The Aromaleigh Drama

Moar makeup blogging!

Aromaleigh has been The Big One of indie mineral makeup since the late 90's.  They have...had...over 300 shades of eyeshadow, gorgeous, complex colors, mattes and shimmers and sparklebombs in every color of the spectrum and then some, sheer and opaque, limited edition collections a few times a year...plus smaller lines of foundation, primers, and lip balms/colors.  Miss K (founder and owner) discontinued the lippies early this year, and the foundations a couple months ago, but there was no hint of intent to close entirely.  Until today.  Aromaleigh is closing, what's in stock is all there will ever be, and when it's gone it's gone.

It's funny.  I'd never actually ordered AL eyeshadows before; I'd gotten samples, because their policy was two free samples with every order, but I hadn't actually used them yet.  Two of the samples were bright reds from the Rocks! collection, so really only useful for special looks I hadn't had reason to do yet, and the others...well they looked *nice* in the bag, but not great, and I tended to forget I had them.  But the other day, I learned that this is pretty common with AL shadows, what you see in the bag is NOT what they look like on the skin.  I'd gotten a sample, Mireille from the Bete Noir collection, that was described on the site as a cool purple with pink and copper sparkles.  But when I got the sample baggie, it looked like a charcoal-grey-black with some purply shimmer and a few pink sparkles, so I never bothered to use it.  It languished in my makeup drawer, unused, until I was putting together a blue and purple look for Ozz's birthday Saturday, and I decided to give it a shot as a crease color just to darken the purple I'd already put there. 

OMG it was gorgeous.  Everything the description said, a rich opaque purple that simultaneously manages to be cool-toned and yet have sort of a fuschia shimmer to it.  I fell in love.  And I went back and started going through and wishlisting the AL shadows I wanted to try eventually.  I'm still interviewing for this job at Lane Bryant, so I figured I'd get around to ordering a few colors at a time once I had some income, right?

And then got the news this morning that AL was closing.  Suddenly I had to OMG GET EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW BEFORE IT'S SOLD OUT!!!  Thankfully, my mom helped me out and advanced me the next 6 weeks or so's worth of the money I'll be making cleaning her house for her, so I was able to place an order.  I got my entire wishlist, totaling a $250 value, for $175 since Miss K put the shop on clearance.  I'm glad I'll be able to get what I wanted (or at least most of it, hopefully, assuming it's not all gone by the time my order is at the front of the queue), but it's so strange to think of Aromaleigh going out of business. 

So why is this huge, apparently quite successful business closing its doors?  In a word: drama.  People being people, horrible politicking drama manages to show up in the weirdest of places sometimes.  High school marching band (oh, the politics of band parents and booster clubs are AMAZING, in the worst possible way).  And apparently, the online makeup community.

Miss K has a bit of a reputation in the indie makeup community.  People either love her, and support her unquestioningly, or hate her.  Her products are awesome, but from what I've heard she can be a bit of an asshole about any customer service issues that aren't clearly black-and-white.  People have shown evidence of her being a total shit and throwing 4-page-long tantrums at people, calling them names and accusing them of not appreciating her enough for daring to ask if something that went wrong with their order could be fixed please.  She'd been horrid enough at enough people that they even banded together to start the Rant4theUgly forums, which, depending on who you ask, are a bunch of troublemaking haters just trying to take down the biggest name in the industry, or a bunch of courageous souls informing the world of Miss K's evil.  I'm kind of in the middle - yeah, she's come off pretty assholish in the stuff I've seen, but the company and products were solid and it seemed if you stayed out of her way she'd stay out of yours, more or less.  I'm not here to do drama, I just want to buy sparkly stuff.

And then there was the Mineral Makeup Mutiny, started by Miss K under a pseudonym, a banding-together of MMU companies to expose and denounce "repackagers", a term for people/companies who purchase wholesale pigments (ingredients for making one's own colors of mineral eyeshadow) and instead of blending them to create unique shadows to sell, just "repackage" the wholesale pigments and resell them at hugely inflated prices.  A worthy idea, I thought - nobody likes the kind of person who more or less scams customers into buying wholesale crap, thus bringing down the reputation of the whole industry - but some people saw it as Miss K being dishonest by not admitting it was her/AL leading the MMM, and just trying to leverage an astroturfed movement to gain publicity and praise for her company. 

After the MMU was disbanded, there was the dustup with Jenna and Stardust Cosmetics.  Jenna, under a pseudonym (are we seeing a pattern here?) started "investigating" the formulation of AL's Rocks! eyeshadows, claiming that they were formulated with non-FDA-approved ingredients and therefore were not safe for use.  The issue was over the fact that the listed ingredients for Rocks! had a "may contain" section that listed some non-eye-safe ingredients.  According to some, this was AL using bad ingredients and playing that down with "may contain" while still selling unsafe cosmetics.  According to others, "may contain" was required even though those ingredients weren't actually IN the shadows, because the Rocks! shadows were being made on equipment that also was used to process other products which *did* contain the contested ingredients, so the Rocks! shadows might contain trace amounts of these unsafe ingredients even though they weren't in the actual formula.  I don't purport to know one way or the other.  The Rocks! line was pulled for "reformulation" shortly after Jenna's alter ego posted the emails she exchanged with Miss K, whether the one prompted the other or it's unrelated is all speculation at this point.  When it came out that it was Jenna and Stardust doing this investigation, there was a sharp divide in the community.  You either supported AL and felt Jenna was being dishonest in her snooping, or you supported Stardust and felt Jenna was just trying to do the right thing by making sure AL's makeup was safe.  The two camps attacked each other, sometimes getting pretty vicious, and in the end Jenna opted to close Stardust, saying that makeup was supposed to be fun and pretty, not dramatic and petty.  I was sad - I'd just started ordering from her and was looking forward to more - but it happens, life moves on.

And now, Aromaleigh is closing, with Miss K citing burnout from the drama:

I can't and won't provide a detailed explanation for this decision... those who know me well know that this has been a decision that has torn me in two for several months. Nothing I say or don't say can matter at this point. All I will say is "You've won... I'm gone. You can stop now..."
It's makeup. It's supposed to be fun, and empowering and beautiful. But it's all become ugly. More ugly than I ever imagined.

So.  A resonding FUCK YOU to everyone who felt the need to make an issue out of all of this.  Now we've lost both Stardust AND Aromaleigh to peoples' need to be petty and attack each other.  I hope you're all pleased with ruining - or at least putting a severe dent into - a lot of peoples' enjoyment of mineral makeup.  This is directed, by the way, at EVERYONE involved.  Miss K herself, Jenna, the Rant4theUgly people, the AL supporters who attacked Jenna, the Stardust supporters who attacked Miss K, EVERYONE.  If people could have just been mature about it and played nice, we wouldn't have been deprived, as a community, of two great makeup makers.  I'm lucky I was able to get a loan to stock up on AL.  Not everyone can do that.  And there are people who will come to the makeup community after the dust has settled and never have the chance to try AL products at all, only hearing about them as wistful memories. 

I'm going to go have a smoothie and grumble to myself about stupid people ruining things now.

Soooo....I'm back!

Oh, for all I know, nobody ever reads this anyway, so I'm announcing my presence to a metaphorical empty room.  W'ev.

So I've been all over the place of late.  School year finished about a month ago, and I completed my first straight-A semester EVER.  I'm quite pleased.  Particularly as one of the classes was Accounting, which is my kryptonite.  Anywho, with that done, I got back on the job-hunting wagon, almost got hired to cash control at Six Flags in Vallejo, except that I was referred to the job by my brother, who works security there, and they have a policy about not having family members in those two departments.  It makes sense, it's just frustrating, particularly as they hadn't managed to connect the dots and tell me so until after three weeks of various kinds of interviews, despite the fact that at every step I was asked "Who referred you?" and replied honestly, including the familial relationship and his department EVERY DAMN TIME. 

Turns out I dodged a bullet there, according to someone I know of who used to work that position.  It sucks.  Hugely.  And then not two weeks after that, my mom and I had gone to Lane Bryant (plus-size women's clothing store) to do some shopping with the freebie dollars she had accumulated before they expired.  As we usually do at LB, we had a stack of probably $500 worth of clothes between us at checkout.  So Eugenia, the saleslady who was checking us out, asked if I wanted to open my own LB account (Mom already has one) to take advantage of their first-purchase discount.  I told her I wasn't sure I'd qualify, since I'm unemployed.  She ran the approval anyway, it came through, and as we were checking out I joked with my mom that she'd have to help me pay the bill when it came due, what with the whole no-job thing...Eugenia handed me an application right then and there, I sat outside on a bench and filled it out and brought it right back, got a call back from the store manager less than 15 minutes later scheduling an interview for the next day!  I did well at that interview, did a second brief interview with the store manager a week later, and now I'm scheduled for an interview with the district manager to see if I'd be suitable for a management position!  Dude, seriously, I've never managed anything in my life, at work anyway.  But they just like me that much I guess, heh. 

So, interview Tuesday.  Wish me luck, internet!

I've also been accumulating and trying various bath/body/beauty products that I think I'm going to start reviewing here.  Why not?  Someone might stumble across them on Google or something.  Haus of Gloi's scrubs and lotions, One Hand Washes The Other's balm and Deep Black soap, Beauty In Balance's gel moisturizer (when it gets here), and the Maybelline lip stain I just picked up at Rite Aid.

Oh, and not that it matters anymore as they're discontinued and sold out anyway, but Aromaleigh's lip balm was not all it was cracked up to be - it was better than any drugstore product I'd ever tried, but it still had a slightly-too-solid texture and made my lips peel a little bit, just like everything else.  I'm way happier with OHWTO's balm.  But I'll blather more about that another time.

On Pain and Being WoWidowed

Argleblargh!  First my left shoulder randomly seizing up and sending shooting spikes of pain through me at certain (and apparently randomly-decided) points of the joint's rotation, for like a week.  Now that's finally slacked off, although certain angles continue to feel tense and problematic, just in time for my right shoulder to declare war.  War of the "You spend too much time hunched over your computer, and now I'm going to make it impossible for you to do so.  And also impossible for you to sleep." variety.  This one is a constant feeling of muscle ache, throughout the joint and across the shoulder blade and collarbone areas too.  I can't sleep on my right side right now or else it feels worse the next day - which SUCKS, as my usual falling-asleep position is curled up on my right side - but it hurts anyway, no matter how I lay.  It got so bad last night that I took an Excedrin PM to help me sleep, even knowing the slightly hung-over feeling I would have this morning from it.  (This can be, and was, cured by liberal application of $4bucks mocha and breakfast sandwiches.)

I am trying to help it ease, by not even opening my computer until around 2 PM today (for someone who normally is on and online by 9 AM at the latest, that's quite the cutting-back) and by cleaning my desk so I can pull the computer close and scoot my chair up so my arm is in a better position when I'm using my mouse.  I may crack and take another PM tonight.  I have a final tomorrow, and I can't afford to be too light on sleep from the pain during it.

Also, I want to vent about something.  So either click the happy little "x" and go find something more productive to do than listen to my grievances, or settle in, because I mean VENT.

The past week or so, I have been a goddamn WoWidow.  That is, a woman whose male significant other spends enough time on WoW in the course of a day that she might as well be living alone.  I figured something like this would happen once our landlord got the wireless sorted for us and he could get online regularly, but I really didn't expect it to be this bad.  But this week he's easily spent 90% of the time he's been at home, on WoW.  Today, he got on WoW pretty much as soon as we'd finished breakfast at 10ish, and finally came out around 5 to ask if I wanted to watch a movie with him - problem being, he hadn't set his watch for the time change yet, thought it was 4, and that we'd have time for that.  I said, "What about the raid you told me about at 6?"  He realized the time change had thrown him off and kinda sighed, and went back to WoW.  Not like we could have, I dunno, spent the remaining hour together?  Not watching a movie, but we could have watched an episode of B5 or something, or read together, or played some Gears of War 2, or SOMETHING other than "Oh, we only have an hour?  Then I guess I'll squander that hour getting back on WoW."  With this raid, he will have spent the ENTIRE FUCKING DAY on that stupid fucking video game.  I complained, on Twitter yesterday, about being WoWidowed, and my ex was oh-so-sympathetic.  His response?  "Well, maybe you should get on WoW and play with him!"  He meant well, I think, but it honestly pissed me off.  Frankly, I actually do intend to get an account once my computer's hard drive is fixed.  But my ability to get my fiance to spend some fucking time with me during his off-hours should NOT be dependent on my willingness and ability to play his fucking video game of choice!  ARGLEBLARGH!

Lip Balm!

So my Aromaleigh lip balms got in today.  I bought 8 of the damn things, plus two samples, because they were discontinued right before I bought, and when the stock on hand was gone, that would be it, no more Aromaleigh balm.  Since I'd heard everyone and their mother in the beauty blogosphere rave about these balms, I decided to gamble and stock up before they were gone.  I bought two Italian Blood Orange scent/flavor, two java, two cocoa-orange, one teaberry, and one yuzu (some kind of Asian citrus, which actually smells way awesome, more than I thought it would.  Wish I'd bought two yuzu and only one java, cause I don't much like how the coffee one turned out.)  I placed my order about a week ago, and they got in yesterday to my mom's, where I picked them up today.

I'm starting with one of the blood orange ones.  On first application, the texture of the stick itself was a bit gritty, and it still feels slightly rough when I swipe it over my lips.  However, the product itself, once on the lips, resolves to a smooth emollient feel.  Kristen (Aromaleigh's founder and proprietress) calls them aromatherapy balms, and I seem to recall reading somewhere that the essential oils are added just for scent, not flavor, but I feel like I can taste the blood orange when I lick my lips while wearing it.  I'm still waiting to see if it turns into that kind of whitish "rind" effect I get with some other balms, where it collects in the corners of my lips and toward the inside, where my lips actually rest against one another.  If it does, then stocked-up or no, I'm not using them.

Before this, my holy grail balm was Yes To Carrots C Me Smile Lip Butter, in berry or citrus scent/flavor.  Aromaleigh's balm compares favorably to YTC.  It feels...less intrusive, I guess?  I don't notice it's there as much as I did the YTC balm.  I used and love the YTC balms because they lack the waxy feel of Chapstick and other lip products, because I *hate* that wax-layer-feel with a flaming passion; I hadn't realized I could find a balm that was even LESS waxish than YTC, but I think I may have. 

So that's my first impression of Aromaleigh balm; I'll update this in a couple days with my over-time impressions.

Wherein I Get All Meta About Blogging. Again.

I haven't been posting much, lately, on either of my blogs.  Depression has this nasty habit of sneaking up and nomming on my ability to motivate myself and get shit done, and this past week has been bad for that.

But on a whim, since my ability to focus and work seems to be coming back today, I posted something to Witch.Words, and then meandered over to check my Analytics for W.W.  I was bracing myself for low statistics, and rightfully so; you can expect visitor stats to remain high if you blog about timeless topics, like personal development or spiritual paths or whatever, the kind of things for which people will always be searching anew, but if you blog on current events and cultural issues, it's an up-to-the-minute thing, and if your content goes stale, so does your visitor count.

Hmm.  I may have just broken some kind of regulation on the number of parenthetical clauses one may have in a single sentence. My apologies.

Anyway.  I got on my Analytics, and looked, and sure enough, it had fallen to a low but steady spot.  I moused over the graph to see the exact visit count per day, though, and guess what?  I was consistently in double-digits, even when I hadn't posted for a full week and then some!  Not by much, it was all in the teens, but still!  And then I clicked to the absolute unique visitor count, and saw that the number was 434 - and mind you, that's only counting from after the template change, because when I changed the template I had to reinstall my tracker code, and that reset my count.  So in the past, what, month or two?  I've had 434 people visit my site.  434 people have read my words. 

Frankly, that both delights me, and scares the shit out of me!  To put it in perspective, how would I do if I were faced with a crowd of 434 people gathered to hear me speak?  I'd be fucking terrified.  I've taken public speaking, and I've been told I have a knack for it, but ye gods, 434 people at once?  Guh.  Wouldn't happen. 

So it's a sobering reminder of the power of the internet, that one young college student, one woman on her laptop in her studio apartment with a big damn mouth and some strident opinions, can carve out the kind of niche that garners at least a dozen visitors every day, and which has reached literally hundreds of people.  Damn.

My Weekend Has Not Been Relaxing, or, I <\3 Financial Statements...

It's been a busy weekend.  My paternal grandmother's birthday was Thursday, so Ozzmodious and I and my younger brother drove down to my uncle's house, where he hosted the full force of the local clan - my grandparents, himself and his live-in girlfriend, my father and his girlfriend, my brother, and Ozz and I - for an evening.  I get kitchen envy every time I go over there.  I don't cook for shit, but I might be motivated to learn if I had a place like that!  A 6-burner gas stove with built-in grill and griddle areas, ginormo oven, huge center island with a built-in wine rack, big damn fridge, so much cupboard space I could cry.  All brushed nickel with black marble countertops and rich wood cabinets.  Beautiful. 

It's been strange, seeing the house getting slowly redecorated with himself and his girlfriend living there now.  His wife, my aunt-by-marriage, died almost two years ago.  And I know that's plenty of time, and I'm certainly glad his girlfriend makes him happy, and I don't begrudge them that.  It's just...after her death, I was living in Tennessee still, and in fact I had never been to the house between when it was them there, and now, when it's him and his girlfriend.  So to me, it's gone straight from one to the other, and it's still taking some getting used to.

But aside from that, the evening was great.  Ozz gets along really well with my family; there was lots of excellent food, and conversations that got so loud and vibrant that by the time we left, I had nearly lost my voice from laughing and shouting and all that.  In my family, s/he who talks loudest gets heard, and that's the only rule, so the volume can get pretty overwhelming if you're not used to it. 

Then this morning, I went over to my mom's early to have breakfast and help her clean up, since her sister is coming into town this week.  As usual, I ended up spending like five hours over there, when the cleaning itself only took one at most, and the same for breakfast.  I genuinely don't know where the time goes...after that, it was home and terrible fast-food for lunch with Ozz, and...homework.  Two mini-papers to write for Soc, in response to some videos we watched in-class on Wednesday last, and then two problem sets for Accounting.  Given an adjusted trial balance, we had to create the set of financial statements: income statement, statement of owner's equity, and balance sheet, in that order.  Then from that, we had to calculate various ratios, like return on assets and profit ratio and debt ratio and shit.  Argleblargh.  I'm doing *really* well in that class - over 100%, thanks to some judicious extra credit work - but it doesn't mean I find it easy or fun.  I am at least coming to regard it as a challenge, and to feel a sense of grim satisfaction when I get things right, but I doubt it will ever be a subject that is dear to me. Oh well.  That wasn't what I took it for; I took it to prove to myself that accounting was not some horrible foreign realm of terror, and that I *am* actually capable of learning and doing it, and I that much I am able to say now.  So far, anyway.

I think I've gone from "weekend summary" to "pointless off-the-path ramblings" now, so I'll close it down and go take a shower.  Hopefully not such a long one that the landlord upstairs turns off the hot water again...heh.

Fucking Blogger...

And when I say "blogger" here, I mean Blogger, the service.  Because it's being a royal pain in the ass while I'm trying to install my Analytics tracker code.  For the love of fuck, Blogger, you and Analytics are both children of the almighty Google.  Why can't you play nice?  Or failing that, why do you have to take your sibling rivalries out on MY goddamn blog?

Short version: while I directly inserted the tracker code into the "edit HTML" bit of the layout editor on Witch.Words and it works fine, when I tried to do so for Jade Haven, the text editor kept inexplicably replacing all "'s with &quot;'s, which of course fucked up the tracker code and stopped it functioning.  I tried a couple different placements, couldn't get it to work, finally said fine, fuck you too, and added a widget with it at the bottom of the page.  Whatever.  Analytics now sees this blog, and can start aggregating data, and that's all I really wanted, just...urgh. 

Yes, I'm totally the kind of narcissist who tracks hits to her personal blog.  Shut up.