Chaos and Crocodiles Asset

I am working my way through a new meditation app.  It's called the Waking Up app.  It's done by Sam Harris.  He has a dreamy voice that's for sure.  Besides the daily meditations, he has what he calls lessons.  The ones I've done so far are pretty damn thought provoking.

The lesson he calls Free Will is especially freaky.  In it he says that the reality is, we have no free will even though we think we do.

Let's get deep people.

What he says is that we didn't pick our parents, we didn't pick the environment that we grew up in, that we didn't pick our genes or pick our soul.  Are you with me so far? We can agree on these things right?

What did you think after reading those statements?  What are you going to think next? You don't know.  One can't possibly know what is going to be the next thought.  As this would mean you would need to think before thinking.  Thoughts just appear, you don't choose them.

So where is your freedom of will? If your thoughts come on their own, that you're not actually thinking them into existence, how can you have free will?

Here's his example if you want to play along.  "He says to pick any movie you want, you're free to choose any movie you want.  Just pay attention to the experience of choosing.  He says that this is as free a decision you will ever make in your life.  You are totally free to pick any movie you want.

Ok now choose...........

Now choose another film and do it one more time.  Pick a third movie.

Did you see any evidence of free will here?  Let's look for it.  Set aside all the films you don't know so couldn't have picked.  There's no freedom in that as you couldn't pick one of those movies if your life depended on it.  But there are many other films that you are aware of that you didn't pick.

Now you absolutely know that Rocky 2 is a film but you didn't think of it.

Think about this.  Were you free to choose that which didn't occur to you to choose? Your Rocky 2 circuits were not in play for reasons you could not possibly know and could not control.  Based on the state of your brain a moment ago, Rocky 2 was not an option.

Where is the freedom in that?

Think of a new film and pay attention to the process.  Why did you choose the movie you chose?  As the conscious witness of your inner life, you are not making these decisions.  All you can do is witness these decisions.  You no more picked your movie in subjective terms than if I had picked it for you.  You have no control over which movie finally appeared in your thoughts.

Pay attention to how thoughts arise and decisions get made moment to moment, you'll see there is no evidence of free will."

Now what I have just typed is verbatim from Sam Harris's lesson, I've put it in quotes.  These are not my words, not my thoughts.  However, it hit me so powerfully, that I wanted to share it with you guys. After really thinking things through, I feel he's got a point here.

It's kind of freaky when you think about it.  He talks about how people sometimes wish they could go back in time.  That if they could, they would have done things differently.  But knowing what we just talked about before, would you really have done things differently if the reality is, you didn't choose what happened in the first place?

Think about it.

OK that's deep enough for today.  Let's talk super holo happiness.

I didn't do a silly bottle shot for this one and I did no art as I usually don't with super holos.

I give you Chaos and Crocodiles Asset.

How freakin amazing is this????? Chaos makes the best super holos hands down.  That's right, you heard it here first!  LOL.  Anyway, it's a gorgeous super holo and an addition to the Secret Agent set Chaos came out with a few years ago. 

Hope I didn't mess with your minds too much with today's topic. 

Until next time people. Any thoughts out there?

Chanel Cavaliere, Polish My Life Milk Chocolate Goodies

Today is one of those mani for me days.  One where I choose colors just for me.  Usually, I try to rotate shades and do holos if the sun is out.  This day I wanted my favorite color brown.

Yes I know it's weird I love brown.

I've officially found and hired what I hope to be a good petsitter who will be around for awhile.  She does this on the side, so not dependent on petsitting for income so hopefully won't stop doing it for a long time.  So Myrtle Beach in February here I come!

Yeah I know, I took a week off.  I started this post last weekend and just had nothing to talk about, nothing to say.  Listening to the new part one EP from Julia Michaels.  So love her music.  Been waiting months for this album to come out and it's a part one? Dude WTF? Anyway, am on the second listen so can't say how I feel yet.

Her first EP had the song Pink, Make It Up To You and all the rest BUT the song Issues.  I read yesterday that Issues was number eleven on the Top 100 BillBoard.  Huh.  It seems that every song I really like is never the one that the world likes.  Oh well.

Driving home from work last week, I had the tire low light come on.  It was like 20F at that time and I just figured I needed to add air as it didn't feel like I had a flat tire.  I made it to the gas station near my house thirty miles away on the highway and saw that I was actually driving on a very soft almost flat tire.

My first thought, well my second thought after I thought sh*t, was damn I hope I didn't ruin my rims. I was adding air to the tire and it did come up, but it was so cold and the air thing was metal and my hands were numb that I just couldn't hold the thing long enough to try to get it up to the forty pounds it needed to be.  All I wanted was to get home and warm my hands.

It held the air for me to get home and knew I would have to call the tow truck in the morning. Next day, it was back to flat.  Called the tow guy and he was able to put enough air in so I could get to the garage near my house.  Turns out I had run over a nail so it was a slow leak.  It was also near the outer rim in a place where it just made it legal to patch it.  Otherwise I would have had to buy a new tire.

Now I know I already need new tires this Spring as I'm hitting 50,000 miles on my car.  I just wasn't ready to buy one then. You feel me?

So $100 later, I was finally on my way to work.  It was one of those days.

All right, let's get to the silly bottle shot.

This is Polish My Life Milk Chocolate Goodies and Chanel Cavaliere.  Here is the base.

Notice I actually took the time to file my nails into a nice shape.  They have since split and broken back down to nubs.  The Milk Chocolate Goodies leans khaki to me.  You can see in the second photo there is holo in the bottle.  It's very subtle.  Cavaliere is a gorgeous deep brown with shimmer.  I love it. 

Next I just added dots and my funky.

You can see the shimmer in the Cavaliere in these pictures.  Still working on a pose. 

Until next time people. Any thoughts out there?

Liquid Sky Lacquer Pure Luxury

Did I tell you what I got myself for Christmas? I bought it during the Sephora Fall 20% off VIB sale. It's the Foreo (pronounced 4, 0h) UFO device.  I also got all the masks that go with it.  Let me just say that I love this thing and need to use it more often.  It's like I'm saving it for some reason.

This device is touted as a sheet mask done in ninety seconds.  It has red light, green light and blue light as well as heat, cooling and Tsonic pulsations.  So depending on which mask you choose, the combo of heat/light etc is programmed.

For example, yesterday I did the night mask.  This one used the red light, heat and Tsonic pulses.  I usually repeat the mask twice as there is so much serum left in the package I hate to waste it. The one for oil control is called the Matte Maniac.  This one does red light, blue light and cooling with the pulses.  I have no idea if the different lights actually do anything, but in my mind it does!

I just love this thing! If you're looking into this, do not get the mini.  Splurge for the full one as the mini does not have the blue light or the cooling feature.  If you're acne prone, you want this feature.

My skin care routine has been quite simple as of late.  I did try some different brands and different items, but my skin kept reacting and I was getting raised red bumps on my left cheek.  It's not acne, it's just reaction.  So right now, I am using Dr Sam's Flawless Cleanser and her Flawless Moisturizer with Differin Gel in between.  It's calmed the bumps and my skin has remained clear.

Currently I am talking to Directv for the bazillionth time.  I hate more than anything talking to f*cking computers.  I get what they call loyalty discounts that are good usually for six months and then all of a sudden your bill is $63 more and you have to call back in and get passed around to different people until you get to someone who maybe can help and then they say sorry there are no discounts so I then have to threaten to switch to DISH and all of a sudden discounts are there.  It's a pain in my butt and I hate having to go through this.  Why can't my bill just stay the same? I haven't changed anything??????

So dude says there are no discounts available, but he can lower my bill by adding more channels to my listing.  WTF? How are you going to lower my bill by adding more channels that I don't want or need  when I just want my discounts back? I threaten to leave and demand to talk to a supervisor and he says I can transfer you to our Loyalty Department.  Yes this is what I want, I shouldn't have to call and go through this crap multiple times since I've been using your service since 1998.  Am now on hold for that department.

I talk to that loyalty department and they can't help me so I get transferred to another loyalty department and the fifth person I've talked to now in the past 23 minutes of being on this call as well as trying the online chat.

It's now been a 38 minute call and all I got was a $63 credit for this month's bill as apparently, there are no loyalty discounts right now.  So I'm told to CALL BACK  as they pop up all the time.  I am so pissed off right now, you've no idea.  This whole game is a load of crap and I hate it.

So while I calm down, let's take a look at today's polish.

This is a gorgeous super holo in gold.  This was the original bottle from when LSL first started making polish.  I've no idea if they are even still around or making polish.  Does anyone know?

How do you keep your loyalty discounts with ATT/DirecTV? I'd love to know.

Until next time people. Any thoughts out there?

American Apparel Peacock, Girly Bits Cosmic Ocean and Bettina Clouds

It seems that the videos I added to my recent posts aren't working, so I've removed them for now.  It worked in the past, but not now.  I'll have to look into it as I like to show you guys the rainbows.

I'm seriously thinking of revamping my blog.  I'm a bit tired of the green.  Because of this, I've just spent the past hour researching other nail art blogs and websites that list the "best" nail art blogs. So so many of them are no longer posting.  I'm talking the great ones (IMO) from the past when nail art blogging was huge.  Like 2012-2016 or so.

I'm talking about All Lacquered Up, The PolishAholic, The Nailasaurus, Chalkboard Nails to name a few.  Are they posting elsewhere or just gave it up all together?

What happened to the blogging? Has another platform replaced it? I know personally, I no longer read blogs and I guess that most people don't read blogs anymore either.  What would be really cool is to do mini videos on Instagram like Yagala does. But I am no editing expert and don't feel like learning right now.

Maybe it's silly to spend money to revamp something that no one reads, but this blog means a lot to me and I've put countless hours into it since I started back in 2011.  It's my way of journaling I guess.

Even in my heyday, when this blog was at its most popular, I only got like 200 hits a day.  But those 200 people meant something and still do mean something to me.  A reader on Facebook yesterday mentioned how my past staged silly bottle shots was like my thing, my signature.  That started out as poking fun at blogs for showing the bottles as I thought, who cares? I'm here to see the nail art. But then it turned into something my readers liked.

I may need to revive that.

Maybe more people would stop by here if I didn't write as much and just focused on doing the nail art.  What do you guys think? Do you think a new design and less writing would get more visitors to this space?

I'd really like to hear your opinions.  Please.

Back when I started this blog, I did a mani using American Apparel nail polish.  Somehow it got featured on this website that I've forgotten, but have it printed out and have it somewhere in my house. Today when I see that mani, I just cringe.  I'll dig it out and paste the link here so you can see for yourself.

That was back when I used to post so many pictures.  Sunlight, regular light, close ups and macro. I've stopped using my camera to take my nail photos and have been using my iphone.  I need to work on better photos.

All right, here is today's silly bottle shot.

This is Girly Bits Cosmic Ocean, an original from when she first started making polish. American Apparel Peacock and Elevation Polish Con Tanto Affetto Yeti.  Another original bottle from when Elevation Polish first started.

Are there people still making polish out there?

I started with American Apparel Peacock.

It's a bit more teal IRL.  Next I added a layer of Cosmic Ocean.

See the gorgeous green shimmer? I love this and have since the day I got it.

Next I tried making a zigzag design with the glitter, but was a huge fail, so I ended up just adding dots and my funky.

Kind of a fail, but I kind of like how it came out.  Very wintery. 

Here is the mani I mentioned that won a place on a website long ago. 




Don't say I didn't warn you! This was back before I changed to showing my left hand.  Yes this is horrible, yes I am aware, but I'm still proud of being on that website.

Until next time people. Any thoughts out there?