June, 2013 - The Seventh Sphinx

June 26, 2013June 26, 2013

a few favorite summer lip colors, vol. iii: glosses, sheers, paints

Let’s ignore that I changed my categorizing criterion from color to texture mid-series. I do what I want.

Origins Liquid Lipcolor in Juicy Details (w/ gold glitter), Lip Fusion gloss in Boca Babe, Estée Lauder The Lip Gloss in Coralée, Maybelline Color Whisper in Orange Attitude, Revlon Lip Butter in Tutti Frutti

Revlon Kissable Balmstain in Rendez-vous, Korres Lip Butter Glaze in Pomegranate, Sleek Pout Paint in Lava, OCC Lip Tar in Banjee

OK, quickly:

Hardly wear lipgloss but when I do wear it, I wear these ones. I keep thinking I ought to give them more of a chance. They have that summer ease and swipeability about them, and have the virtue of already being in my possession. I especially like the Origins one, sheer with a bit of gold shimmer. Others in this Origins line are beautifully pigmented. Thinking of the red one.

Isn’t that Estée Lauder gloss packaging beautiful? What? Oh. Tom Ford designed it. Genius.

It’s like learning that Joss Whedon script-doctored Speed (which he did).

I like Maybelline Color Whispers more than Revlon Lip Butters. There, I said it.

And I like Revlon Balmstains better than either of them.

The Sleek Pout Paint is intense and exactly the color I hoped it would be. Lava is actually a pretty accurately evocative name, hue-wise.

I picked up the OCC Lip Tar in Banjee to mix with red (so I could determine my own red-orange ratios) but it’s pretty stunning on its own, a vibrant orange marigold color. It would be a slightly editorial look, but what’s wrong with that? In the grocery store. At the liquor store. In line for hot chocolate. Baffling small children. Etc.

June 26, 2013June 26, 2013

on the menu: Paradise Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Kochere coffee

Trying coffees that sound appealing, most often those that claim to taste of caramel. For the last few weeks, this one from Paradise Roasters.

This didn’t really come through on the caramel front, at least not in the aeropress (and if not there, where?). Light* and sour with some tangy citrus element that was maddeningly familiar but I couldn’t put my finger on it (and it faded over time, eluding me). Not artichoke but something like artichoke. It isn’t love this time, Paradise. [I do really like your Romance blend, though.]

*Which I like – a dark roast is too much for me for these relatively early forays into coffee drinking, and probably too much for me altogether, comic levels of dilution aside.

Deciding today what to try next. I am not [yet] an avid coffee drinker but I want to drink enough to learn what I like, and what I like a lot.

I am in good company:

“Coffee glides into one’s stomach and sets all of one’s mental processes in motion. One’s ideas advance in column of route like battalions of the Grande Armée. Memories come up at the double, bearing the standards which will lead the troops into battle. The light cavalry deploys at the gallop. The artillery of logic thunders along with its supply wagons and shells. Brilliant notions join in the combat as sharpshooters. The characters don their costumes, the paper is covered with ink, the battle has started, and ends with an outpouring of black fluid like a real battlefield enveloped in swaths of black smoke from the expended gunpowder. Were it not for coffee one could not write, which is to say one could not live.” – Balzac