truelove's ramblings

I have been experimenting with makeup, lately. It's been -- interesting, definitely. For a variety of reasons, I don't care for subtle. I want it to be *obvious* that I am wearing makeup, that I have chosen to paint my face. I'm not super keen on conforming to the standard forms of femininity, so my lipstick by preference so far has been black and green.

But I picked up a couple shades of red that are -- well, they're pretty damn bold. One's called This Corrosion, it pretty well IS the colour of rust. The other's Undead Red, which is a dark plum that's almost brown. But they are in the red palette so I can get away with them at work.

The thing that's interesting about that is, my work manual says makeup must be subtle. Subtle? Subtle this is not. And most of the women who work here who wear makeup don't wear particularly subtle makeup.

"Subtle" here actually means close to the established norms of femme makeup. How close? Who knows. I mean, black lipstick would be too far of course. But a painfully obviously unnatural shade of something-vaaaguely-red is A-OK, so basically what the fuck. Beauty standards are completely bizarre.

(The other thing that was disconcerting as fuck was being completely thrown by a compliment on my lipstick. I -- was really deeply uncomfortable with the implication of praise on buckling down and conforming to feminine beauty standards. I, uh. I have some dysphoria on that score, sometimes.)

I realise not nearly as many people follow this identity as do my fannish pseud, but if you do and you see this:

Cute fuzzy animals, and funny things that are not racist/sexist/ablist would cheer me up immensely. It has been A Day.

I have a $50 credit with B&N from purchasing my new Nook HD+ (her name is Cordelia).

So, hey, would anyone care to rec me their favourite Darkover books and/or a best reading order?

Some of the idcandy in there is not for me, some of the idcandy is the idest of candy for me, so (to my recollection, Spell Sword/Forbidden Tower are the ones that were super idcandy for me).

I have asked this before elsewhere but it's been awhile and I don't want to go digging.

So, you know, since I'm trying to expand my 8g jewelry so I've got more choices and can pair to outfits and mood and whatever, I went wandering through BAF's 8g section and pulled links for all the stuff that caught my eye. This is basically just a wishlist/reference of the kinds of things that I like in earrings -- anything with a * really caught my eye or is something I am planning on picking up eventually. (Some of them's kinda spendy and/or unique so, you know, realistically I'm not going to pick up all the stuff I have starred even over the long haul.)

( This gets kinda long, even as text, so: )

And then, for my own reference, I want to pick these up next paycheck if they're still available then: Gold Wisteria.

Oh hey, since I tagged this wishlist, a note in general for anyone who might be looking to give me jewelry:

Organics (ie, horn, wood, etc.) are fine, and so are silver and gold, but stainless steel is best avoided as I'm sensitive to even the high quality stuff.

In other news, Ravelry's something I can access at work! I am to be found hereabouts: ftfisher (truelove was already taken). And, you know, if anyone that's on Rav wants for intermittent short form realtime contact with me, this is where you want to go.

It's been several years since I did any knitting. Which came from me wanting to take a break from the big project I was working on to play with some lace or something and maybe doing a shawl, and discovering that I knit twisted or something, that made more complicated knitting difficult for me to pick up -- and the big project I was working on, I loved the effect I was getting, and I didn't want to completely unlearn and relearn and then go back to it and have to twist my brain around. Net result: I stopped knitting altogether. Siiiiigh.

So anyway, I decided I'd try knitting because I really enjoyed knitting as a way to occupy my hands so my brain can work. I figured maybe a scarf to get used to knitting again, and impulse bought a few skeins of yarn and some needles when I was in Joann's last (to pick up some spray adhesive for another and unrelated project).

I thought I might need to watch some videos to get started again, at least to cast on -- that's how I learned in the first place, from online videos -- but I didn't have any trouble casting on at all!

So apparently knitting is just one of those things that sits in muscle memory even if your brain can't come up with how to do it! Because for the life of me I couldn't have even visualised a cast-on but my hands just went and did it for me.

Anyone have a particular rec for an Android period tracking app?

So I've been rereading Girl Genius to catch up on it -- back last year sometime there were a couple of pages that were uncoloured due to something with Cheyenne, their colourist. The thing is, I have a really hard time reading Phil's art completely uncoloured. Well, okay -- if it was intended to be black-and-white, that's one thing. They tighten it up, and that makes it easier for me to follow what's going on.

Anyway, they still haven't gotten those pages coloured but I finally decided I was going to catch up anyway. But first, I needed to reread it because it's worth rereading periodically and also it's been like five months since I was reading it.

I've caught up!

And omg GIL. GIIIIIIL. Omg. Did -- what did the Baron actually do? Omg. GIL. Meeeeep.

(Normally I would flail about this elsewhere, but, you know, I've been rereading it at work and I really need to flail.)

Also, I still ship OT3. I mean, who reads the comic and doesn't, honestly? *waves her ship flag* I want it to be caaaaanon.

Aaaaaand I want Gil to be okay. Omg. GIL. meeeeeeep.

titanium eyelets
silver eyelets

I want the former so I can adapt my old 18-20g wire dangling earrings without changing their hardware. I'm not sure if the latter is going to have a large enough opening for that in 8g, and I don't plan to size up past 8g. But they're pretty and would be nice to wear in and of themselves, so I want them too...

Oh, to be rich enough to buy all the accessories I want. Earrings and shoes, I would have so many.

A couple things: this is definitely not the choice of limited vocabulary I'd probably go with myself for a project attempting to simplify verbage for understandability. But it's interesting to work within.

Also, I made an effort not to oversimplify my syntax which is something I've seen a lot of upgoerfive do -- it's a stylistic choice, maybe, but I think a lot of people are making it unconsciously. And I think it contributes to a sense of condescension, at least to native speakers; it feels like you're being talked to as a small child. Which, I'll be honest, I didn't like that much when I was a small child myself.

Additionally, I defined a few words that aren't in the editor; I didn't use them to further define any other words. I think it's valid because how else do you introduce anyone to expanded vocabulary? But YMMV on that one.

So all that said: ( an upgoerfive text talking about my work )

Permalink to the upgoerfive editor as proof it passes.