Robin’s Nest

Plans for Esprit — the 19th consecutive year! — are underway, and 2008 looks to be another great conference.  Early-bird registration ends 3/31, so if you plan to go for the week (or even half-week) you can save some money by signing in early.

Esprit 2005 was my very first time out of the house, so I have an emotional attachment to the conference.  But even objectively, it’s a great time to meet people, learn, have fun, and socialize.   Port Angeles is a small town that really opens itself up to us.  A wonderful environment overall!

Regards!
Robin

Some time ago, I had a coupon and bought a Braun Silk-Epil Xelle epilator (see link for manufacturer info, including some pretty sparkles that follow your cursor around ).  A couple nights ago, I had the chance to try it out.  I had a few days’ growth of leg hair after shaving, which is probably just about the right length — maybe 2-3 mm or thereabouts.

For those new to the idea, it’s a small device, a little smaller than an electric shaver, that has a bunch of tweezers that rotate and pull out your hair.  It’s supposed to be like waxing, both in pain level and in how long it lasts.

First impression: WOW! There’s a lot of hair under the skin!  The ones it pulled out were much longer than I expected them to be.

Second impression: WOW WOW!  It does a good job.  As good as waxing (haven’t waxed myself, but have had legs waxed a couple times).  Once the hair is gone, there’s no stubble and nothing visible under the skin (my hair is very dark, so in some places slightly visible after shaving).

Third impression: OW!  This thing can be quite painful.  On the shins/calves and knees, it was great — not bad at all on the pain-meter.  On the outer thighs, it was OK as long as I did it in stages (first, I did the “baby tweezers” at high speed, then I did the “real tweezers” at low speed).  The front thighs were more painful.  The inner thighs, ZOWIE did it hurt.  Maybe I just don’t have a woman’s tolerance for pain, but I just couldn’t do it.  So I stopped.

Fourth impression: YOW OW OW!  Despite my luck with the thighs, I went ahead and tried it on my chest.  The hair was about the same length, and about the same density.  But this was simply intolerable, and the few hairs that got pulled left bright red bumps.  This happened when I had my chest waxed (four days of hydrocortizone — it didn’t hurt, but defeated the purpose of low necklines ), so I guess it’s back to Nair for that part.

As for results, the shins/calves are great — smooth and silky.  I LOVE IT!  And regrowth seems to be much slower than normal.  I got a few bumps on my thighs (no bleeding, but red bumps) but have been going at them with the loofah to prevent ingrown hairs.

So, considering what waxing costs, it could be a good deal.  In my case, I think I’ll use it on the calves and knees and worry about the rest some other way.

Overall, Robin gives it an “ehhhhhh.”  The Braun is a nice device, and it can work well, but it can also be exquisitely painful — much moreso than waxing, in my humble opinion.

Regards!
Robin

I came across an interesting article from BadScience.com. It’s deliciously sarcastic about a recent study that tries to explain why girls like pink and boys like blue. They also quote a Ladies’ Home Journal article from 1918 that presupposes the exact opposite.

The article shows a graph of Chinese subjects in the test, in which both sexes prefer reddish tones because Chinese superstition has red as a “lucky” color.

I wonder if the whole thing isn’t just cultural — if your mom buys you a pink blanket, and all the other females in your daycare gush over pink, then you pick that up. Same thing for boys (although as they get older, I wonder if it isn’t more “disdain for pink” than “love of blue”).

Regardless of any evolutionary-biological or psychological reasons, it’s clear that the colors are pretty firmly tied to gender in modern America.  Hence the pink of my webpage.  I’ll leave it to your guess whether I chose my pink blog theme to identify with girls, because I like pink, or as an anti-anti-pink thing.

Perhaps everyone knows about this, but it’s worth a quick mention that La Femme Magnifique is coming up this weekend. It’s quite the affair, billed as “A PAGEANT TO CROWN THE MOST GLAMOROUS FEMALE IMPERSONATOR IN THE WORLD !!”

Sadly — very sadly — Robin won’t be able to attend this year, as previous years have been really fun.

See http://www.darcellexv.com/lafemme2007.php for more information.

If you’re looking for a little snack to nosh on with your tea from the previous post, the same company also makes “F-cup cookies“.  They’re somewhat more pricey, at around US$34 for two boxes (and that probably doesn’t include shipping!).

More information (along with some funny comments) can be had from another blog  post at Q-Taro).  There’s a Japanese page (translation by Google at this link) that is also pretty funny.  It has lots of smiling girls (real and animated) and one fellow who’s shocked at the cleavage of one of the women.

No word on what happens if — gasp — a guy were to eat any of these things…

OK, for those who’d like to be a little better endowed, there’s a new solution from Japan. It involves, of all things, tea and biscuits!

“F-Cup tea“, a bargain at just 980 yen or less than US$9 at today’s rates, promises to enlarge your bust if you drink it. The best I can tell is that there’s a little soybean extract in it (which, without meaning to stereotype, you’d think there would be plenty in the usual Japanese diet?!?).

(Of course, the French say anything more than a champagne glass is wasted, but what do they know?)

Anyway, perhaps something for the next NWGA Spring Tea Party.

Wow. There was a recent story on CBS’ “Early Show” about eyelash transplants. Sounds interesting, except that you have to trim them occasionally(?!?).

What we won’t do for beauty, eh? See this link for the full story.

In Hindu mythology, an “avatar” was a particular incarnation of a deity. Nowadays, at least in techspeak, it’s more of a general embodiment or representation, usually of a perso.

My homepage has two avatars on it. The first is from “Designhergals” (www.designhergals.com), which lets you assemble a cartoon character from pieces, and then use that image on cards, stationary, and so on. It’s very nicely done, and really cute. Quite girly, too, but that’s the point. This representation doesn’t really look a lot like me, but it’s not a bad idealization (considering the range of choices they offer).

The other is from Second Life, a 3D virtual-reality game. “Game” isn’t really the right term, as you don’t have to kill dragons or win wars. Second life is more about interpersonal interaction, building things, commerce, and so on. It’s very immersive, and you could spend a ton of time on it without really trying. My character in that world also isn’t terribly similar to how I look, but it’s difficult (possible, but difficult) to create a non-stereotypically-attractive avatar.

Interacting as a woman in SL is interesting. I’m not sure how many guys masquerade (for whatever purpose) in a female avatar, but as a girl you do tend to get a higher-than-average share of conversations, offers of help, and so on.

There are whole blogs just about SL, and my experience isn’t so deep (haven’t had a lot of time to sink into it, for fear of getting enveloped and suddenly losing large chunks of real life! . So won’t say a lot more about it unless there’s some reason to write more later. [Addition - you can download SL and create a character for free. If you want to say that I referred you, my in-world name is "Robin Raffke". I get some bonus, but am not sure exactly what.]

Wordpress is pretty cool.  But it almost suffers from the “too many knobs” problem.  And this geekette usually doesn’t complain about knobs!

It’s nice that there are so many options to tweak, but I wonder how much time gets spent playing around with the format, as opposed to actually making any blog content.  I know I spent too much time surfing for “just the right theme” and didn’t find one.  I like this one, mind you, but there are things about it I could change.

Of course, if I did, then I’d sink a bunch of time into the ephemera of the appearance rather than actual content.  So I’m going to stop Wordpress hacking for a while.

Shoes are perhaps the iconic women’s fashion accessory. For quite some time, I was completely unable to understand why a girl would need so many pairs of black shoes. Now, I’m starting to get it!

As my own collection has grown, the “pile on the floor” method was becoming unmanageable. So after some poking around, I found the following shoe organizer at the Container Store. It’s pretty good quality, and the openings are big enough to hold my size-{mumble} footwear — even my one pair of “f***-me pumps” with the tall spiky heel!

Robin’s closet space is always at a premium, so for this organizer, “It’s a Good Thing(tm)”.