My absence from blogging

I came back from a trip to India on September 1. The day my husband and I left, TSA screeners were passing carry-ons through the detectors twice, which significantly delayed the security process. The TSA official told me that I had to wait until my carry-ons had entered the detectors before I was allowed to cross the line to walk through the metal detector. The wait was a long time, given the double screening, and I was getting impatient. I regained my equanimity only when I held out the possibility that the Inspector-General (IG) for TSA might have cited laxity among TSA screeners, which meant that they had to re-double their efforts.

Given TSA screening, maybe it was just as well that I didn’t carry my own laptop. I was dependent on my husband for access to his laptop. While I had scheduled two articles (Robert Jones, Fall's Color Story) to go live in my absence, I was not able to provide timely stories on the pre-sale of Twilight Beauty or Sears getting back into the beauty business after discontinuing its Circle of Beauty concept several years ago.

Happy New Year

I will be leaving for India tomorrow. I'll be logging in only sporadically for the next three weeks - maybe to update my Facebook status, but likely not to blog.

Visiting my in-laws is the purpose of the trip - it's been two years since I last saw them (my mother was doing poorly last year, and I didn't want to go overseas in those circumstances). I also plan to shop for textiles while I'm in India: talk about serendipity - I found an issue of Departures devoted to India at the seniors' home where my mother lives, and found out all the great places to go shopping.

Here's to a Happy, Prosperous, and Successful New Year for all!

An idea: Use January 6 (Epiphany) as an opportunity to share gifts (post-Christmas sales, perhaps re-gifting). Epiphany marks the arrival of The Three Kings with their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Learn more about Epiphany on Wikipedia.

I'll be away the week beginning May 25, 2008

Hi folks,

I'll be away next week (the flag gives clues about my destination), so I might not have an opportunity to blog then. After I return, expect reviews of Saude Pele from Christopher Drummond Beauty and WNW Beauty Benefits. Also, I expect to have another interview with an as-yet-to-be-announced beauty entrepreneur to share with you - see my past interviews with Lubna Khalid of Real Cosmetics and Lydia Mondavi of 29 Cosmetics.

Changes to The Style Page blog

I had installed the Talkr MP3 player so that you can listen to articles on The Style Page as well as read them, but I removed it, as my computer became infected shortly thereafter. I can't establish casuality between installing Talkr and my computer getting infected, but I wasn't going to take any risks.

I also removed banners for Amazon.com, drugstore.com, Beauty.com, and Sephora.com on the sidebar, as these banners were being replaced by teasers for T&A vidoes and ads such as "your online privacy might be at risk" and "you might have already won." I am continuing to use text links, however.

I purchased and installed an entire suite of security software from McAfee, but that didn't solve the problem. Then, as I was starting Firefox (my preferred browser), there was a popup window alerting me about the new Yahoo! toolbar. As Yahoo! is a trusted source (It also hosts my web site), I went ahead and downloaded the toolbar. After installing the toolbar, I ran the anti-spy software from there. Problem solved! Go figure ...

Best wishes for 2008

The Style Page wishes all its readers and friends the best for the New Year.

Upcoming: reviews of tarte's We Wish You Health Skinvigorating Discovery Kit and Laura Mercier products.

Happy Thanksgiving

To our friends and readers of The Style Page

A sad trip home

Tragedy, it seems, comes in chunks. The morning after my post on the Virginia Tech massacre, my mother called and told me that my father had been admitted to the Cardio ICU. I called my brother, whom I hadn’t seen in nearly 13 years, and our family friend Susan to let them what was happening. I set aside all my plans for that weekend and began packing for St. Louis. As I packed, my husband went online to make plane reservations for me. He completed making reservations at 12:30 PM, and my flight was to depart at 2:30 PM. I had a connecting flight from O’Hare, and didn’t arrive in St. Louis until that evening. Fortunately, Susan gave my mother company before my brother and I could arrive.

My father was put on a respirator. By Sunday, it was apparent that he wasn’t going to recover, so my mother, brother, and I made the fateful decision to have the respirator removed. It was removed at about 1:30 PM. We sat by my father’s bedside, held his hands, listened to his breathing, and watched the heart rate monitor. His breaths grew less and less frequent, as his heart rate dropped. When his heart rate dropped below 30, the monitor sounded. The nurse came to shut it off. My father died 3:42 PM, Sunday, April 22, 2007.

That was not the end of bad news. Susan called to let us know that her son was diagnosed with cancer. Also, the daughter of my mother’s late friend called to say that her father had died. As I had to contend with my mother at the same time, I’m sorry that I couldn’t be fully present for these people when they called.

Massacre at Virginia Tech

Northern Virginia, where I live, has been deeply and personally affected by the Virginia Tech massacre. Below is a list of those residents of Northern Virginia who died in the massacre:

Daniel Perez Cueva. Age 21. Junior, International Studies.
Erin Peterson. Age 18. Freshman.
Mary Read. Age 19. Freshman.
Reema Samaha. Age 18. Freshman.
Leslie Sherman. Age 20. Sophomore, History and International Studies.
Maxine Turner. Age 22. Senior, Chemical Engineering.

The lives of these young women and young man were senselessly cut short. I extend my sympathy and condolences to family and friends of all victims, whether from Northern Virginia or elsewhere.

The killer, Cho Seung-Hui, also came from Northern Virginia. I am saddened for his family, who will have to carry this stigma for the rest of their lives.

I encourage readers of The Style Page to honor the memory of the victims by giving to the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund.

Updates to The Style Page website

I've been having a lot of fun inserting add-ins on The Style Page website to enhance users' experience. New features include Google Search on the front, About us, What's New, and Contact us pages, where search results are featured on the same page. Also, I've added links from Yahoo! My Web that are customized for many (but not all) pages on the website. Finally, I've inserted a widget that enables display of thumbnails of linked pages with mouse-over on the Cosmetics page, in which case you might want to look at the page "below the fold."

Have fun searching or browsing our companion website, and share your comments with me via the Contact us page or here on this blog.

A note for blog subscribers

The Style Page appreciates everyone who subscribes to my blog by email or news feed to be informed of new updates. I have lately been taking advantage of Blogger's tagging capabilities; however, any new tags results in a new Email or update to our news feed, even though the original posting might be old. I regret the deluge of Email or updates to our news feed, and hope that subscribers bear with me as I continue to add tags.

Changes to The Style Page blog sidebar

I had to customize the layout of The Style Page blog to automatically load the Flash widget for ThisNext. However, customizing the layout meant that many of the elements (Subscribe, Shopping, Blog archive, and Blogroll) in the sidebar were lost, and I had to reconstruct the elements.

I've also added a "Rate this blog" feature and a BlogExplosion button.

If there are any other news readers I should add under Subscribe, please contact me at thestylepage [at] yahoo.com.

I've been using My Web from Yahoo! to provide links to newly discovered web sites. You can find the five most recent links under My Web Bookmarks on the left-hand sidebar. By selecting "My Web 2.0 Links," you will be directed to all bookmarks I've collected since the last update of The Style Page web site - it is simply too laborious to update the static HTML pages anymore.

Best wishes for the Holidays

Dear friends,

I will be leaving for St. Louis tomorrow to be with my parents for Christmas. After that, my husband and I will be traveling to India, where we will welcome the New Year (thanks to the multiplicity of calendars in India, there are several New Years, and more opportunities to create or renew New Year resolutions :-)

All this activity will leave me precious little time to blog. To everyone who stops by and visits The Style Page, best wishes for holidays and for a happy, prosperous, and peaceful New Year!

Julie

News from The Style Page

I hope that everyone had a nice Thanksgiving holiday. My husband and I flew to St. Louis to spend Thanksgiving with my parents. We had a wonderful time, but it was also poignant, as my mother (and my father, as an unwilling companion) visited with the marketing director of a senior living center in the St. Louis area. For them, moving to a senior living center is an admission that they are no longer able to live independently.

The first semester of my doctoral program will be over by December 9. I'm already struggling with my dissertation topic - more about this some other time. I'm indebted to ThisNext to provide fresh content for this blog, as my studies leave me precious little time to blog. Now ThisNext enables me to blog directly from my shopcasts; in fact, my Holiday Gift Guide 2006 post was created with ThisNext's BlogIt! utility.

I've also upgraded to Blogger beta, which enables me to add labels without having to go through the cumbersome process of using a widget to generate code for inclusion in my post. This allows you, the reader, to select a label and view all posts with a particular label. Look for labels at the end of a post. Another change I've made is adding a "badge" for del.icio.us under the "Subscribe" heading in the left-hand navigation bar.

I hope that you like these enhancements, and be sure to share your comments with me!

Ch-ch-changes

I am now enrolled in a doctoral studies program. Between my studies and regular job, I have precious little time to devote to this blog.

However, I'm trying to provide fresh content everyday through ThisNext - just look for the ThisNext "badge" under SHOPPING in the left-hand navigation bar everyday or visit ThisNext by thestylepage and vote on your favorite reviews and lists by The Style Page.

I'm also interested in guest writers who can provide content for those areas of interest to The Style Page: fashion, beauty, interior decorating, and media.

ThisNext - Blog - Interview: Julie of The Syle Page

Aunt Beep interviews The Style Page for ThisNext:

At ThisNext we can’t get enough of bloggers with a mission, and Julie of The Style Page (ThisNext profile: thestylepage) is no exception. Her quest is simple, she’s “obsessed with finding the perfect olive green eyeshadow; Cadbury mini-eggs and JBz chocolate candies; and glass bead jewelry.”

Fair enough, dear blogger. Fair enough.

Check out her worldly shopcasts on everything from mouth-watering marzipan to goth candle sticks to Sitar music then read on to see why she roams the isles of CVS and why she loves animated flicks…

Read more of the interview and learn more about my eclectic interests.

Also, Kristopher Dukes picked up on my shopcast for Constant Color Gel Eyeliner in Nightfall in her article A Pinch Goth, A Touch Glam: Black Makeup.

ThisNext by thestylepage

I was privileged to be invited to participate in the private beta release of ThisNext, a network where you can discover, recommend and "shopcast," or share, things you love.

ThisNext had already picked up on some of my posts:

• ThisNext - Blog - Starbucks to sell books
• ThisNext - Blog - The Hype Ain't Pretty
• ThisNext - Blog - Cute Cleaning Continued...
  

I am pleased to announce that ThisNext has been taken out of private beta, and is now public. I've created a "best of the best" on my shopcast. While some of these items have already been covered in this blog, a couple have not, so you'll want to check on these, and vote if my recommendation is smart, funny, or useful.