Y'all. Do you watch that show, Style By Jury? I have never seen it, so I may have the wrong impression here. But this happened to me today.

So I'm zipping through the mall, trying to get from my store to our stockroom in less than ten minutes, when some woman comes click-click-clicking after me in heels, hollering, "Excuse me! Excuse me, miss!" Thinking that my dress was tucked into the back of my tights or something, I whirled around and immediately looked down at myself to make sure I wasn't exposing my new underwear with the umbrellas to everyone in the Eaton Centre. I wasn't, but this lady runs up to me and hands me a flyer.

Lady: Hi there! I've been calling you forever since you went flying past me at our booth outside of Sears! Could I ask you a few questions?

Me: Er... sure.

Lady: Great! Do you know the show Style By Jury at all?

Me: Not remotely!

Lady: Haha, okay. It's on the W network every Tuesday evening. It's a makeover show! We're here recruiting for candidates for the upcoming season. Women and men undergo a seven-day transformation on the show with all sorts of things like dental implants, Botox, clothing, makeup...

Me: (totally interrupting) Wait a minute. You think I need a makeover?

Lady: No! No, not at all!

Me: Oh my god! You think I need a makeover!

Lady: Of course not! No, they wouldn't even accept you as a candidate! I was talking about you being one of the judges! You have a very unique style and you obviously have a really individual look...

She kept saying the words "unique" and "striking". You know, the kind of words people use when they're trying to tell you that yes, you need a makeover badly. To be honest, I kind of tuned her out after that (judge or candidate, there was no way I was going on TV to tell women that there's yet another thing wrong with the way they look), but accepted her flyer and went about my business. I knew she was just doing her job, so there was no need to get snippy with her, but I was totally offended.

LISTEN. Not all of us have to dress like we came off the conveyor belt! Not all of us go crazy for the chance to be on TV! Not all of us need to wear matching socks and boring neutral makeup. OKAY?

And Botox? Good grief. I'm okay with fine lines. They help me buy cigarettes without having to show ID.

If you kill youself and leave a note on your facebook page, you are not just a loser. You're a fucking loser.

Sigh! Day off!

The last couple of days at work have been driving me bananas. It's the beginning of summer, so there are tons of people in the store (which you'd think would be a good thing), but it's like they don't actually want to shop. It's just waves upon waves of people who stand in the doorway sniffing the soap at the front of the shop and then asking you where Mr. Greenjeans is. The groups of people who do come in are excited to get demos and hand treatments and stuff, but they are totally interrupty and have no attention span, and it just generally makes me crazy.

Shurlanna looked at my face at one point and asked me why I looked so frustrated. Renee walked by and said, "Jaime got interrupted."

I HAVE INTERESTING THINGS TO SAY. STOP INTERRUPTING ME SO I CAN ANSWER YOUR QUESTIONS.

I think this is why I like LJ so much. Finally! A captive audience!

So I've been looking forward to my day off for awhile now. I have new videos to upload to demonbeauty and a lot of antisocial activity to get through. Yay!

Yo! I made a beauty community just for my beauty blogging. Hopefully, this makes life easier for my LJ friends who want to watch my videos and read about makeup without having to trek all the way over to YouTube to subscribe. Join demonbeauty!

Buffy kicks Edward Cullen's sparkly ass.

Just awesome.

What is with TODAY?! We had an usually high number of weirdos in our store today - one a day is normal, eight in one day is not - and when I told Stephen all of my crazy-people stories, he told me that when he was on his way to work this morning, some guy decided to drive on the wrong side of the road to beat traffic. When cars started to come toward him, he cut across three lanes of traffic to drive on the shoulder until the cops stopped him. When Stephen went by the guy in the end, the cops had him cuffed and spread out on the hood of his car.

Did anyone else notice that people have temporarily lost their shit today, or is it just us?

1. The best picture I ever took with my shitty little camera:



2. The second best picture I ever took with my shitty little camera:



Both in Europe, where everything is better.

I am supposed to post an older picture of myself, but I can't find it. Annie, I will just bring photographic proof of my former self to work and leave it in the back room for you.

<3

Apparently, there are companies out there that make sample boxes - basically a box full of different things from different e-tailers that you can try out and they usually have little coupons and stuff to use if you like the products. You pay a certain price for a box full of samples, and each box is different because it just depends on how many samples the different e-tailers send to the one company that's putting together the box. Why did I not know about this before? I LOVE THIS IDEA! I think next month, I will order a box from these ladies.

So we went to this... I don't know, I guess it's a store? They supply vegetarian restaurants with frozen and packaged fake meat items, like the soy drumsticks you can get at Vegetarian Haven. Everything's preservative-free and organic! We got fake shrimp and fake crab. Okay, that sounds gross, but it is AWESOME. So last night, we had fake shrimp alfredo and steamed crab with veggies. It was a vegan seafood feast! The fake shrimp alfredo was tasty, but it's hard to get a thick, creamy sauce with soy milk.

Have just come back from seeing The Taking of Pelham 123. What can I say? I have to see every Tony Scott film ever made. This one was better than I thought it would be, although that's probably only because John Travolta was doing his psycho-bad-guy-having-the-time-of-his-life thing that he does so well. It's like they just let the cameras roll and said, "Johnny! Just BE CRAZY!" The only thing I didn't understand was ( SPOILERRIFIC! )

Anyway. Stephen is trying to make vegan chicken balls, and I think it's my job to go in there and taste them. Dirty!

Every night, before we go to bed, Stephen and I spend a few minutes checking our email. Since I'm obsessed with IMDB, I usually also go on there to look up the trivia for whatever movie we just watched over dinner. I started playing this game with myself where I'd think of another movie or TV show or actor to look up, and then try to get there by just clicking instead of actually typing in the name. Then Stephen started doing it, and then we started playing this game.

Independently of each other, one of us picks a famous person and the other one of us picks a movie or TV show. Let's say I pick Penelope Cruz, and Stephen picks The Fellowship of the Ring. We tell each other what our picks are, and then I go to the page for Penelope Cruz while he goes to the page for The Fellowship of the Ring. Then we try to click from one to the other, and whoever can get to the other the fastest wins that round. So I might go Penelope Cruz = Blow = Johnny Depp = Pirates of the Caribbean = Orlando Bloom = Fellowship, and Stephen might go Fellowship = Cate Blanchett = Talented Mr. Ripley = Matt Damon = The Bourne Identity = Franka Potente = Blow = Penelope Cruz.

NERDS. BOTH OF US. It's like the Kevin Bacon game (at which I am JUST AMAZING), except with computers. And not always about Kevin Bacon.

Let's see if I can actually finish a post today.

I am back from Pennsylvania. I can't believe they have Vanilla Coke Zero in the States. I brought back a whole case of it, and now I'm kicking myself for not getting more. Stephen has already gone through about six cans.

We went to the Bose Factory Outlet and I finally got the headphones! These things are crazy expensive here, like at least $350. Worth every penny and then some, but still. The outlet had them for a lot cheaper, and the best part is that my parents bought them for me as an early birthday gift! They come with this heavy-duty case that I'm trying to keep them in (I basically break everything, so unless I make a conscious effort...) but I look like a total nerd on the bus fighting with all of it. Who cares? They rock my socks. Now I want these ones for Stephen. They were the same price at the outlet that they are in the store, so I might get them for him as a Christmas present later in the year.

Aside from that, though, there wasn't much else for me at the outlet. I got some perfume, but that was about it until we went to Hot Topic and Target. We actually got lost on the way there, and I was all anxious and panicky until we got inside. And is it just me, or are there less clothes at Hot Topic than there used to be? We walked in, and it was lots of... like accessories and stuff, and t-shirts, but not a lot of pants. The pants they did have were all skinny leg jeans in multiple colours and I felt like I was at H&M. Yuck. I just got a cute hoodie thing and some little trinkets, mostly because I felt like after we had come all that way and gotten lost twice, I had to buy something.

Why do Canadians love Target so much? While we were in there, squealing over everything, it suddenly occurred to me that a Target has a lot of the same stuff as say, a Zellers or a Wal Mart. It's just... better, though, somehow. I don't know, cuter clothes? Nicer displays? I bought mostly makeup.

In other news, I went to see Land of the Lost yesterday with Annie. What can I say? I like dinosaurs and giant crabs. It was ridiculous fun. My favourite scene was probably the one where Anna Friel just wraps her belt around her hand and beats up a bunch of lizard men. You had to be there.

( Secret of the Day )

Ergh! Why are people SO ANNOYING? Some woman and her loud little boy have been in the laundry room all day, basically taking up all the washers and dryers. I have this thing where I immediately hate parents who tell their kids to stop screwing around, but don't actually stop them from doing so, so this lady wasn't anyone I had warm fuzzy feelings for in the first place.

I went down there to take some stuff out of one of the dryers, and put two of my dryer balls on top of the dryer as I was putting the clothes into the basket. Her kid runs over and grabs one of the dryer balls and starts playing with it. I waited for the mom to tell him to put it down, but of course she didn't. I kept putting my clothes into the basket, wondering if I should say something or not.

Finally, when the dryer was empty, I just walked up to the kid and said, "Excuse me, I need that." and took the ball from him. The woman said, "Oh no, that's mine. We have only one." I explained - rather patiently, in my retail customer service voice - that he had, in fact, just walked over and taken it from me, leaving me with just one of them. She didn't really seem to understand that, but started to look around with me for another one. I just gave the kid back the one I had in my hand and kept unloading the second dryer of our clothes.

A few minutes later, when both dryers were empty, I looked at the woman again - all this time, her kid was running around the laundry room generally being loud and annoying, and at one point actually climbing into an empty dryer - that I was sure the one he had was mine, since I put two of them down and he had come over and taken one of them. Immediately, she got all defensive and said, "Why would I lie? You saw me walk over and look all where he was playing, and we only have the one. What, do you want to go through all my stuff and check??" I stared at her for a second and then said, "You know what? Keep it, it's obviously more important to you than it is to me."

I suppose she didn't appreciate that one, since she started going ON AND ON about how she's not a liar, why would I call her a liar, etc. I finally just said, "I don't think you're lying, I think you're JUST NOT PAYING ATTENTION. You weren't watching him, and he came over and took one of mine." She came back at me with something like, "I don't teach my son to steal" and I turned around and said, "Yeah, he's obviously listening to you right now, look, he's climbing into a dryer again." I watched her go chasing after him as he tried to shut the dryer door on himself and then shook my head and left the room.

Seriously, if she's still down there when I get back to take out the third load and she decides to start anything with me, I'm going to fucking kick her in the face.

ETA: Ha! When Stephen got home from work, I told him that I got in a fight with some slag in the laundry room today, and he immediately said, "Did she have a kid with her? Blue shirt?" I said yes, and he was like, "Yeah, they were on the elevator on the way up. Her kid was totally annoying." SEE? It's not just me! Stephen was only exposed to them for thirty seconds, and he knew right away who I was talking about. On another note, it's pretty funny that he assumed that if I got into a fight with anyone in the building, it HAD to be someone with a loud, annoying kid.

So, Joon is ALL about my hair elastics. She's crazy for them. I have to hide the good ones (I toss her the colours I don't want, like yellow and orange, but I keep all the purple ones, you know how it is) because wherever they are, SHE SEEKS THEM OUT. I actually keep them in a drawer, and if I don't close it all the way or accidentally leave it just a millimeter open, she's got her paw in there faster than you can blink. Most nights, she's chewing them out of my hands as I'm still taking them out of my hair.

Basically, she really loves hair elastics.

Last night, Stephen said she was chasing one around in the kitchen while he was in the living room, and he heard a snap and a little yelp. He went into the kitchen to see what happened, and Joon was sitting on the kitchen chair, staring down at a snapped hair elastic with some surprise. Clearly, she got too excited and it snapped back and hit her in the face. Her little nose looked a little red, he said. I feel like a jerk for laughing at that!

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So, I was at Henna for Hair, just looking at some photos and getting new ideas for things I can add to my henna mix (I'm doing Caca Marron for the first time in over a year right now. It is soaking in RIGHT THIS MINUTE!). I like looking at all the pictures of befores-and-afters, and you can read about what some people add to their mixes to highlight. So I came across this one, and it is ASTONISHING. "I’ve got a small baby and a toddler and I have to cajole hubby to stay with them while I’m hennaing, it all depends on hubby’s mood!" I mean, forget about the fact that she's one of those women who says "hubby" instead of "husband" - annoying enough in itself. I think people who say that should be shot - it is SO INFURIATING that she would have trouble trying to get him to keep their kids busy while she's doing her hair.

Um, there should be no cajoling involved. You should be able to say, "I'm just going to be applying henna for a half hour here, watch the kids." End of discussion. I have never come across a man - aside from my father, haha - who would say, "You know what? I'm not in the mood for that." And if he did, I'd probably think I had bigger problems than finding time to henna my hair. If you read the rest of the post, where she starts to rant about how she has to feed the kids and bathe them and put them to bed instead of "whileing" away the hours with a book the way childless people do (really, my life is just one endless party over here, I have no responsibilities whatsoever), you can kind of tell that she's got some issues going on that are all bottled up.

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I had the day off! Yay! I spent a lot of it browsing Xsparkage and her YouTube channel. Out of all the makeup tutorial blogs and videos I've ever seen, I like hers the best. She's really talented and posts looks that anyone can do, she doesn't gussy up all her videos with graphics and bad techno music and she has useful, interesting things to say without being at all pretentious or annoying. Those things are important to me! So I like her a lot. Through the course of the day, I decided several things:

1. I am going to start a video beauty blog.
2. I will post different looks that are interesting and not scary.
3. I will post reviews of different products.
4. I will talk about LUSH endlessly and hopefully be of some help to new LUSH users.

When Stephen walked in the door tonight, I greeted him with:

Me: I need to buy a video camera.
Stephen: We have one, we've just never used it. What do you need it for?
Me: I'm going to start a video beauty blog.
Stephen: Let me get it all charged up for you.

One of my favourite things about Stephen is that I can go to him with any crazy new idea, and instead of being all, "What? Why would you even-? I don't get it." he's like, "Okay. Let me help you with this." I'm very excited to marry him!

=

( Secret of the Day )

Last night, She and Him, Jenny Lewis and Jakob Dylan were on Spectacle with Elvis Costello. Every time I see Zooey Deschanel, I think she and I should be best friends and then wear each other's clothes. Also, she has inspired me to get my bangs cut straight across from now on.

In other news, we just came back from seeing the play Doubt: A Parable with my sister. It was GREAT. I haven't seen the movie yet. Seana McKenna was Sister Aloysious, and my sister, who has seen her perform in practically every CanStage production ever, could not stop raving about her. Then we went to get coffee after, and she was there! My sister got all flustered and zingy, and we convinced her to go talk to her. She was so nice! My sister was all, "I know people must hassle you all the time, but would you mind signing my program?" Seana McKenna was like, "It's Canadian theatre - no one ever comes up to me!" It was pretty awesome.

Bought the new Manson album. I only buy albums by my favourite artists, and by little indie acts that need my money, so I slapped down the $15 and brought it home, full of expectation... and it's just okay. I mean, there a couple of standout tracks, but it hasn't really grabbed me yet. I might change my mind when I listen to it again.

I found a new makeup company to be obsessed with! It's called Fyrinnae (Fyeer-ih-nay). It's AWESOME. I was looking for something with the same kind of bright loose pigments as LimeCrime, but I'm dissatisfied with the packaging (no sifter, really small sizes for $12, etc) and also, the colour payoff of some of the shades isn't so great. I found Fyrinnae after perusing Makeup Alley reviews, and my goodness. The full size jars are only $5-$6, and the samples (which are larger than a full size of LimeCrime Magic Dust) are only $2! Plus, it's free shipping worldwide if the order's over $20. There are tons and tons and tons of colours, nice and bright, comparable to MAC pigments and everything's vegan. I like everything I've read about this company so far. They even have a line called Endangered, and a portion of the proceeds get donated to the World Wildlife Fund!

We are in the midst of a Terminator marathon (tonight is T2, which is my FAVOURITE!), so I have to git. Yahoo!

( Secret of the Day )

I stole this from indigosarah, and then promptly became obsessed with Garfunkel and Oates.



I hope I don't offend my pregnant LJ friends.

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Man, what a crappy day. I hate being tired.

Just saw Terminator: Salvation. SO GOOD, I CAN'T EVEN TALK ABOUT IT. All the way home in the car, I was like, "FUCK YEAH! That's what I'm fucking TALKING about! That was SO AWESOME." Stephen had to tell me to shut up because I was going on about it so much.

OH, MAN. SO GREAT.

From Vegan With a Vengeance, by Isa Chandra Moskowitz:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 and 1/3 cups rolled oats
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 and 2/3 cups sugar
2/3 cup canola oil
2 tablespoons molasses
1 cup canned pumpkin or cooked pureed pumpkin (do NOT use pumpkin pie mix)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (I used almond, we were out of vanilla)
1 tablespoon ground flaxseeds (this is optional, they're just there to make the cookies chewier. They're pretty chewy anyway, but ground flax is so good for you!)
1 cup walnuts, finely chopped (I left these out)
1/2 cup raisins

Preheat oven to 350F. Lightly grease two cookie sheets.

Mix together the flour, oats, baking soda, salt and spices.

In a separate bowl, mix together the sugar, oil, molasses, pumpkin, vanilla and flaxseeds until very well combined. Add the dry ingredients to the wet in three batches, folding to combine. Fold in the walnuts and raisins.

Drop by tablespoons onto the prepped cookie sheets. They don't spread very much, so they can be placed about an inch apart.
Flatten the tops into a cookie kinda shape with a fork or your fingers. Bake for 16 minutes. If you are using two sheets of cookies on two levels in the oven, rotate them halfway through for even baking.

Remove from oven and let cool. They taste better when they've had some time to set.

The recipe stated that I'd have enough for four sheets of cookies, but it was more like two-and-a-half. I guess I made mine pretty big.

=

My plan worked! The cookies smelled up the whole fifteenth floor, so that when Stephen got off the elevator, he thought, "Man, it smells really good up here." He was TOTALLY surprised and excited when he opened our door and learned that it was because I baked cookies. Yay! They came out really good, aside from the fact that I forgot to add the raisins until I was on our third batch of cookies. They are extremely orange.

( Secret of the Day )

Last night, we watched Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, which neither of us had seen in YEARS. Man, is it ever weird. And funny! I don't think I ever fully appreciated Paul Reubens' style before. That whole scene where he has the town meeting after his bike gets stolen is comedy gold! Then again, I probably only think that because I saw it high.

I have two projects today, aside from laundry! I'm making pumpkin-oatmeal cookies as a surprise for the mister, so I need to start them around 6:00 tonight, so I can be taking them out of the oven as he gets home. The plan is to make our whole floor smell like cookies, so he's all, "Man, I wish that was coming from our apartment.... wait a minute! IT IS!" And I could be wearing the apron Francie got me last year and everything! Wouldn't that be the best ever? Of course, since these things rarely turn out the way I want them to, I am pretty sure I'll still be struggling with the food processor when he walks in, and not quite started with the actual baking. Or else I'll burn them and the entire 15th floor will smell like burned pumpkin and he'll be all, "Jesus, I hope that's not coming from our apartment... wait a minute. IT IS."

Anyway. The second thing is that I plan to reorganize the linen closet. Ha, I just realized that my two plans sound like I've turned into Donna Reed. No, really, it is nuts in there. I learned from Real Simple that you can save a lot of space by just keeping your sheet sets inside one of the pillowcases that came with it, so it keeps all the loose sheets together and you don't have them topple over on you when you open the door. Plus, if you have cats that like to jump right in and take a nap on the pile, they don't knock everything over when they jump back down.

SHUT UP. THESE THINGS ARE EXCTING TO ME.

Hey, you know what's weird? Remember my jogging thing from last summer? I was really getting into it when I stopped, because I got freaked out that I was doing damage to my knees. Now I miss it! I keep seeing people running when we're out in the car, and it makes me all, "Sigh. I was one of those people once." It was just nice to be outside in nice weather, and the route I used to go along was really pretty. There were geese! I think I'm going to start again, since I've been strength training and I think my knees should be able to handle it. I also really like the idea of coming home from work and then going for a run to shake off the day.

Of course, I say this now, but we'll see how long this lasts.

Current obsessions:

* Lemon water. It's like soap for your insides!
* Life, season 1. And the main character is JONESY!
* Using LUSH solid perfumes in my oil burner. I just scrape a little off, into the thing and light the candle! MY WHOLE HOUSE SMELLS LIKE VANILLARY, YAHOO!
* New veg restaurants!

We went to Green Earth restaurant for Stephen's birthday dinner (11 days late) tonight, and it was AWESOME. The menu is huge, the place is small and impeccably clean, and the staff was really friendly. I had some kind of pumpkin-eggplant concoction called Three Flavours, and Stephen had a vegan Philly cheesesteak sandwich thing. ( This was our dessert. )

Now we are home and getting ready to watch the last two episodes of Life. Ta!

My life is like one long episode of Seinfeld.

I must draw everyone's attention to this fucking hilarity, right here. My favourite, BY FAR, is the pic of the cat with the glasses: "I'm not trying to brag. I'm just saying, I knew about Cat Power before anyone else did." That wouldn't be so goddamn funny if I didn't hear some dude (in those glasses and a scarf like that, no less) say those exact words to his friends the other day on the bus.

Is it mean to put little outfits on cats? We found baby socks in with our laundry last week - I guess they got left behind in the dryer and we just brought them up without noticing - and I immediately put them on Joon. We laughed at her skating around in them for a few minutes. She seemed very good-natured about the whole thing.

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Stephen bought me these for my birthday! He knew I wanted them DESPERATELY, so he gave them to me early. Yee! They look awesome with my purple coat.

Speaking of birthdays, we are going to see Star Trek in IMAX tonight for Stephen's 38th, which was Wednesday. I am not a Star Trek person (like, AT ALL. Blech.) but he is the birthday boy, and the birthday boy gets to do whatever he wants to celebrate. I figure I can sit through anything as long as I have enough popcorn. The movie doesn't start until 12:30 am! I also got him this thing. I am not exactly sure what it is, but he really wanted it and he seemed extremely excited to find it in his Birthday Bag O' Fun this year.

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( Secret of the Day )