The Shiny Uberness Is Here

And, more importantly, in proper working order! I promised before & after pics, and I didn't forget. I actually took an absurd amount of pics at every step of the unboxing & setup, but I won't subject you guys to all of that. I actually got it all set up last night, but I was super tired by the end & then I was gone most of the day today.

Here we are before. Polish all over the place, no surprise. I also have to mention that this desk is my baby, it came in 2 big boxes & I put it together all by myself. I got a really sweet deal on it from a really crappy website. There's really nothing so horrible about this computer, aside from the fact that it SUCKS:

Now, for the picture I will keep near to my heart every time I turn my back on a bottle of polish:

So, of course it took longer than I thought. Not difficult but tedious, especially trying to cram all the related cords behind my desk without actually moving the desk. Pros so far are that it worked the first time I pushed the power button, and the keyboard is really nice & quiet - not to mention the PC itself - after listening to my other one clutter & clank along, the new one's silent presence is enough to put a smile on my face.

Still a lot to do to get comfortable with this new machine, but hey, it's got the library set as my homepage, iTunes is all set up & ready to go with my full music library, and I have successfully both uploaded new pics (which was more of a hassle than I expected by I managed) & posted said pics on blog. So all the important stuff is covered.

I kind of expected that after a few hours of opening boxes & other manual labor that my nails would be in pretty poor shape, but I have to say in this aspect the Flying Dragon impressed me - I barely even have any tipwear, so if nothing else it's durable. Thanks for reading.

~Colette

NOTD: China Glaze Flying Dragon (Neon)

OK, so maybe I'm getting jaded, but this color did not really impress me. Maybe my hopes were too high. For one thing, for something that's got "neon" right on the label I thought it would be bright, and it actually turns out darker on the nail than on the bottle. Second, even though it's got like 2 kinds of glitter in it, it's not very sparkly.

Anyway, here we are, China Glaze Flying Dragon (Neon). Behold it's blurple refuse-to-be-photographed-properly beauty:

If you couldn't tell from my sarcasm, the color is off. It's got some blue glitter, but the base is most definitely purple. The real color is somewhere between the camera flash shot & the regular lamp shot colors. I was going to stick a silver Konad on it but couldn't pick one. I am definitely burned out with my current (8 plate) selection.

I'm also quite thoroughly sick of this no-buy crap. Thankfully, Mom came through in the pinch & got me a present:

Sinful Colors Green Ocean from their Shamrock Collection (I think that's what it's called ... if I'm off, I'm sure you guys know what I'm talking about). My mom rocks. Thanks for reading.

~Colette

Poll #1 Results & Poll #2 Up

LOL, I feel a little slow on the uptake - it's been finished for a couple days now, but I kind of forgot about it. I don't know if there's a way to like embed the poll's results in a post for posterity (if you know, let me know!) so I'll just break it down generic-style with a screenshot:

Kind of a puny poll I know but on the other hand blogging has become such a part of my routine I have to remind myself I've only been doing it like a month & a half. And in that light I don't think I'm doing too bad with readership.

I know there's got to be code somewhere to change the color of the bars, this is so hard to read with this color scheme I'll really try to figure it out.

I was surprised how many chose "Sorted? Uhhhh....". If you can't read the text, it had 11 votes. Only 1 less than Brand which had 12, with Color coming in 3rd with 6 votes.

Now, on to the 2nd poll. My mom (have I mentioned she's cool? She only goes online like once a week & one of the things she does is catch up with my blog) says to me the other day, "Why aren't there any pictures of toes on the blogs?" to which my response was "Because feet are gross." She tried very hard to convince me that my toes are cute (will any mom ever admit that any part of their child is less than cute?) and so I decided I'd put it to the test ... errr, to the poll ... well, I though I'd ask what you thought.

So? Go & VOTE - are feet gross or would you like to see some POTD (Pedicure of the Day) ... or would that be TOTD (Toes of the Day)? After all, we call them NOTD (Nails of the Day), not MOTD (Manicure of the Day). Hmmm... enough acronyms. I'll leave this poll up a good while, since although I keep my toes painted all winter they don't start getting real attention until the sandals come out.

Thanks for reading.

~Colette

NOTD: Cover Girl Chocolate Mint

Yet another tricksy one that is not playing 100% nice with my camera, although I managed a couple good shots. The name pretty much says it all; Cover Girl Chocolate Mint:


Chocolate brown with mint green shimmery duo-chrome effect is what I'm going to describe it as. Sometimes I have a little debate with myself regarding at what point a secondary color goes from being just a shimmer or an opalescence to a true duo-chrome, especially when it's so hard to capture on film. Either way though, this color was pretty enough I only had a passing temptation to Konad it last night. However, after having it on all day, I must confess to being bored. I'm not even sure if a Konad would have helped, but I'll be changing this tomorrow unless something pops up.

I'm actually kind of sick of my current Konad selection. But I told myself I wouldn't place my order until I did my taxes, and I kind of felt like crap over the weekend so I didn't get around to them. And I'm trying to keep my word to myself because if I allow myself any wiggle room, it won't be long before I wiggle myself right out of my no-buy.

The only upside to the feeling crappy is that I haven't been up to anything but sitting & reading, and so I managed to finish a book in what is more normal time for me which was under 2 days. Usually I read 2-3 books per week, not the 1 per week I've been at lately. I guess I'll see once I'm feeling better if I can keep it up. Thanks for reading.

~Colette

Books 11, 12, 13

I've just gone through the irritation of removing glitter polish & will be doing a fresh color shortly, so I'll have some NOTD pics to post tomorrow, but for now I've got some catching up with my book list:

#11
Mona Lisa Darkening
Monere Book 4
Sunny

I needed a break from the Women's Murder club & the stress of waiting for the twist to happen, and this is where I started. Sometimes I lose track of publication dates for everything I'm waiting on, so it was a nice surprise when this showed up on Hold for me.

#12
Bone Crossed
Mercy Thompson Book 4
Patricia Briggs

This is one of my favorite series (you'll actually probably hear me say that a lot). It was an interesting experience of judging a book by it's cover, because the first book in the series actually did attract my attention because of the awesome cover art by Daniel Dos Santos. I figured, they're not going to give the great cover artist to the crappy author, and I was right.

#13
Summer Knight
Dresden Files Book 4
Jim Butcher

It took forever to get this book, because for whatever dumb reason the library only had 1 copy & like 40 requests so I had to wait & wait & wait to get it but now that I've gotten over this rough patch, the rest of the series they have more available books so I (hopefully) shouldn't run into the same problem again.

I still don't feel like I'm back on track as far as my normal reading pace. I guess there has been a lot going on lately, but I've got to find more time to squeeze books in. Thanks for reading.

~Colette