Pittsburgh - Part 1

I'm on an airplane right now on my way back to Tampa without any internet or Glee episodes to watch so I figured I’d blog. Dear Lord has it been a hectic travel day!! As I wrote before I was in Pittsburgh for a conference. It was paid for by my university for me, three other students, and our advisor to attend a tour guide conference for two nights. It’s great that the university paid for everything but let me tell you it’s not all peaches and cream when things are “free”. My mother was always told by her mother that nothing in life is free. Somehow you have to pay for it. Well naturally, she passed it down to me and my sister and every time I get something free I always have this hope that it will be great and wonderful and feel so lucky to have been blessed with such kindness. But life is life. And that means, somehow you have to pay for it.

Of course Pittsburgh was amazing (I’ll blog about that in another post with pictures); but like I said before, the traveling was hectic and to put it simply it sucked! The university wanted us to purchase the cheapest tickets and lay-over’s were the way to go. Unfortunately, I hate lay-over’s. But I figured I could deal with that. That was until they put us on a plane the size of my living room complete with a total of 20 seats!! The propeller was right next to me sounding like a wind shield wiper cleaning a dry wind shield. For some reason I wasn’t that nervous, I actually felt relaxed because I get sleepy on planes but then the lady next to me kept saying that the turbulence wasn’t normal. OK, lets think about this. Who in their right mind would want to tell someone that?! Honestly, don’t scare people, that’s how panic and hysteria occur and then you end up sitting next to a lunatic who needs to vomit and there’s no bathroom on the plane!!! Just kidding there was a bath room on the plane but unfortunately there wasn’t a light switch so the stewardess had to turn it on for whoever needed to use it.

So right now I'm on a normal plane, the kind with three seats on each side, with my pink UPitt sweatshirt, some Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and I feel better. There’s a little turbulence and a really smelly guy two seats behind me but hey, at least I got a twenty minute nap with my mouth wide open to show everyone my seven thousand dollar mouth! Sexy, I know. Unfortunately I have to work tomorrow and help my mom with a garage sale, but I do it for love. OH and speaking of my UPitt sweatshirt that my friends will kill me for because they are our rival team, I really really wish that my school had stands in the side of the road selling $15 sweatshirts. I mean, who wants to spend $60 for a bookstore sweatshirt when you can get a replica?! They had five dollar shirts too! I was stunned and yet so jealous at the same time.

Ok, the pilot just said we’ll be landing so I'm gonna stop writing. Just to reiterate, I had a great time in Pittsburgh I really did! Just never fly Continental… ever.

Pittsburgh Bound! .. who knew Pittsburgh had an "H" at the end?

So there is a conference going on at the University of Pittsburgh and since I am on the Executive Board for the Green and Gold Guides at USF, I get to go represent our Bull pride :) Unfortunately, that means I have to set my alarm for three o clock in the morning so I can catch a seven o clock flight to Atlanta and from there grab a flight to Pittsburgh. However I am expecting to have some fun and sight see a little. Hopefully I get a chance to blog while I am there. Anyway, I gotta get to packing. It was my intent to pack this morning but I got this urge to see Armageddon and we all know how long that movie is (except for me of course because this was my first time watching it).

I'll be posting pictures soon :)

HASTA!

The Reason Why People Spend $18 On Bronzers.

Let me tell you, there are reasons why people spend eighteen dollars on bronzers and fifteen dollars on single eye shadows! I promise you, there is a reason!!!

I just started wearing makeup about two years ago when I decided to retire my bottle caps and buy some contacts. So naturally, when I looked in the mirror and saw dark circles under my eyes and an uneven skin tone, makeup became my best friend. I started off with Covergirl powder that was way too dark but I didn’t care. I had some L’Oreal eyeliner that I stole from my mom’s vanity and some old Mary-Kate and Ashley cream eye shadow from 2001 when my sister started wearing makeup. I thought I was good to go. I’m telling you I thought I was fly. Fast forward two years and hundreds of YouTube make up guru videos later, and Mary-Kate and Ashley were sold for twenty five cents at a garage sale.

I get lots of compliments on my makeup now, especially with my eye shadow. According to my sister, I spend 30 minutes putting on makeup but that’s a lie. I take like ten minutes, fifteen if I’m experimenting. I think that’s pretty normal. So anyway, I’m not rich and I know that. I still use L’Oreal liners and Revlon foundations but I'm beginning to rack up some sweet Sephora and MAC products that are stealing my heart away (even though the Asian sales associate at the MAC store has a stick up his a**)! Moving on, two years ago I would have been shocked with the prices… shoot, six months ago I would have been shocked with the prices, but now I completely understand. Here somes the story:

I was watching a video by DulceCandy and I love her because she’s short and brown like me and all the makeup gurus on YouTube are Asian. I also love her because she has a black Pomeranian that looks just like Milo J So I was watching her and she was using bronzer and I was like “WHAT?! Brown girls can use bronzer!!! I'm getting some!!” So before I went and spent twenty dollars on a bronzer I went over to good ol’ Wal-Mart and got a four dollar Maybelline one. That shit is CRAP!!! I'm sitting in front of the mirror all excited and packing this worthless crap on my face and it freaking sheer! I was thinking it was just the color of my skin tone but NO people it was sheer! As in no color whatsoever! I should have just dusted off my old Covergirl powder from two years ago and used THAT as a bronzer. That would have out this new one to shame! And the brush that came with it was more like sandpaper. This just pisses me off really. What a waste of my four dollars!

Moral of the story, don’t buy Maybelline Bronzers. If you are shopping on a budget by all means go to the drugstore but do NOT buy bronzers because they will either rub off within an hour or not appear at all! And if you are looking for a matte black eye shadow, just invest in MAC or Sephora because drugstore black eye shadows come out really chalky. Stick with drugstore mascaras and liners like L’Oreal’s Lineur Intense Liquid Liner with the felt tip (that one is AWESOME!). Or L’Oreal’s liquid pencils, it’s an oxymoron but no joke it’s great for the water line. Oh, and foundation wise, Revlon ColorStay and L’Oreal True Match products are the bomb. Okay I'm gonna stop because I'm starting to sound like a makeup guru which by all means I am not because no guru would waste four dollars on packaged shit and get excited about it. ;(

"Do you live in a house or a trailer?"

Wassup blog world. Okay so this is my first blog ever and I have no clue why I have decided to make one. If it were a year ago I’d be blogging because I had a project due in a week and it was mandatory to do something creative. Now, I sit here in utter boredom as it thunders in the small town of Polk City using my wonderful “writing skills” to tell you all about a bunch of nothing.

My name is Stephanie and usually the next thing I tell people is that I am Puerto Rican. I don’t know why, it just comes out that way. When I was younger the next question would have been “Do you live in a house or trailer?”. Now, for those who feel offended at this point, don’t. I simply asked because before I moved to Florida, I considered a trailer to be a movie promotion or what semi’s carry. Culture shock, that’s what I would call it now, culture shock. I moved to Polk City when I was eight years old. Before then, I lived in New York. Sounds drastic I know, and that’s because it is. Skyscrapers to cows on the side of the road, cracked cement to picturesque meadows, Tony’s Pizza on Myrtle Avenue to Hungry Howie’s. Now don’t let the fact that I lived in New York allow you to think that I was living in “TriBeca right next to Deniro” because the next line to that song is “I be hood forever.” I lived in good ol’ Brooklyn on Sunnyside Avenue (bit of an oxymoron now but whatever). But, when I was younger, I thought I had life down pact. I had my family, a best friend (who doesn’t remember me now), and all the “street meat”, pizza, and Italian ices I could ask for. But, things change and people change and THAT’S another blog entry for another time!

So yea, I am Puerto Rican and I’m a student at the University of South Florida majoring in Mass Communications. This is so cool I feel like I’m sixteen again writing in the About Me section on MySpace for the first time. Except now, I can write about more than just the basics and not have to sound cool about it. Oh, MySpace how I don’t miss you anymoreJ.