Days are getting shorter, weather's just a bit chillier (though we seem to have hit a mini heat wave here in the last few days), for those in climates where you have deciduous trees, maybe the leaves are starting to turn. (Or maybe they've turned brown and dropped off in the summer heat. :P) I miss New England in the fall. Hell, I miss seasons, period. Except for hot, humid summers on the East Coast -- those I lack all missingness for.
Since I'm on the quarter system, I still have a couple of weeks reprieve before school starts again: I'm going into the 2nd year of my PhD program. I'm starting to get really nervous, remembering how hard my first year was (for a number of reasons, both personal and professional). But there's no reason to suspect that anything will be different than the year before, except this year, I'll know what I'm doing. I'm even TA'ing the same class again as I did last spring, Psychology of Language. Except there'll be more papers to grade this time around: 5 essays in the quarter (i.e. every two weeks), 50+ papers for the two TAs.
For all you students who complain about having to write papers, let me remind you of your TAs (or, for the lucky ones, professors) who have to read and critique them. :) After TA'ing for the first time last year, I realized something: bullshit is obvious (as is ill-preparedness and lack of proofreading). I really wanted to write my college professors and be like, "I am sorry for not proofreading! I am sorry that it was so obvious that I had NO idea what I was talking about at times! I am sorry I made such a fool of myself on paper and didn't fully realize how foolish I sounded!"
Anyway, instead of discussing the irritations of grading, I think I'll post some pretty nail polish pictures. Here are some yellow swatches I've done in the last few months but haven't gotten a chance to post here. I love yellow and am always on a mission to find the perfect yellow creme nail polish. For those of you who love yellow too, you know that yellow is often one of the hardest colors to work with: often streaky, goopy and hard to build to an opaque finish. Here are some of the better examples of yellow cremes I've found.
Chinoiserie Joy
Four coats yet still VNL. Not a fan of Chinoiserie. At $8 a bottle (plus the hassle of actually ordering Chinoiserie), for polishes that have largely disappointed me thus far... I doubt I'll be putting in a Chinoiserie order again.
OPI The "It" Color
I love this warm golden yellow (it almost tiptoes its way to a soft orange, but not quite): it's streaky and kind of sticky for the first two coats but by the third, it settles down into a lovely smooth finish with VNL that's only visible if you scrutinize it. If happiness had a color, it would be this.
Barielle Lemondrops
Fairly decent yellow: a shade too cool for me, I think, but as a polish, it was alright. Not the easiest to work with but nor was it a huge pain in the ass. Unlike the other Barielles from this summer's line, I found the formula somewhat hard to control.
Okay, maybe happiness would be this color. Seriously one of the best yellows ever: applied beautifully, three coats, no VNL. Gorgeously glossy finish. Better than OPI The "It" Color because TIC is more of an orange-y yellow whereas this is, like, the platonic form of a yellow: the color lemons are supposed to be. :)
Nubar Lemon Sorbet
I wanted this polish so bad for so long. And then I got it, and it just was waaaay too bright and chalky. A glossier, jellier finish would've suited me better. It applied fine in three coats, but just didn't look good on me.
And of course, check out my latest post on Illamasqua for Wayward (a couple posts down), a fabulous cool yellow creme.
