. I saw it at Target, right next to Chapstick. The Burt’s was about a quarter more than the Chapstick, so I was questioning the au naturale ideas in my head, especially since there were three Chapsticks in one package, and only one of the Burt’s — pay less for triple the product? Very tempting. But I decided to not be cheap and try the Burt’s at least once.

I have to say I’m disappointed. The Burt’s gives my lips this cold tingly feeling , which I do not want. (Apparently other customers like it though…)

Hmm … it appears that it was a good thing I waited to write this up, because the info on the Skin Deep: Cosmetics Safety Database changed since I last looked at it. Chapstick lip balm now looks more harmful than Burt’s Bees Beeswax lip balm. Huh. (And oh hay look, white petrolatum in the Chapstick!!1)

Well, natural lip balms at places like Lush cost too much for me (and I never like having to touch lip balm to apply it — don’t they advise not touching your face because of the bacteria on your hands?), and Chapstick seems out (unless I can find this Chapstick all natural version), so I don’t know what to go for next. But that won’t be for a while. I can count all the lip balms I’ve had in my life on one hand; most of them were freebies.

Next item, 3Musketeers Mint. I saw commercials for this starting Christmas of last year? 3Musketeers is probably my favorite candy bar. It doesn’t mean I absolutely love it, but most of the time I’d accept eating one, which is better than what I can say about other bars. So when I saw the mint, I wanted to try it.

I found it in the checkout line at Albertson’s here, so of course I grabbed it. When I got home, I realized it’s smaller than the normal 3Musketeers bar, and it’s packaged with two bars, half the size of a regular one. Slight disappointment there, but maybe mint costs more or something, I’d forgive them for that.

When I bit into it though, it wasn’t that great. Maybe my expectations were too high. I think I expected something like a York Peppermint Patty. But the 3Musketeers Mint isn’t as sweet. It’s okay. I probably won’t buy it again. But I’d accept it if someone offered it to me. *grin*

The really rad thing about it though, the main reason why I’m talking about it at all, is the packaging. XD First, 3Musketeers Mint wrapping in normal lighting. It’s got that normal metallic look that the 3Musketeers bar has, right? Then, 3Musketeers Mint wrapping while backlit. Whoa! Transparent wrapper! XD It’s not a good quality photo, because in real life the nutrition facts can be read while backlit. mreh.

Now, I read Wil Wheaton’s post about Scarlett Johansson’s album a while ago … whenever it was first posted. I had no idea what type of music she’d done, but I know generally I don’t share Wil’s taste in music. (I’m more pop and mainstream, although I enjoy rock and a bit of indie music.)

Her album really surprised me though. I thought she’d be doing the normal pop album. I never expected the music that I heard. (I’m no music guru, so I have no idea what style or genre it is or anything.) There are a few songs on there I don’t enjoy, but for the most part, I would buy the album if it cost me $10 or so. (Hm, maybe I should buy the mp3s on Amazon.)

It’s got a nice atmosphere to the music. Not something I’d want to listen to every day like The Cardigans, but in the right mood it would be the best music. Like Lily Chou-Chou! *grins*

So I finished reading Garth Nix’s Across the Wall … a long while ago. I loved it! I read someone’s comment that it’s not as good as the Old Kingdom Trilogy. Well of course. The Old Kingdom spans over three books, you really get to get into the world and into the characters and into the stories.

Across the Wall is a collection of short stories. Short stories are, well short. There’s no time for development and evolution. It’s just a quick event that introduces a new idea and makes you (well, me at least) think about the world differently. I thought Garth Nix was incredibly imaginative with these stories. (I love short stories, by the way. Got introduced to them properly by Neil Gaiman. Read some of Roald Dahl’s adult short stories. I need to own them!)

Garth Nix was so good that I want to read The Once and Future King. I never thought I’d pick that up. Daddy owns a copy (an ooold copy). I never was interested in King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. But Garth Nix has piqued my interest … as any good author should do.

Those are my reviews. The first two were written June 6th; I’m finishing this June 17th.

The remark I made earlier about gas … well the Monday before I saw gas was $4.33. I thought of filling up, but meh I was lazy and as I always do when I’m lazy, I thought I’d wait to see if the price would go down. The next day, Tuesday, I drove by the station again and the price was $4.44. I was so gobsmacked that I didn’t even consider buying gas.

I guess I should have though. I ended up buying four gallons on the 13th to make it home to L.A. where gas is guaranteed to be at least five cents cheaper (oh big whoop, five cents…) and had to pay $4.69 per gallon. Augh.

That ends my collection of little reviews and thoughts.

2005 book list

Sunday, 8 January, 2006 at 12:48 am

Wheee, I remembered to update. :P Here’s a list of all the books I managed to read in 2005 (plus a few from 2004 >.>). (List started January 22, 2005.) I was trying to read 100 books in one year. I didn’t read that many, just half (including the few from 2004 ^^;). Another goal I’d like to accomplish in life is to read 100 books in one year! (Even though that would amount to reading one book every 3.65 days. …Unless I did it in a leap year, then it’d be 3.66 days…)

It’s kind of weird. I look over the list, and I think, Wow, I read that book then? It seems like so long ago… Like The Handmaid’s Tale or The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I want to reread Ender’s Shadow again. XD (Even though I already have about a half dozen books on my to-read list, not including class required reading. *ack*)

Also, wow, I’m gone for only one week and WordPress is updated. Hmmm, maybe I should leave other things alone and maybe they’ll get updated too… (Note to self, upgrade WordPress after backing up current state.)

Continue reading “2005 book list”

there’s got to be another way

Tuesday, 8 June, 2004 at 7:12 pm

Hah, I just realized there’s this option to have people registered before they can comment … and that I had it marked “yes” ^^;; I don’t really know how I’d have people register. How did I register in this thing? I forgot. Uhh … too lazy to go find out.

Yesterday I watched Mean Girls. Mum thinks it was a copy of some executive’s video, and not a pirate, ’cause it was bad quality, but in a good way. Meaning, it wasn’t slanted, and there weren’t shadows of people walking across. ^^;; (unlike Shrek, which we watched Saturday.) It was just fuzzzzy and there was an annoying crackle in the background, which I managed to partially get rid of (Mum: “There was background noise?” ^^;).

I liked Mean Girls, but it wasn’t as good as the commercials make it out to be … :/ I don’t know if I’d watch it again. But I’d tell people to go see it if they’re interested! (And … I’m not a hypocrite; I wouldn’t have paid theater admission to see it, I wouldn’t have rented it from Blockbuster, and if it weren’t on HBO later I’d go through my whole life without having seen it.)

Shrek was good. Not fantabulously amazing, but if anyone had a DVD or paid for my ticket, I’d see it again. >b

Most of my summer so far, my internet access has been subpar. :( Half the time it’s really really really really really slow and the other half it’s all right. One time when it was slow I tried running a speed test, and my browser sat there for about ten minutes (or more) before the site told me the id thingamabobber had timed out and I should check to make sure I met the requirements of the test (cable or DSL access). O_o

Earlier this year I finally managed to get Launch videos to work on my laptop, but now they don’t work because the internet speed is too slow and the video keeps “buffering” or my connection is broken and I have to click OK to restart the video, but that never works and the window just freezes and I can’t do anything with it.

Also, the host servers I use for fs.net (Host Affect) seem to be down quite a bit. I don’t know. They say they have 99.9% uptime (equalling 45 minutes per month of downtime), which means roughly 1.5 minutes downtime every day. A week or two ago I couldn’t get fs.net for an hour or so almost every day. I didn’t think the internet was that slow then, either. x_x I dunno.

I have 21 different nail polish colors. Blues, pinks, purples, reds, and shimmery colors. I also have four clear bottles (one’s this Sally Hansens diamond strength thing, one is a plain clear color, one is Cutex Strong Nail with glitter in it, and the last is a topcoat). Right now I like only two or three of the colors. I want new nail polish. ^^;;; Yeah, I’m horrible all right.

Books I want to reread: Sabriel and Lirael, Crown Duel, and the Ender series. I also want to reread The Sandman series. I also have By the River Piedra I Sat and Wept to read. I just have to finish reading Jo’s Boys. Blah. That one is so unlike Little Women … but I won’t get rid of it, because it’s part of the series. ^^;;; I also have to buy Abhorsen before I read Sabriel or Lirael. That came out … a looong time ago … but it didn’t go to paperback for a while, and by the time it did I’d stopped going to the young adult section. :(

I have ten dollars. I want anime posters, Yeah Yeah Yeahs album, Confidential Confessions 4, Abhorsen, and The Time Traveler’s Wife. ^^;; Good luck to me.

reading

Thursday, 26 June, 2003 at 4:05 pm

We went to Waldenbooks. We got the Harry Potter book for $20. Mommy said Hidek’s gonna read it first. Oh pooh. :b

Blegh, I already have loads of books to read … even though I complain that I have nothing to read. I’m reading The China Garden by Liz Berry right now. I also kinda started Count of Monte Cristo (wanna read it before I watch the movie again). And then there’s War and Peace which Mommy got for me a year and a half ago during Christmas. I think I’m on page 80 thereabouts. ^_^;;

I also yoinked Daddy’s copy of The Other some time last year because Mommy and Daddy were watching the movie (made by Disney o_o) and they were saying how good it was. I’m up to the part where the kid is talking about a big stain spot on his ceiling. Like a page after that. About 5–10 pages in. Ahaha. And I forget when Mommy gave it to me, but I also have The Haunting of Hill House.

And there’s these two books I’m thinking of giving away, but I want to reread them before I actually do, just to make sure I don’t want them. Plus I have Moll Flanders and The Diary of Anne Frank on my to read list. I’m also thinking about rereading A Tale of Two Cities. Just because I got about 1/5th out of it the first time around. ^_^;;;

Aaaand, for the finishing touch, I bought Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere today. Eeeee!!! :D:D I saw American Gods there, and I would have bought it, but the corner of the back cover was bent. :( And it wasn’t a nice crease, either. It looked like it had been folded one way (while being put back on the shelf, maybe), and someone folded it back, but in a slightly different area, so there’s this … thing in it. Yughy. I also saw The Sandman! :D But it was book two. So I no buy. I looked through it though. Looks so goood. *wants*

Oh yeah. The guy at the cash register said to me, “They say this is good,” when he scanned Neverwhere. XD Mommy asked me how I find out about these books. I said, “I dunno” ’cause I didn’t want to think. ^^;;; Well, I heard about this book … okay, I was at thefanlistings.org, and I saw that someone made a fanlisting for Coraline. I thought that sounded interesting, so I went to look, and it looked cool, so I went to the official site (and it is amaaaazing *.* go see!) and really got interested then went to Amazon.com to read more and found out it’s for kids. Hah.

I would read it, regardless, but I’m trying to improve my reading skills. >.> Or something. Oh yeah. Mommy said kids in Japan aren’t reading novels anymore. They’re reading nothing but manga now. I can’t believe that. I mean … sure, manga is uber cool, but still, it’s like … I don’t know. Not as good as books. Nowhere near good as books. Even Paradise Kiss, which I looove (and Waldenbooks didn’t have volume 4, grrr), it just doesn’t compare to, say, Sabriel (another book I’m thinking of reading again XP). I dunno. Anyway. Back to the story at hand.

People on Amazon were talking about how good Neil Gaiman’s other books were in reviews for Coraline so I went to look at his other books. Actually, I just clicked on his name and scrolled through all the titles he’s done and I noticed one called Death: The Time of Your Life, and it had a neat looking cover :b so I looked at it, and they said it was a substory of his Sandman series, so I went to look at that, and that looked cool, and then I went to look at the books he’s written (’cause I was really curious by then) and, yeah, that’s how I found out about it. ^__^ I also realized that he cowrote Good Omens, which I’d read about a while ago because someone was crowing over it in their blog. So … yeah. Hehehe.

random: Simpsons, songs, Parakiss, Time Enough

Tuesday, 27 May, 2003 at 8:42 pm

It r hot, yo. (Forgot how to say very. Uhh … muy XD atsui.) Atsui, yo.

“Wow. Trowa‘s usually quiet, so it must be a good idea.”

O_o Anyway. I’m being random. I’m in a random mood.

For some reason while watching Simpsons I started reciting the lines along with the characters. “Oh, I’ve created Lutherans!” “Must Kill Moe. Wheee! Must Kill Moe. Wheee!” XD *ahem*

“I’ve been taunting them, singing off key … mah mee my moe, mah moo my may— AGH!” Incorrect line. But you get the idea. Chief “Piggum.” I forget which episode. Apparently so do Hidek and Adam. Darn. Darn is a real word. I forget what it has to do with dragonflies, though.

I like this chorus. “I know you are wrong. Headstrong. Headstrong. I’ll take you on. I’ll take on anyone.” Or something.

I also like the chorus to Christina Aguilera’s “Fighter.” >.> Don’t tell anyone that. “Make me that much stronger. Makes me work a little bit harder.” Or … switch that around.

I also kinda like the music video. Don’t tell anyone that either. I don’t like the Asian-ness of her outfit, though. Adam says maybe it’s because I feel like people are wearing it as a fad, and they know nothing about the culture. Yeah. That makes sense, no? But I don’t like the rest of the song, funnily enough. It’s nothing special, and for the life of me I can’t remember what it sounds like. All I remember is the chorus and her smashing the glass and her fluttering her eyelashes and her black outfit melting away.

Anyway. I think I like weird indie stuff. Probably not, though. It’s still hot. Yo La Tengo is in my mind.

I bought the first volume of Megatokyo. Yaaay. No one has Paradise Kiss. Well … that BnN in Ventura had 3 and 4. The Waldenbooks here has 3. The Waldenbooks at the Westside Pavilion has none. Or maybe they have 1 and 4. BnN at WP has NONE. They have Abhorsen though. Hardback still. T-T There’re a lot of books I could possibly fall headfirst into.

Time Enough For Love has gotten kinda draggy lately. >.> Although it was rather funny how he said they wear clothes all the time, even while they sleep. Hah. Funnay. Yeah. And he said clothes say a lot about your social status and what you do and your education. He’s in 1916 right now.

Last I read, he was attracted to his mother, so he cut his trip short. Or … that’s what he told himself, anyway. Time paradoxes, either you have or you haven’t. And his mother hadn’t been unfaithful to his dad, and he hadn’t had an eighth sibing.

That commercial, I guess it’s a car commercial. For the Passat? Can’t recall. He called hmself from the future. But don’t you think, if he’s in the future calling himself, then he’s in a trillion other places at other times, and so would that time or whatever have to lead to himself calling from the future again? Bad wording. ._.

Um. “Regardless of warnings the future doesn’t scare me at all. Nothing’s like before.” Utada Hikaru

I also like Amy Lee when she sings, “Look, here she comes now. Bow down and stare in wonder.”

I wish I could sing. Mommy had this theory that tone-deafness influenced your music tastes. Tone-deaf equals heavy metal. Something like that. ‘Cause Mickey likes tuneful pop stuff and plays cornet, and Mommy likes tuneful stuff, and plays cornet … and other instruments, and Auntie G is tone-deaf, and always liked the harder stuff. That was interesting. But then I pointed out someone I know of online can sing and wanted to be an opera singer at one time, and she likes Evanescence. Then Adam says he can’t sing and he likes metal and classic rock, but he played trumpet before.

I’m bored now. I forget what I’ve said. My brain died. I can’t recall what I’ve done today. Major stuff, yeah, but not small stuff …