Topcoat Trials Take Three

Welcome to the Topcoat Trials, my darlings. It's been a while since I last posted one of these babies. In my search for a top coat that matches the extremely quick dry time and lovely glossiness of Seche Vite yet is without the gloppiness, short brush, and expensiveness, I picked up Sally Hansen Mega Shine Extended Wear Top Coat. Long name, yes? This is one that many people recommended to me, and so I decided to take a shot at it.

How did I like it? I found that the claim of a 90 second dry time really was quite true, or at least a 2 minute dry time was very easily obtained. My nails were dry to the touch in about 2 minutes, and completely dry in 5. Very lovely. The shtuff itself did not get goopy once I got down past the halfway mark, but stayed nice and thin. However, the thin part is something I wanted to talk about. Mega Shine really was not shiny and thick enough for me - I quite like how Seche lays such a thick layer over the polish, since it makes it impervious to chips and beautifully mirror-like. Mega Shine has a thin formula, and does not form this lovely thick layer.

In conclusion, I liked Mega Shine, but I did not stop there. I am pushing on with my search to find a new topcoat! :)

Teaser Tuesdays - A Bookish Post

Today I have no new nail polish for y'all. I am wearing China Glaze Watermelon Rind, which I have reviewed before and love. I do, however, have something fun called Teaser Tuesdays. I copy/pasted the below from shouldbereading.wordpress.com.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB ofShould Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

I am not reading any books for pleasure at the moment, so I am giving y'all a teaser from the Lombardo translation of Dante's Inferno, from his Divine Comedy. I am reading it for a course I am taking, but everyone should read it! I've read this book perhaps 2 or 3 times before, and have always liked it. :) This translation is particularly nice.

Of course I wept, leaning on one of the stones

of the hard crag, so that my escort

said to me, "Are you still one of the fools?

Pity survives here where pity is dead"

- Canto XX, lines 25-28

Books!

So, no nail polish today. But I do have BOOKS! I freaking love books, y'all. Lately I've been very unhappy because I cannot read anything not required for school since I have no free time. At all. Ever. I've taken to going on goodreads for extended periods of time and drooling extensively over books. I call it book porn. Oh, and for those who do not know what goodreads is, it is a wonderful website in which you and your friends can review books you have read. Everyone should have one! You can organize your books by shelf, and I tend to spend inordinate amounts of time reorganizing my shelves when I want to procrastinate. :)

Anyways, I wanted to let y'all know that I recently found all these lovely lovely book blogs. I've been lazy and have not searched for book blogs before, but the other day I had a paper due and thus much procrastination was in order; so I searched. I found such an abundance of bookworms, and it makes me so extraordinarily happy! :) I haven't read enough of them extensively enough to say which ones are my favorite yet, but I promise to let you know once I figure things out. So far I know that I do like Book Lady's Blog (www.thebookladysblog.com).

Oh, and also, today I talked to my mother about majors, and told her how much I wanted to major in English, and she told me that that made so much sense for me. Very happy Faithy. I was scared that it just wasn't practical enough ... but I love reading too much not have an English major, methinks. I'm thinking that I'll double major and minor. I would like to major in International Studies, maybe with a European concentration, and English, with a Literature concentration. My minor would be music, concentration in voice, most likely, though piano is very possible. Yay for school! I sign up for Spring classes this Friday ... I kind of have a sucky registration time though, since registration started yesterday. Boo. But hopefully I'll be able to sign up for British Lit. and ballroom dancing and a course in Latin on Ovid. Woot!

Back from the Dead?

Hello dearests! I have cruelly neglected you, but somehow my followers list keeps growing - how this has happened I'll never know. Welcome to the party, everyone who's joined since I last posted! :)

As usual, school has been keeping me insanely busy and on my toes, but this week I'm having a blessed respite from the storm of homework, and so will try to post more than just this once. :) I've got a Spanish test, a biology presentation, and a paper due on Friday, but only the Spanish test is too big of a deal, so I'm not overly worried. Last week was a little rough, with a 2 page paper, a 4 page draft, and multiple other things due, but now I'm done with that and happy. And guess what? Thanksgiving is in 3 weeks or so! Glory glory!

I went home a week ago for the first time, and while that was lovely and full of good food and cuddling my puppy, it made me homesick for the first time since I came to Trinity. I believe I cried harder in the car leaving Houston than I did when my parents dropped me off here. :( But I'm feeling better now, since my roommate loves me and so do the rest of my friends. Yay for friends! :) Unfortunately Alli is sick right now, and that's always sad - I act like her mother and buy her juice with lots of vitamin C and ice cream and stuff. Haha!

Anyways, on to the nail polish. I've got Zoya's Rihana for y'all today, and goodness, she is a pretty one. A shimmery berry almost-vamp that is very similar to China Glaze Cowgirl Up and OPI Bastille My Heart, except that it does not have the blue shimmer of Cowgirl Up, and is more shimmery and purple than Bastille My Heart. Quite pretty. Its not super unique, but I love love love this type of color, and so I have no qualms about owning many many versions of it. Look at that... there's golden shimmer and red shimmer and purple shimmer... and its just beautiful. :)