Pavlina: Life is Not For the Living

I am so excited! I finally got off me butt and upgraded word press on my server, WOO-HOO!!!!! Now I can finally make some sweet sweet changes to the site so stayed tuned!

Looking through my Flickr pictures, this was number one. May 2004. Martin was probably days old. Enjoy.

or should I say, Brasil, uma parte. Well, maybe I shouldn’t as my brain refused to acknowledge the Portuguese and instead inserted Spanish which was just as bad as speaking English as I don’t think they understood a word I was saying, English or Spanish. I get ahead of myself.

So, Jason and I were in Brazil for 10 days, without the children as Jason’s parents came over and looked after the kids. A special kind of hell, having the in-laws over who you have absolutely nothing in common with except for their son. Anyway. 10 9 days in Brazil in August which is winter there, but their winter feels more like our early summer so I wasn’t exactly miserable. We spent three and a half days in Rio, then five and a half days in Buzios. I’ll tell you about Rio today and tell you about Buzios later in the month. :)))))

So we get to our hotel in Rio, Copacabana around 1pm or so, the flight was late leaving Hotlanta and we rolled the dice and took this shuttle from the airport to the hotel. The shuttle was kind of cool, it drove through most of the city and I was able to see a lot of the city but it did take forever. We got to the hotel and checked in, it was nice at the Marriott (I cashed in some of my points) and we took showers right away (why is it that over 12 hours of air travel makes one so filthy?) then walked around a bit, soaking up the sites, looking at the people.

We saw a few of these on the beach, this must have taken ages to do and it had an amazing amount of detail in it.

I must include the obligatory beach photo, but this day was a but cool, and I did take it later in the day, probably around 3-4 local time, remember it was winter and full dark at 6pm. Notice there aren’t too many people around.

They also have a bunch of kiosks on the beach, mostly bars, but we sw this guy there as well: I thought it was interesting they had a “Beijing menu” while we were there, complete with cheeseburgers with this weird stir fry on top, fried rice sticks and something else that was weird.

The next day was Friday, time to go to the Sugarloaf. I should let you know that while I love thrill rides, I do detest things that go high and slow, i.e. ferris wheel, Jumbo ferris wheel (the London EYE), cable cars! Yes, one must ride not one but two cable cars to get to the top of Sugarloaf, which is not so bad for those who are not terrified of such or who have husbands that did not show them scenes from Moonraker. Here I am, going to my death, Goodbye World!.

Can you believe I rode in two of those!?! It was well worth the view, though.

One more

That’s the view of Copacabana beach from the top.

So we walked back from Sugarloaf to the hotel, via the Rio Sul shopping center where I did quite a bit of window shopping and we had lunch, then onto the hotel where we tried to go to the beach but it was too late in the day. We went back to the room, got changed and went to dinner. On the walk back from dinner to the hotel, we were caught up in a scam scheme. It was hilarious. Well, to me anyway. There we were walking down the street, and we were accosted by this shoe shine guy who we were prepared to keep walking by but he gestures to Jason’s shoe which had magically grown a heap of s***. Jason stands there while this guy cleans his shoe, and the guy is making a big deal of the stinky s***, using a brand new toothbrush, etc, etc, etc. I am giggling ,then the guy wants 20 reals for it! The nerve! If you ever go to Rio and walk down the Copacabana, watch out for flying s***!

Saturday! Beach day!

We get our suits on and take a walk down to the Fort Copacabana, stopping by a little cafe for breakfast on the way. The Fort was pretty neat and cost something like 5 reals to get into, so a real bargain considering how nice it was. I took a few more pics there.

This was a cool mural at the fort. Anyway so we walk around inside the Fort, no pictures allowed so sorry about that, then contine walking to Ipanema, then back to our beach where there were actual cabana boys to get you chairs towels and drinks and if you have ever been to the Copacabana beach this means something as you cannot move on this beach without getting sighted by every seller of anything you could want badgering you. You can buy beach towels, bikinis, jewelry, food, drink, tanning oil, futbol jerseys, purses, shells, beads, the list goes on and on. We finally left the beach as the sun got low in the sky, went to dinner then had some drinks at a kiosk along the beachfront that night.

Sunday! We did nothing, as I picked up food poisoning at some point the day before, I suspected the dinner, but it could have been anything. We had meant to go to the Hippie Market, but all I did was lie around in the Marriott watching the Olympics in Portuguese, hoping my innards had calmed down before our bus ride to Buzios.

And that is where I must leave as this blog post has gotten very long indeed. More later. Bye!
s\

A small handful of happiness. Sorry for my absence, but if you have been visiting the page and reading my twitters, you’ll know that I was in Brasil/Brazil. I will give you the whole story soon!

Wonder twin powers activate!

Have you seen/heard of one of the newest additions to MAC’s line of lippies? Surely you have heard of this type of long wear lip color. They comes in two parts, usually, the color end and the gloss. You usually have to be lightning quick and very accurate with the color as it dries very quickly and is impossible to remove. I went into this with eyes wide open, I had tried these before with negative results. The color didn’t last, it flaked off, it pilled, it cracked, it dried out my lips, etc. The reason I was drawn to this product were twofold: 1) the colors looked gorgeous 2)two separate men, to include my hubby and a coworker had remarked on my lipstick transfer. I usually wear pretty dark lipstick, reds and berries, so it does tend to leave quite a stain on cups.

So I walked into MAC and purchased the Alta Moda/Hip Love.

I really wanted the Red Flame/orange flicker combo, but it looked a bit too bright for me. I tried it on at the store and was satisfied with the texture and the color. I woke up this morning, all set to try it out. Now I will give you the breakdown as I went about my day.

• 7:30 am I put the color coat onto my lips. They were already nice and smooth, I had put on lip balm earlier but I tissued that off, and wiped a lot of the color off the doe foot applicator, then carefully filled in my lips. I worked both quickly and precisely. The product was nice, it didn’t dry too fast, but at the same time it was not thin and runny. It layered nice and gave me a good even coverage. I smiled big and wide as not to create “cracks”. I then walked around my room for the next 5 minutes grinning like the Cheshire cat so it would dry. I put the glossy coat on. Then promptly kissed hubby and no transfer! kissed the kids and out the house I went.
• 8:30 am I arrive at work having drunk a cup of coffee. I look at the mirror and notice some crumbling(?) around the inside. I hope for the best as I only brought the gloss coat with me to work.
• 10:00 am I have had a good bit of water, and I notice more crumbling around the inside, but it still looks great. I add more gloss.
• 12:15 pm I am ready to eat lunch and have some tea. I am a bit concerned how it will hold up. I usually rub my lips together, but I have held off. Pressing my lips together, I can feel a certain amount of grittiness. Yuck. I eat my half sandwich, and drink the tea. This time when I look in the mirror, I notice some cracking at my lower lipline. Uh-oh. I reapply the gloss and I can’t help feeling that I resemble a porn star with all this gloss on my lips.
• 2:00 pm I have had more water, a cup of coffee. I go to the bathroom and notice big time cracking. I really have to lean into the mirror though, and there is now a clear line of demarcation where the lip color has completely faded from my inner lip area. I ask our admin at the front if she notices and she says it not obvious until she really gets close and has a good look. I grab a cup of yogurt and return to my desk to inhale it. After that I reapply the gloss, which makes my lips feels really nasty….
• 3:30 pm I am fascinated at the pattern formed when I smile wide. You can see all the cracks but the color is hanging on tenaciously and I have had very little transfer through all that drinking. Standing back at normal interaction distance, you can’t even tell and I must say it still looks great.
• 4:00 pm Driving home and I can’t wait but to get this crap off my lips! Agh!
• 4:45 pm Home sweet home. I run to the bathroom and paused to look upon the strange pattern before I glop my makeup remover all over, then add some exfoliating sugar scrub and work it in. I am disappointed to find it has dried out my lips and there is some flaky skin.

Overall, I am fairly happy with this. It did look great all day, but it felt terrible! I can see this will be great for when I am in front of customers all day and I don’t need to worry about my lipstick fading even though I’ll have to keep applying that gloss! I won’t be reaching for it much. I think I just need to accept these products are just not for me. Sorry boys, you’ll have to get used to seeing my red lipstick on cups.

I woke up with a but-raging headache! Oh the sweet misery of it all. Was it my typical hump-day, dread to go to work malaise or was it a large tumor threatening to burst out of my head? I have no idea. Of course the spawn were being quite insistent on making my headache seem worse than it was. Screaming at each other for “touching” or “pushing”. I really don’t understand that juvenile urge of not having your sibling “touch” you. Even the threaten of a ouch is enough to send any child off into wails. I don’t get it. Well….maybe I do actually. I just wish they could not scream at each other when I wake up with a head splitting pain that WILL NOT GO AWAY.

I have a mini-pharmacy at my desk. Advil liquid gels (awesome!), reg and extra strength tylenol, cough gels (dextrothromorphan), Guifansen, Tums, lip balm and chocolate. Nice. You may have noticed that this was one of those mornings I “could not but-to wait to get out of the house RIGHT NOW” so I scrambled out of there like the barn was on fire and zoomed down to work, gulping at my lukewarm coffee that the half and half had curdled in (and I just opened the darned container!) hoping the jolt of caffeine and the lack of juvenile screaming would nurse my headache but it was not meant to be.

I arrived at work after a small detour, and immediately opened my pharmacy (read: small drawer unit on top of my desk slab) and took out: one Advil liquid gel (marvelous stuff) and one tylenol extra-strength caplet and swilled them both down with a gulp of water leftover from yesterday in my cup. I then stalked around the office for the next thirty minutes until the magical meds worked their lovely, sweet, pharmaceutical magic. Nice. I just took a re-dose, as I discovered the headache was not gone for good but simply banished to a corner, but like my spawn, it was just waiting to come back out and make some ruckus.

Oh, here’s a belated, not very sincere apology for not being around. I am sure you understand that with summer and my Wii with Mario Kart, and reading the accursed Peter Hamilton. Sorry. I’ll try to post more, really.

Caught Spam

Akismet has caught 8,894 spam for you since you first installed it.

You have no spam currently in the queue. Must be your lucky day.

Can you believe it? I scan through and like 99% is porn and pharmaceutical related. Unbelievable.

A few months back, during one of my early morning jaunts to the gym. Experienced:

I hand my card to the attendant, but he can’t take it right away. He has to wipe his hands on his shirt first as they are covered with the powdered sugar form his donut. He has powdered sugar on his hands, and all over his mouth. It looks like he was making out with a giant pile of sugar. Not too strange in itself, but at a gym filled with people trying to pound their bodies into shape? He is there at like 7am stuffing his hole with trans fat goodness?

This morning, on my way to work. Seen:

On the way in, near the Safeway headquarters. I see a sign. The gist: Fundraising BBQ. FREE lunch plate with a $5 donation. Question, is it free if you have to pay for it? I do realize the difference between selling a plate of food and giving it away “free” with a donation, but it seems to me that the person getting their plate is paying $5, regardless.

I blinked my eyes and it was last night, the weekend went by so fast. My new addiction to silly Mario Kart isn’t helping.

I bathed Samantha on Saturday. She was “groomed” last August when we boarded her. Since then she has had the occasional brush, but no other baths. She has been getting a bit stinky and raggedy looking, so I finally bathed her. Ugh. Mat city. I felt like such a bad kitty mama. I guess I can’t be perfect at everything *wink wink*. Anyway, I bathed her Saturday and got the last of the mats out last night. I only had to cut two out, so I guess they weren’t that bad. Yes, I was very careful, but I was sweating nonetheless. I just had horrors of clipping her skin so I was very, very, very careful. By the time I finished I had a pile of fur bigger than she was. As a matter I fact I think I hear it in there, meowing! Oh no, spontaneous kitty replication! Now we know they reproduce by fission, no wonder there are so many cats! She looks absolutely fab now, and I am sure she feels much better. When I get off me big butt I snap a photo or three.

I left work in the mother of all thunderstorms. It was MAD rain. I was just waiting for a break in the weather so I could dash to my van. You gotta love those summer storms.

SO I didn’t get much done over the weekend. I have the blank template for the new site, but I still need to write the CODE!!! I am so procrastinating. I’m not really very good, I’m okay but it takes me a LONG TIME. I just need to sit and do it. Sigh. Well, that’s me to go and download a new FTP client.

Hey, I’m still “at lunch”.

So another week gone and a nice, short weekend in front. I love Fridays and the promise that is Friday evenings. Ahhh. Then I’ll blink and it will be Sunday evening and I will not have gotten anything done, Agh!

The man of my life (MOML) wants to clean the garage out. I have finally figured out why I hate to throw things away. I can’t stand throwing something out that someone else, that ONE other person in the entire UNIVERSE who could possibly want my old “whatever” that I have used but is still in perfect order. Cannot stand the idea of it going into a landfill when there is that ONE OTHER person who wants that thing! What is WRONG with me! Just throw it away!!!! Alas I cannot and it drives MOML (AKA Jason) mad, poor guy who has put up with the last four years of my hoarding. He should get a medal. Really. So I am going to buck up and and try VERY HARD to throw some stuff away and try to ignore the ulcer in my stomach what will appear about putting that much stuff into the landfill. I’ve already sent a few things to my Freecycle, so hopefully someone will want some of this stuff. I hope…otherwise we will have a LOT of crap at the curb on Monday…*sigh*

All that perfectly fine stuff, just going to the landfill. Breaks my heart, it really does. I need help. Professional, psychological help I think.