The Curse of Curves

I live with 5 girls, so naturally, the subject of body shape and size comes up pretty routinely. We're evenly matched in that some of us complain about being too skinny and wanting curves like Beyoncé and the rest complain about having too many curves and wanting to be able to wear that latest trend and not look like a whale. I always fall sort of in the middle of this debate, where I like my curves, but definitely wouldn't be opposed to losing about...25 pounds. I used to be extremely self-conscious (like What Not To Wear status) about my body type and only within the last two or three years have I started to understand what looks good on me. I'm fairly curvy, and I do occasionally feel like that limits my wardrobe choices, but overall, I'm not too upset about what I can't pull off. The thing I find hardest for me is that I can't just buy something because it looks good on a mannequin, because the mannequin's proportions are nowhere close to mine. I think, if there's one thing fashion blogs have taught me, it's that everybody looks amazing when they find the right pieces and wear things they feel confident in, and that's been something I've been trying to incorporate into my daily fashion lately. Now, I choose to not wear a t-shirt and sweatshirt all the time because they're comfortable, and sometimes I'll even wear something curve-flattering and like the way it looks on me. I've got a long way to go on really loving my body, like many girls, but I think I've taken some important steps forward on this road. Today, though I was wearing a t-shirt and hoodie (paired with skinny jeans) for the first time since school started, I felt really good about my body. I was reminded of an icebreaker all the girls did during this self-confidence session for residents I went to: What's your favorite part of your body? Mine are my calves.

Yours?
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TurTurKeyKey

Happy Thanksgiving!









{images via weheartit}

I just got home and I'm so thankful to get to spend my Thanksgiving with my family. Hope everybody is planning on eating a lot, bonding with family and friends, and then waking up early to go Black Friday shopping! Have a wonderful weekend!

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Lust List Monday: Lush Cosmetics

It's been a long time since I did a Lust List, but over this weekend I have found things to lust over. So, Lush Cosmetics aren't that new to me. A friend introduced me to them about a year ago, but the turn in weather has my hair and skin feeling out of whack, and me therefore dying to find a new and effective routine. Thus, I would LOVE a little Lush in my life.


Stimulating Spice Shampoo Bar

Okra Vegetable-Infused Conditioner

Mask of Magnaminty Facial Cleanser

Tea Tree Toner

The highly recommended Dream Cream

I'm getting excited to home for Thanksgiving break! What are your plans?
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Empire State of Mind

Recently, one of the postdocs in my lab moved to New York. And since this move, he's slowly been sharing pictures of the beautiful city. Now, as many places as I've been, I've yet to see New York. Shocking, right? Can one even consider me an American? I've never even had the chance to land at JFK or LaGuardia on one of my other trips! That being said, I didn't have a huge desire to go to NYC until I started watching Gossip Girl and that just didn't seem to be the right reason to want to go there. Now, though, his pictures and stories have me perusing airline websites for the best deals. Oh, how fun it would be to:


See the skyline from the magnificent Brooklyn Bridge,

Pretend to be Meg Ryan in Sleepless in Seattle at the top of the Empire State Building,

Soak up the grandeur and elegance of the Met,

Get some delicious coffee and other New York-specific eats,

People watch in the Upper East Side and spot some real-life Blair Waldorfs,

Stroll around the peaceful and serene Central Park,

Find a cool and cozy bar or club to unwind in for the night,

See a show on Broadway...

...and so so much more. I now have a list nearly a full page long of things I want to see or do while in New York. Given this list, my vacation there is looking like it's going to need to be a full month long. Sigh.

Have a wonderful weekend!
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Coronado Sunset

First and foremost, let me apologize for having gone suddenly and unexpectedly AWOL. The conference went from Saturday to today, and I've been attempting to balance being in downtown San Diego all day with keeping up with school...and failing. The conference was pretty amazing, though, with over 30,000 people there, it was also a little overwhelming. Seeing as business casual is one of my favorite dress codes ever, I was all set to do some outfit posts on what I wore, but then I ended up so rushed for time and busy busy busy that I forgot. Sad life. But, I ran into a couple friends from high school while I was there and on Monday, I decided to show one of them around Coronado! We had a bit of a sunset photo shoot, because she has awesome camera skills.

The Hotel Del Coronado!



Wearing my ModCloth dress that I'm in love with!

Me and R, my lovely partner in crime for the day.
And, in other news...ONE DAY. ONE DAY. ONE DAY. My shirt is almost made. The back is cut out and the front has "Neville Longbottom will reject your bribes and kill your pets" in puff paint, from the PotterPuffs comics. I just finished listening to the Deathly Hallows audiobook today, and it's made me really really excited (not that I wasn't already)! And, since I forgot (!) to do a WizWiz for the last post, I will be doing TWO today!

Wizarding Wisdom: 1 DAY, 5 HOURS, 41 MINUTES
"Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure." -Engraving on the Lost Diadem of Ravenclaw

"I don't know who Maxime thinks she's kidding. If Hagrid's half-giant, she definitely is. Big bones... the only thing that's got bigger bones than her is a dinosaur." -Harry Potter

Thank You

I hope everyone had a wonderful Veteran's Day! I thought I was going to be having a nice relaxing day with my laptop and my favorite scrupulous serial killer, Dexter, but then I found myself desperately in need of some things. Thus, a trip to the mall was in order. First, I required a red shirt to make pretty for the Deathly Hallows premiere. Old Navy saw to that pretty quickly. Then I headed to Papyrus because several recent encounters with professors and their wisdom had left me needing to buy some 'thank you' cards. I unintentionally spent a full hour in there. Found some adorable cards, though. It was nuts because some were way out of my price range and I still couldn't decide which to buy.


Simple, but chic. Lovely, as Kate Spade always is.

Adorable, and Martha Stewart. Another classic.

Pretty!! And teal!

These were the ones I settled on. I like them. :)
I'm going to be going to a huge neuroscience conference this weekend, which is oh-so-creatively called Neuroscience 2010 and I am (really dorkily) excited for it!! I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

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The Slopes

In the last few days, the cold weather's got me day dreaming about skiing. Being a Phoenician, seeing snow was rare. Well, in Phoenix, it was non-existent, but you know, occasionally we went places where it snowed. My earliest memory of skiing is going to Eldora resort in Aspen, Colorado when I was 7. I'd played in snow before, but there was something really beautiful about seeing a huge mountain top covered in a blanket of pure white, untouched powder. And then, I got to fly down the mountain at break-neck speed (read: pizza-position it down the bunny slope) and I was hooked. Since then, my family's gone skiing almost every year, and as winter comes closer, I start fantasizing about the next time I'll find myself blazing down a blue diamond (which, I can actually do now!).


Snoqualmie, Seattle.
Yeah, I took this on the ski lift at significant risk to my life.
It's so serene to get up at this obscenely early hour and go to a place where it's peaceful and cold and you're all bundled up. I love feeling chilly wind in my hair and on my face (well, until my nose feels like it's going to fall off from frostbite). This ski season, I want to plan a trip with some of my friends and maybe learn to snowboard. It'll be a lot of planning work, but I think it will, as always, be worth it.


Wizarding Wisdom: 8 DAYS!!
"Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain." -Arthur Weasley

ModCloth Giveaway!

Just wanted to let you all know, that the lovely Collette over at Statements in Fashion is doing a $50.00 ModCloth giveaway!! Obviously, I'm entering, seeing as my love for ModCloth probably goes deeper than my love for my brother, but go check it out! ModCloth doesn't disappoint!

Wanted: Motivation

I am having a motivational crisis. I have my last midterm of the quarter tomorrow, and lordie lordie, do I need to study. Seven hours of podcasts need to be listened to and understood by tomorrow. Yikes. I just can't find the motivation to start though, so I've been trying to find it on the internet (a bad idea, I'm sure). I think I need this:

But seeing as my roommates would be neither able nor willing to perform that task for seven hours...I will content myself with one fo my favorite poems: El Derecho al Delirio, the English translation of which can be found here and some life lessons I can learn from Ralph Waldo Emerson, whom I respect as a writer (unlike Thoreau, for the most part). My favorite:

"Lesson 1: Aim Above The Mark
“We aim above the mark to hit the mark.”
To hit the mark, it’s necessary to aim above the mark. If you want to do $100,000 in sales next year, create a plan that allows you to do $150,000. To hit the mark you have to aim higher! Do you aim high when setting your goals? Things seldom go exactly as you plan them, aiming allows you to hit the target with the inevitable occurs."

What motivates you?
Wizarding Wisdom: 10 days!!
“Enjoying it? I don’t reckon he’d come home if Dad didn’t make him. He’s obsessed. Just don’t get him on the subject of his boss. 'According to Mr. Crouch…as I was saying to Mr. Crouch… Mr. Crouch is of the opinion… Mr. Crouch was telling me…' They’ll be announcing their engagement any day now.” -Ron Weasley

Breakthrough!

Good news, chronic sufferers! It seems that progress has been made on developing a cure for the common cold. This is huge! I mean, this thing is so high-occurrence that we've even stuck 'common' in it's name! You'd think science would have progressed far enough to combat this seeing as we have already found cures for leprosy and vaccines against polio, right? But, now is that time! A mechanism has been discovered by which antibodies can enter a cell attached to a virus, and with the help of the TRIM21 protein, can destroy the virus within the cell before it has time to reproduce. You might say, well that doesn't seem virus-specific, and you'd be right, but the virus that causes the common cold (rhinovirus) is high on the list of viruses to target, along with tons of others. This could be Nobel Prize material if all goes well. For me, I'm excited to see what will be done with these findings! Yay, science!

News on NaNoWriMo Progress: About 2500 words in. Yeah, I'm behind, but that's what weekends are for!

Wizarding Wisdom: 13 days!
"But for god's sake, you're wizards! You can do magic!"
“The trouble is, the other side can do magic too, Prime Minister.” -Cornelius Fudge

Fixtures

I'll be the first to admit I'm kind of a sucker for innovative bathroom/kitchen fixtures and design. Remember those commercials for the 360˚ spa showers? When I was 8, I wanted one of those for Christmas. My mother sort of nixed that idea, seeing as I'm pretty sure they are thousands of dollars, but my love....hasn't subsided. Here are some awesome fixtures I've come across lately. In my future-home, there will be one of each kind in every bathroom, to fit the theme!!


Yes, there is a stick-shift to choose spray strength.


Okay, so to be honest, I wouldn't want a random drain on the ground by my sink, just because I think that'd get messy, but...how cool?!


Chic and sleek.


Pretty, if not particularly efficient. But, pretty!


Adorable Hanging Garden Shower Curtain from Anthro.

I have a lot of things I have all planned out to buy for my future-home. The reason I put the dash in there is because the chances are good that this ideal house will always remain just a little bit further in the future. I can dream, right?


My current desktop bg, complete with countdown!

I'm going to end this post with a new feature. So, the premiere of Deathly Hallows Part I is in two weeks, which I think is close enough to start an official blog countdown. In that spirit, I will be ending all posts from now till then with some Wizarding Wisdom or some of my favorite quotes from the books.

Wizarding Wisdom:
"And now Harry, let us step out into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure." -Albus Dumbledore

I Might Be Nuts.

I did something crazy yesterday. Before you jump to conclusions (and I know some of you who will!), I did not get Dumbledore's face tramp stamped to my back. Instead, in a sleep-deprived, study-crazy, crack-addled(jk) fit of madness, I signed up for NaNoWriMo. November is National Novel Writing Month...and as of last night, I'm doing it!

I realize it's a big commitment, but hey, they don't even judge me (though you guys probably will) if I don't finish the 50,000 words (yeah, that's 1667/day...about 3 pages)! I've always got weird stories going on in my head anyway, so I figured, to hell with college biology classes and midterms! I'm going to write fiction! They also don't expect it to be any kind of quality work. You know what that means? I could almost literally ramble 50,000 words, and few would judge me! Well, I would judge me...which is exactly why I have a plot developing (slowly...) in my head. It was all I could do to pay attention to the exams in front of me today.

If my writing space looked half as nice as this, I probably wouldn't get anything remotely productive done in it.
I will, hopefully, keep you guys updated on my progress, but I'm sort of shy about my stories. I'll be trying to fix that. Wish me luck!

Time Warp!

Somewhere around the ninth grade, when I was really still trying to find myself and feel comfortable in high school, some friends and I watched The Rocky Horror Picture Show. All about breaking boundaries and social norms, my initial viewing of this movie.......made me fall asleep. I was tired and confused and more than a little weirded out by the whole thing. Then later, my friends thought we should have a Halloween theme party and watch it again. I was a really tame Magenta, but for some reason, watching it that time around, I loved it. We'd printed the script and shouted out all the call backs, like true midnight-viewing nerds. So, when I found out Glee was doing Rocky Horror, I was a little skeptic. I mean, surely they'd have to tone it down so much that it wouldn't even be Rocky Horror anymore! But after watching it, I'm pretty sure I have only one bad thing to say (which is that they changed too many of the lyrics)! It turned out great! Kurt was an amazing Riff Raff and Jayma Mays's rendition of "Touch-A Touch-A Touch Me" was so adorable and perfect that I honestly might be starting to like it better than the original! I realize this sounds like fangirling, but once again, Glee really impressed me. And right around Halloween, it seemed like a fitting thing to post about. Hope everyone's Halloween was to die for!

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