Super Bowl XLVII Nails

SUPER! BOWL! SUPER! BOWL!! I love the Super Bowl so much. My team (da Bears) has been out of it since halfway through the season, but today it doesn't matter. It's the Super Bowl! It's by far one of my favorite holidays. I don't really care who wins today, but it's a tradition to pick a team and root for them anyway. I rooted for the Ravens a few seasons ago, but I think I'm gonna switch it up and go for the 49ers this year. I can't remember the last time that team was decent. Anyways, you can't have a Super Bowl without some super nails! Here's my 49ers spirit.

OPI Goldeneye, Sally Hansen Lite, OPI The Spy Who Loved Me

Austin City Limits & TX/OU Weekend

This weekend will be the weekend to end all weekends. Two of my biggest yearly celebrations have collided into one super holiday this year - ACL/OU!

First is the Austin City Limits Music Festival (ACL). I've had my tickets for this year's festival since October 9, 2011. I am more than ready to go! This will be my 4th festival - I missed my freshman year of college and last year. But never again! ACL goes from 11AM Friday until 10:30PM Sunday. Dozens of the greatest bands both known and unknown, along with hundreds of thousands of hipsters and music lovers, make a yearly pilgrimage to Austin, TX - the Live Music Capitol of the World! I am super stoked about the lineup this year! I'd have to steal Hermione's time-turner and a teleporter to make it to everyone on my list, but I'm gonna try my damndest. My bestie Jordan and sister Eileen (along with a bunch of people from work and my lovely former roommate Maggie) will be joining me this year! Eileen and Jordan are both ACL newbies, so I'm hoping the weather stays nice so they can see Zilker Park at its finest.

If three days of nonstop music weren't enough for one weekend, The Red River Shootout (the Texas v. Oklahoma rivalry game) is set to kick off at 11AM Saturday morning at the Cotton Bowl in the middle of the Texas State Fairgrounds in Dallas. This will be my first time not being at the game in a while, and I am actually so depressed about missing it that I've been trying not to think about it. LUCKILY, the people in Austin understand that this game MUST be watched, so they've set up a tent in the middle of Zilker filled with television screens dedicated to displaying this glorious game. I think that they could sense my dismay and also only scheduled crappy bands during the game. *cue a rousing gospel choir belting out the Hallelujah Chorus*

I'm really hoping that the Football Gods ("Dear Our Lady of the Boobies...") and the Music Gods will get their shit together next year and schedule these things for different weekends. But this year I'm embracing the madness.

Update:
I had planned out a super mani for this weekend. But instead of actually getting it done.. I went to the hospital. I spent 7 hours there today, and I am just so exhausted that I can't do anything. Long story short, I have a kidney stone. I really only thought old people got those...? And I'm not out of the woods yet. It's supposed to get super painful really soon. So that'll be great for a 3 day outdoor music festival... Fingers crossed.

Fall into Autumn Challenge: Football

It's football season!! My team lost last night, so I wasn't super excited to do football nails today. The brush I used was being obnoxious, so I have some smudges. =/

Fall Into Autumn Challenge: School Spirit - Texas Longhorn Skittles

Football season is finally here!! UT's first game is Saturday night, and I am stoked. And sometime last night, in an answer to my prayers, AT&T U-Verse FINALLY decided to support the Longhorn Network!!! EEEEEEEEEEEEEE! I'm driving up to Austin to watch the game anyway, but now I can watch everything all the time!

To get ready for a new season, I went out and bought all-new game gear. I'm a little superstitious, and I don't want to bring last year's bad juju back by wearing tainted jerseys. And of course I decked out my nails in the ole brunt orange and white.

Artificial light

Artificial light

Artificial light

Sunlight

Sunlight

Artificial light

Artificial light

Football For Dummies

I have been watching football for as long as I can remember. The most exciting day of the year for me, other than Christmas, of course, was Super Bowl Sunday. Being six or seven years old, the prospect of eating snacks in the living room while yelling at the tv seemed too good to be true.

Unfortunately, many people don't understand and/or like the game. Unreal! For many, many years, I've attempted to convert many of my besties into fans by explaining the scoring system, positions, etc. This doesn't seem to work. Ever. So I'm taking a new approach - humor! I'm hoping that once people see how fun and hilarious football can be, they'll be less hostile to sitting down and watching a game with me :)

Keyshawn Johnson, a former wide receiver and current ESPN commentator, started the C'mon Man segment before each Monday Night Football Game. Each week, he picks out the most ridiculous plays and invites America to laugh at the ones they love.

Product Testing ~ Quick-Dry Polishes

Last night was the first game of the 2011 NFL season. I was counting down the days, minutes, and seconds to this game since... one minute after the Super Bowl ended. I don't know if you've picked up on this already, but I love football. Being a short, fat, injury-prone girl, I have never played this glorious game, but I can shoot the shit about it with the best of them. Thankfully, many of the awesome people I work with also love football, so we went out last night, watched the game, and got a little rowdy. :]

Before I went out, I decided to play with some nail polish. Because I make no sense. Anyways, I tried out three different "quick-drying" polishes to see which one worked the best. I absolutely hate waiting for polish to dry, and 99.99% of the time I end up smudging it. Which is really frustrating, since I often spend an hour or more getting them to look awesome in the first place.

☀ Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Fast Dry Nail Color

Don't buy this. Seriously. The polish itself was crap. I'm not sure how to describe polishes like this. I actually have a few of them. They come out of the bottle fine, but as soon as they touch your nail, the get... clumpy? But not really clumpy - lumpy? I don't know. But they're not smooth, not shiny, and don't cover evenly no matter what you do. The way to make these work (if you have similar issues) is to put a clear and/or glitter layer on top. That somehow makes them perfect again.

Anyway, back to the original issue of quickness. The bottle says it dries in 60 seconds. Five minutes later, it was still goopy and smudgey. This might have been because I attempted to fix the lumpies with an extra layer..? It says it's supposed to coat in one layer, but that's a lie as well.

Although this didn't dry nearly as fast as I was hoping, it did have a couple good aspects. I don't know if you've noticed this, but polish creators have started using a different brush design - which I love! It's flat and wide, rather than round and thin, which makes it a lot easier to cover your whole nail in two strokes. This brand also had some really cool colors. Which I like. Revolon, the other brand I tried, only had fairly basic colors (at least at the CVS I went to).

I think I might have to give this one another shot, but I'm not getting my hopes up. I wouldn't rush out to buy more any time soon though.

☀ Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Anti-Chip Top Coat

This product sounded SO COOL. It's a clear top coat that claims to make any polish dry in a minute. The box says to apply your normal polish, wait 2 minutes, apply this top coat, and wait another minute. Although it definitely didn't dry in a minute (it was more like 3-5), I still liked it. I don't know about you guys, but I already have a million colors that I don't want to have to replace just so they'll dry faster.

☀ Revlon Top Speed Fast Dry Nail Enamel

I had heard rave reviews about this Revlon polish from a couple other bloggers. And it actually lived up to the hype! By the time I had finished painting each of my nails, the first nails were already dry!! It was a miracle. I only saw a few colors in the store, which is kind of annoying, but I have a feeling that if I hit up Ulta there'd be a lot more to choose from (the website says there's 32 colors).

When I was testing for dryness, I did both the finger print test (does it leave lines when you poke it?) and the nail-edge test (poking the edge of another nail straight into the polish). This was the only polish that passed both tests easily and quickly. The bottle claims that it dries in 60 seconds. It passed the finger print test in 60, and the nail-edge test in 2 minutes or so. Not bad, right?! I'm really excited about this stuff, if you can't tell. The only thing is that if you put a different polish on top, it will take longer to dry again. But all polish is like that, so I wasn't surprised.

There are about a million different types of "quick-dry" polishes out there. I'm going to try to test out a few more, but if you have any brand suggestions, or any type of testing suggestions, let me know! I'm going to work with the Konad stamper stuff soon, so I'll let you know how my second attempt at stamping goes!

Football Thoughts of the Day

End of the Lockout
Football is back! The players and owners have finally reached an agreement, and all of the players have unanimously voted to follow the new collective bargaining agreement!! I could not be more excited.

Fantasy Football
Now I have to start thinking about my Fantasy team! I attempted to manage a team last year... and failed miserably. I like to think that I did so terribly because I was busy going to school. I'm not sure what I'll blame it on if I crash and burn this year. But I'm trying it again, and looking for all of the help I can get.

The Worst QB in the NFL
In other news, two starting QB's had wedding-ish events this week. Ben Roethlisberger got married. This fact alone amazes me. Isn't this the same dude who got in trouble a year ago for harassing women in restrooms?! Who wants to marry that?! And so quickly??! A gold-digger with a prenup, I'm sure. 


The other QB, Jay Cutler, ended his engagement to a chick who was way too hot for him anyway. What a poop. Although I'm a Bears fan, I have never liked Cutler. He just seems like a whiny baby. This article compares the two QB's to determine which one of them is hated more. I'm not sure which I dislike the most, but I feel like it's pretty bad when you're comparing a sex offender to a crybaby. Just saying. Step it up, Cutler.

The New and Improved Rants & Raves
My (former) roommate Marissa and I have been listening to the NFL Rants & Raves podcast religiously for 3 (soon to be 4) seasons. During the offseason, these guys have stepped up their game - Steven quit his job, and now the two guys are making daily five-minute videos about what's going on in the NFL. It's kind of weird putting a face to the voices I've been listening to for so long.  Since the videos are so short (as compared to the 2+ hour-long podcasts) they're a little more to the point. I still love all of the hilarious stories and strange tangents, but it's nice having just a quick video I can watch during my "coffee break" to get caught up on the news of the day. The guys have also launched their own YouTube channel, which has all of the videos, plus a few others they've made along the way.

If you're a football fan and you're not listening to these guys, you're really missing out. Even if you know nothing about football (a large percentage of their audience lives in the UK) they're still hilarious, especially for car rides (or walking around campuses). Although I've never met either of these guys, I feel like I know quite a bit out their lives. Maybe too much..?

Favre Watch 2011
What. The. Heck. For those of you who don't know, Brett Favre, originally a QB for the Packers, has retired from the game FOUR TIMES. Since his first retirement, he has played for two more teams, the Jets and the Vikings. At the end of each year he retired yet again. After this last one I was convinced that he would give it up for good and go play with his grandkid. Yes, he's a grandpa.

I've always loved Favre. He's been playing since 1991 when I was 2 years old. I grew up watching this man be a freaking indestructible beast. But that decades ago! I'm not sure why all of the media outlets have started talking about him coming back again, but they need to stop it. Don't get the idea in his head! You know how he is with decisions.

Fight for Football!

Dear NFL players, coaches, and owners;

I love football. All football – Pop Warner, middle school, high school, college, and pro – all of it. And it’s getting close to football time. Almost.

It seems like most fans start getting a little antsy around July/August. By now baseball is getting a little tiresome, especially if you can tell that your team won’t be making a play-off run (mine won’t). It’s 104 degrees in the shade, and all I want to do is head to the stadium, stand for 3 hours in the blazing sun, and yell my brains out while giant men clobber each other. Is that too much to ask?

I don’t really understand what you guys are waiting for. I know that there have been a lot of issues regarding rookie salaries, compensation for veteran players, and how to split up the revenue, but is this really so important that it should deprive me, and the rest of America, of enjoying the game? I believe the answer you are searching for is "No!"

I am a (former) poor, starving college student. But every year I scraped up enough cash to buy season tickets to the Longhorn football games. And I attended every single one. Even last year when we went through a bit of a rough patch. It would be my dream come true if I could get season tickets to a Bears game. Unfortunately there's a zillion year wait-list, and even if I got to the top sometime in my lifetime, I probably could never afford them. And that's disgusting.

When did football stop being about the fans? I mean, I guess I understand that you want to make as much money as you can - that's the American way! But when you start fighting about money so much so that we might have to miss a few games (or the whole season!) then I believe that you need to get your priorities straight.

Even though I am incredibly frustrated at the prospect of a year without football, I remain a true fan. Get your act together guys, and let's end this lockout.

Sincerely,
A Forever-Fan