Tag Archive | green

Some PWIs and some reflections on blogging

Mar31

It’s been a few weeks since I posted. I’ve been painting my nails; in fact, I think they are literally the longest they have ever been, right at the moment. (Usually they grow until one breaks, and I hack them all off. I don’t know why nothing has broken yet. Random chance, perhaps.) But although I have had PWIs to do, I haven’t had anything else to talk about, and I find that just posting pictures of swatches is not really as rewarding as blogging when I feel like I have something to talk about.

It’s not like nothing has been happening. Friends have visited for the first time since very early 2020, work always has something going on, life continues on. It’s just not the sort of thing I’ve been in the habit of talking about on this here blog, or perhaps the spark that makes it fun to write (and, one hopes, to read) has been missing.

I don’t really know, nor do I know what exactly I plan to do about it. Blogging is definitely good for me when I’m in the groove for it. Maybe I’ll just… post about nail polish for a while and see how I feel. Here, have a dump-o-polishes.

Leesha’s Lacquer, Huddled by the Heater. A pretty pinkish-copper with lots of bright sparks.
Pahlish, Heroes in a Half Shell. A lovely spring green with lots of gold shimmer.
OPI, Sweet Heart. A mellow, blush-y almost-nude pink. Much prettier in person.
Noodles Nail Polish, Lend Me Some Sugar. Basically a tan crelly with gold flakes. In reality it looks speckled rather than gold-flecked, which is okay but not what I was after. Very thick formula and no fun to take off.
MTK Design, All the Hype!. I didn’t end up getting a pic of this one that wasn’t just ugly. It’s a very sheer thermal jelly that goes back and forth between a bright (clear) peach and a rather dingy (clear) lavender-brown. Pretty in the bottle but on the nail, I was not enamored.

More to come, probably, perhaps. It depends apparently, in part, on the muse.

Shiny green things – a PWI of sorts

Feb19

Sally Hansen Color Foils came out with much fanfare when I was graduating from grad school, and I bought the set of 7 as a graduation gift to myself. (I skipped the silver, which AFAIK is identical to OPI Push and Shove.) These are a very weird polish that goes on looking like a normal polish, then gradually dry down to a very shiny, almost chrome-y finish. There are no true chrome polishes—anything shinier than this is some form of nail wrap or powder—but they are unexpectedly shiny when freshly applied. Weirdly, they are dulled by top coats, so they don’t last long, but overall it’s a fun, geeky effect.

Up close you can see how uneven it is, but from any distance not so much. I’m pretty sure this is Cutting Hedge, unless they’ve changed the names. I could go check the bottle but it’s way over theeeere.

I’m teaching a required undergraduate class this semester, and it’s definitely a different experience from teaching grad students. I find I worry more about being taken seriously when I have painted nails or don’t choose my work outfits carefully. It’s been a stressful semester, partly because I haven’t taught this class in seven years, partly because we’re still doing intro stuff and haven’t gotten to the fun content yet. Teaching can absorb an arbitrary amount of time, so it’s always a calculation when to cut off the time spent on it in order to focus on the things we’re actually, you know, incentivized to do. I try to put in enough time to be fair to my students but not so much that it’s unfair to me, but that’s not an easy heuristic to actually apply.

So… I dunno if I’ll go to class with really shiny nails or not, but ultimately that shouldn’t be a first-order consideration. On the other hand, that kind of thing has an outsized effect on people’s perception of you, which is dumb. I have had several students tell me over the years that I’ve inspired them to paint their nails, or explicitly that I make them feel okay about painting their nails. It wouldn’t be such a strong effect if I had more female colleagues, I suppose. Sigh.