02 April 2016

Online competition

Back in February last year, Stana posted a selfie of mine in the blog post Alice's favorite photo (of Alice!) on her blog, Femulate, as part of a series of reader submitted photos of themselves.

In February this year, Stana posted about what she referred to as an Online Womanless Competition. When I went to the web site hosting the competition, I was rather surprised to see my selfie on their site, shrunk to the point of making the watermark unreadable, then attached to a an unrelated image. My first thought was that when I went to the site, it had somehow used the image from my Google or Facebook profile, but it was a static image that everybody got if they went to that site during February. 

I was simultaneously upset that they used my photo without asking me first, and pleased that they thought that it was good enough to steal.

With that in mind, I had to think about whether I wanted to enter their competition, and ended up doing so just before it closed. Since they wanted a full-length photo and I didn't want to submit the same outfit as the photo that they'd swiped, I ended up submitting photos of the outfit that I wore to a nail appointment in April 2014, a fortnight before the photo that they had used.

I submitted three photos ~ a close-up selfie, and front and rear photos taken at the salon. Oddly, I was apparently the only person to submit a rear photo.

After a few weeks of waiting, the results came out. They'd apparently struggled to choose the winners. They'd chosen two entries for first and second places but took a while to decide who got which, and they had to bring an extra judge in to break a three-way deadlock for third place.

After all of that, I came second. Apparently they thought that the detail of my makeup let me down. Given that outing was before I had my eyelids done, it wasn't entirely surprising because my lids always hid my eyeliner. The close-up photo that they were judging was also taken at the end of the outing, by which time my foundation was shiny and the whole lot generally faded. Overall, for something that was never intended to be a competition entry, I'm pretty happy to have come a close second. :-)

The prize was a US$50 voucher to an online clothing store called Choies. I ordered a dress and a skirt (both red), which totalled about $47. I'll just have to wait and see if they will fit...

17 January 2016

A belated review of 2015

I updated the graph of frequency of outings that I posted last year. The one test run outing in November means that the total for the year wasn't zero, but it can't get much worse!

A year ago, I was upset at having gone over 90kg for the first time in over 20 years. This New Year, I went over 100kg for the first time in my life, peaking at 101.5kg. I also had swollen ankles and feet. It appears likely that the swelling was caused by the fact that I'd gone back to taking ibuprofen on a regular basis, and it's likely to have contributed to the weight gain. Like back in 2012, I've had to stop using ibuprofen completely, but this time it is probably going to have to be permanent. Within 3 days, I dropped 2kg and the swelling virtually disappeared.

Unfortunately, I still haven't got my hunger under control. I'm still eating too much, part of which is comfort eating. Surprisingly, even though I'm depressed, I'm nowhere nearly as depressed as I have been at my worst.

I've also been on holidays since just before Christmas, and will return to work tomorrow (Monday), meaning that I need to spend at least part of today getting the office and yard organised. While I've been on holidays, in spite of intending to get to bed earlier, I've fairly consistently ended up getting to bed far later than intended, and consequently getting up later than planned and getting very little done.

In what I can only describe as a devastating blow, we found out around Christmas that our house plans, that we've been working on with an architect for several years, isn't permitted at all in the zoning of our property. The letter from the council to the architect didn't quite say that he should have known from the outset that it wasn't going to be possible, but came close to it!

Our current property is in an area intended to be re-developed as units, townhouses, etc., and building a large extension of a single house simply isn't going to be allowed by council. Also, the architect used the building envelope allowed for units or townhouses in planning the house extensions, giving us the impression that that would also be acceptable to council. After seeing those plans, I don't think that our next-door neighbours on either side are talking to us any more.

As I did with limited success back in 2014, I now need to look at things that can be done to rearrange the house that we have to be more liveable, while trying to work out what we do next.

12 January 2016

More China Red

My favourite nail polish, TBN China Red, is now a discontinued line. :-(

Because of my relatively large nails, I go through a fair quantity of polish every time. I've been buying a bottle or two from time to time, but when I went looking for it at the usual places, they still had the brand but not the colour.

I remembered seeing it at a chemist in Wallsend (across the road from the op shop where my sister-in-law's mother used to work), but I rarely go to Wallsend because it's a bit inconvenient to get to, and parking is almost always difficult. I made an effort to go there yesterday, and the drive was as bad as expected, but I fluked a parking spot right outside that op shop. Since I was in the area, I had a brief look around four op shops along that side of the street before heading across the road to the chemist.

They had a stand with the same brand of nail polish but not the same colour, so I asked the lady at the register, and she asked another woman to check in a cupboard, where they had some old colours of the same brand. She found one of the right colour, and I said that if they had any more, I'd take them too.

She continued looking through and found one that was half full and dried up. I assume that it must have been a tester that had ended up amongst the others. Because it looked like it was no good, the woman at the register decided not to charge me full price for them.

In total, they had seven including the dried up, half empty one. Imagine my surprise when they charged me just $3 for the lot!

When I got home, I checked them closely, and I'm confident that only the half empty one has been opened. The other six appear to be in good condition, full and the liquid moves around in the bottles how it should.

So, it appears that I have at least a couple of years' supply. :-)