I came across this not-too-surprising article on CNN about how choice can paralyze people from making a decision. Specifically, they were describing the drawbacks to online dating where people often can’t commit to a choice of partner because there are too many choices. More is less. Well, that’s why my overstuffed closet leaves me feeling like I have nothing to wear. I probably ought to clean it out instead of buy more clothes.
Monthly Archives: January 2012
The paradox of choice and why I was banging my head against the wall trying to get dressed this morning
Posted by Leaf on January 31, 2012
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E.L.F. Eyeshadows
Posted by Leaf on January 30, 2012
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It’s been two weeks since I got my E.L.F. eye shadow and I’ve tried it enough times to share a bit about what’s good and bad about it. I got the 32-color palette for a peasely $5. I’m comparing it to my “free gift with purchase” Estee Lauder and Lancome eye shadows. First, the good. It has 32 colors. That’s plenty enough to confuse me. Luckily, most of the colors are about the same or similar enough. Black, charcoal, and dark gray, what’s the diff? It might as well be a 20-color palette because that’s how I see it. I do enjoy the variety though and haven’t had to wear the same color twice yet. Conveniently, they all match each other fairly well so I don’t have to think too hard about which color combinations to use. I really can’t go too wrong. But that’s specific to this palette and not the individual quality of the product. So on to that. The colors seem to stay on pretty well and last long enough for me, which is about an evening of 6 hours. They blend well and are easy enough to remove. Even a little tissue off on areas I was too heavy handed generally does the trick. On the other hand, the Estee Lauder/Lancome eyeshadows are a bit more pigmented and stronger so where I’m too dark, I just have to blend out more with a lighter color sometimes. Tissue wiping doesn’t take off that much. They’re also a finer powder. The E.L.F. seems to come off on my brushes a bit coarsely. Which brings me to my next point, the coarseness of the powder comes off my brush and lands on my cheeks. I’ve never had this issue before with my previous eye shadows. It’s easy enough to clean off with a tissue but a bit of a nuisance nevertheless. Overall, it’s not something I’d go running back for but it’s perfectly fun to play with. I’d recommend that if you’re going to pay money for eyeshadow, get something of better quality. They last a long time and you want to have something you like. Don’t get sucked into all the colors. I mean, unless you’re a performer or other artist, a few versatile shades will be plenty enough.
Thai X-ing
Posted by Leaf on January 28, 2012
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Two words: Yum and Yum. This place is what we’d imagine food in Thailand would taste like.
This little gem of a restaurant is barely noticeable on the street. We got out of the taxi and wandered back and forth a bit before seeing its little sign and twinkly lights outside tucked amongst a street of row houses. We walked downstairs to the hostess stand and right away you can see the kitchen. She led us back outside to go upstairs where their main dining room is. All the tables and seats are tiny. The whole place doesn’t have many tables so it’s a good idea to get a reservation.
Firstly, it’s BYOB. We brought beers and as soon as we placed them on the table, they brought us 2 glasses and an opener right away. We noticed every customer brought bottles of booze. Wine. I think we were the only ones who brought beer. I just thought beer went better with Thai food than wine. But hey, it’s booze, you can’t go wrong either way.
Secondly, there are no menus. They ask you only what dietary restrictions you have. After that, the food just starts coming out one or two at a time. On these tiny tables, they have to go through course by course slowly. Each one is so delectable! Spicy too! The papaya salad and chicken cilantro salad are very spicy so watch out.
Each table has its own pitcher of water too so you don’t have to wait for someone to refill your glass. In fact, because there are no menus, there aren’t really any waiters, only servers and really, one main waitress, who happens to dabble in photography on the side. When I asked her to take a picture for us, she knew how to work my camera better than I did!
Our favorites of the evening were the pumpkin curry
and the dessert of mango sticky rice. Even after were were too full to eat our last course, we somehow found room to polish off the mango sticky rice dessert.
All in all, there were 8 dishes for $40 per person.
- Soup of cucumber stuffed with pork.
- Papaya salad
- Chicken cilantro salad
- Pumpkin curry
- Steamed fish
- Green Bean salad
- Pad See Yew
- Mango Sticky Rice
On our way out we peeked downstairs and we watched the chef whipping up a storm in his kitchen. His passion in his cooking definitely came out in his creations.
Blue
Posted by Leaf on January 27, 2012
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I have a bad case of the winter blues! I think fall and even up to Winter solstice I’m just working my way down to the blues. Mostly I can deal with it by self-medicating with lots of cheesy poofs, cereal, beer, and coffee. Then sometime around early February, I’m a blob of give-up-ness. Uncle! Give me some sunshine! It’s made worse because the only time I see sun is if I’m running late in the morning so instead of enjoying the sun I’m scurrying to my sunless Dilbert-cave. Those advertisements I’m seeing online for Hawaii is looking mighty tempting!
Saigon Cafe
Posted by Leaf on January 23, 2012
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Eh. It was okay but overall, not someplace we’ll probably be going back to anytime soon. I read about this place and how they were known for making an authentic bun bo hue (this thick rice noodle beef soup). SO of course, we ordered that. We also got caramelized catfish with rice, appetizers of these little round steamed rice flour bowls with scallions on top, cooked shrimp paste on sugar cane, and summer rolls. Their appetizers were tasty. The catfish was flavorful but very salty and the Imperial Hue beef soup was fine too. It was reminiscent of pho though. And we added beef tendons expecting these soft melt in your mouth gelatin like morsels but ended up with a few pieces of leather in our soup. After lunch, we went back to the car and discovered I’d been walking around with dental floss in my purse all these years and flossed our teeth! So nothing was awful and nothing was great. It’s just not somewhere I think you should waste your time on.
Mad Men
Posted by Leaf on January 18, 2012
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Move over Mamoun
Posted by Leaf on January 15, 2012
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Two years ago, we ate our way through a weekend in New York City. One of the most memorable places we ate at was Mamoun’s Falafel. I would not shut up about it. Mamoun’s this, Mamoun’s that. You’d think he was my son! It was because of Mamoun that I set my Yelp star rating basis. A 5-star rating is if I would travel to eat there and by traveling, I mean not sleep in my own bed. Ad-Hoc, Kirala, and for these last 2 years, Mamoun’s all were well deserving of 5 stars. Well, I’m happy and sad to say that I have found a new falafel dealer by the name of Max. Max’s Kosher Cafe sells schwarmas and falafel and they are out of this world. We ordered a half falafel and schwarma and learned very quickly what a big mistake that was… just get the whole. Yes – learn from my fail. They will knock your socks off! We were visibly new to this as the guy asking us what toppings we want quickly realized we didn’t know what we were doing and proceeded to put something together himself. He knows what he’s doing because holy cow they were good. We went back and ordered more after quickly polishing off the first batch. I’m sorry I didn’t bring my camera, but we’ll certainly be back. Oh and they’re not opened on Saturday’s (Shabbat Shalom!) so keep that in mind.
Not what it used to be
Posted by Leaf on January 14, 2012
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I just got back from a shopping trip to Ann Taylor. There was a recent article on the Post saying how women in this area LOOooVE Ann Taylor. Well I did love it but this recent trip was disappointing. Their quality has diminished noticeably. The material is of poor quality, like it wouldn’t survive many wears and cleanings, and the clothes appear sloppily slapped together. Just about everything is from China now too. I’m saddened that my go-to place for work clothes is nothing better than an expensive version of Old Navy. Now I’ll really have nothing to wear for work!
Sprinklers
Posted by Leaf on January 13, 2012
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A little past midnight this morning, the fire alarm started blaring. I was in the middle of a nice dream so it felt like I dozed my way out of the building. I remember we briefly discussed bringing the chinchees but not seeing any sign of smoke anywhere, decided it would be too traumatic for them to be stuffed into a sack and hauled about for what appeared to be an ill-timed drill. Yes, we left them and Dirty Hairy to die in a fiery inferno. No, I didn’t bring anything of value out either. I just remember hauling my purse out with a box of tissues and for some reason, made sure to bring my metro card out. Where did I think I was going? To work?
Anyway, when we got out, we thought it was raining. But then when we looked up we saw water trickling down the building, it was the sprinklers. The fire trucks came and when they finally gave us the go ahead to go back in, we learned that our elderly neighbor’s unit had a sprinkler malfunction. Her unit totally flooded and for some reason was unable to get to her door to exit so the fire department had to break down her door and escort her out. Thank goodness no one got hurt, but the sprinklers really went crazy raining down in her unit. Water seeped out everywhere and even down to the unit below. By the time we got back to bed though I could hear people with wet-vacs already cleaning up the hallway. Our poor neighbor must have had quite a shock. She slept in another neighbor’s place for the night.
E.L.F.
Posted by Leaf on January 12, 2012
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The stuff’s all made in China!! No wonder it’s all so cheap! I mean, $5 for a palette of 32 eyeshadows? It’s almost seemingly too good to be true. And indeed it is because it’s from China! I’m envisioning a little girl, too young to be wearing makeup, forced to stand in a windowless factory, not even allowed to talk to her fellow workers, cramming makeup brushes into a case.
Had I known about this China bit, I probably would not have purchased any of their products. I am still impressed with the brushes but again, I’d rather pay a bit more for something not made in China. And I’m just a bit squicked out about putting chemicals on my face that came from China. You just never know what’s really in there. I tested some of the eyeshadows tonight and might have felt some in-my-head phantom tingles. I don’t know. So, this stuff will be fun to play with but I don’t see myself ever purchasing from E.L.F. again. Unless maybe they move their factories to Vietnam, which I hear will be the new China in 30 or so years. We’ll see.
Aside from the 32 eyeshadow palette and the 11-piece brush set, I also got:
A Kabuki face brush – It’s so soft! Much much softer than the current one I have from Target (probably also made in China), and of course softer than paint brushes. Anyway, this one feels like a chinchilla. Ok maybe not that soft. But close. In fact, all their brushes feel like bunnies. They’re great. I washed them all and not a single hair fell out.
Eye Transformer – This is a set of 4 light colored eyeshadows which they recommend you use with your existing eyeshadows to create new colors. I guess if you have a very dark color that you want to lighten, you could blend it together. I see this more as just a set of 4 pale colored eyeshadows you can use alone, as a highlighter, or blended – like any other eyeshadow really. Kinda’ gimmicky, but it gimmicked it’s way into my makeup pouch.
Shimmering Facial Whip – This is the same thing as the Body Shop’s Radiant Highlighter, for which I paid $7. Though I haven’t tried it, I’m expecting it to be equally as useful, which is to say, not very much. Still, it’s worth the buck to satisfy my curiosity.
Under Eye Concealer & Highlighter – How many highlighters do I need?! Well, I got it for the concealer half. These bags and dark circles under my eyes aren’t going to just hide themselves are they? The packaging says the highlighter can be used as an eyeshadow primer too.
Eyelid Primer – I don’t know what the difference is between an Eyelid and Eyeshadow Primer. Other than $2. I’ve read it’s just as effective as the fancy pants Urban Decay and Too Faced primers. Minus points for the unsanitary wand instead of the squeeze tube packaging but hey, for a buck, can’t complain.
Mineral Infused Mascara – $3
Lengthening & Defining Mascara – $1 *shrug* they were cheap. I got em.
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