… but at least it ended in a fun relaxed manner.

** A warning - this is a totally girlie shopping entry. I’m truly not this vapid. There was research involved, as well as a certain appreciation for artistry and color!

I drove into work in an attempt to get there early and catch up for not being there yesterday. Of course, this plan was thwarted - not by bad highway traffic, but by the public works department of Hoboken, NJ. They blocked off any and all streets I needed to get to work or to the parking deck across the street from work. I circled (squared?) around the blocks surrounding work trying to find a one-way street that would get me where I needed to go.

There wasn’t any, but there WAS a police officer who took a momentary break from flirting with a youngish woman walking her bulldog to direct me the wrong way onto a one-way street which was closed off at the other end and could safely be driven on the “wrong” way. This allowed me to park and get into work. It still took me a full half hour to get from the highway exit for Hoboken to my desk. Pathetic. Infuriating.

I had a lot to catch up on and a LOT to do. That was at least good because I felt extremely productive and had a nice little dose of positive stress. I work well under pressure, so it wasn’t a bad thing. The pressure and stress of driving home was the negative kind, though, so I wasn’t in the best of moods when I got home… but my friend Theresa was waiting for me since she was going to accompany me on a trip to buy foodstuff for Saturday’s BBQ.

We went out for Indian food beforehand and by the time I finished, I had decided that I just wanted to take it easy and not deal with long lines and tons of people at the crazy warehouse superstore. Instead, I wanted a nice relaxing trip to … the mall. I hadn’t been there in many many moons (as was quickly evidenced by the plethora of new stores I’d never seen before) but Sephora was where I’d left it.

I went in looking for a shade of Nars lipstick called “Dolce Vita”. It was listed as a good color for people with very fair skin (me) by a makeup artist in a little magazine blurb in InStyle magazine. Since the same makeup artist recommended Nars “Orgasm” blush - which I use and find very flattering to my skintone - I decided to give it a shot and indulge. Sephora - incredibly - was out of stock on the shade. I bought a palette of Urban Decay eyeshadow instead.

I love their eyeshadows because they are so richly pigmented and their glittery or shimmery shades retain their glitteriness and shimmeriness. I also love Nars eyeshadows, but they’re a good deal more expensive… but also much more highly pigmented and they pack a punch of color. They have an incredibly diverse and expansive color palette, too, with shades for women of all ages, skin tones and styles. Urban Decay is a little more limited to young women with a certain degree of funk in their style. I am a young woman with a certain degree of funk in my style. Not a bad nasty funk. A fairly cool funk.

My mother and my sister are watching “Brokeback Mountain.” My brother is sitting in his room asserting his heterosexuality. I’m going to watch some MST3K - “Hercules Against the Moon Men.”

These are the moments that still let me feel like a Renaissance woman… buying girlie makeup, coming home to play with makeup and watch MST3K, and then read a memoir of mental illness (”Nervous System: Or, Losing My Mind in Literature” by Jan Lars Jensen).