OK, OK. I know I promised to be back in business yesterday, but my brain was STILL in vacation mode, friends! I had plenty of blog material lying around but no inspiration, and you deserve better than a regurgitated press release, so I waited for the creative juices to start flowing again. And waited. And waited.

Then this morning in the shower, POOF! The ideas finally came back. First, a story I hope you'll find amusing:

Right before I went away, I attempted to photograph myself for a mascara tutorial that I'd been cooking up. This birdbrained idea was born of two factors: (1) several of you have asked for more pictures and (2) I'm always nattering on about mascara techniques (blink it on! roll the wand behind your lashes!) with no visual back-up.

After having attempted to photograph my eyes in several stages of mascara application, I have a newfound respect for bloggers who post detailed visual tutorials.

First off, the digital camera REVEALS ALL. I thought my eyebrows were in good shape, but all those megapixels highlighted those seemingly innocuous little peach fuzz hairs -- they look "clear blonde" in real life, but in digitial high-def, not so much. And, um, I have a unibrow? According to the Macro setting on my camera, I do (mere peach fuzz, again). Merciless beast.

After a bout of vigorous tweezing I took up the camera again. Now my entire brow area was red. And wait, are those crow's feet? My undereye circles are HIDEOUS! And that scar above my eye from when I was 2, it looks awfully nasty right about now, and appears to give my eye wonkitude on the level of Paris Hilton's.

Clearly this was not meant to be.

But I pressed on anyway, carefully applying concealer and eyelid primer to make the area look somewhat acceptable. Then I attempted to hold various "poses" with the mascara wand as I snapped pictures with the other hand. This is where the project really went off the rails.

I looked like a serial killer. Or, more accurately, like Alex in A Clockwork Orange (hence the photo that accompanies this post). With the added bonus of mascara all over my face and hand from flinching every time the camera went off.

So my dears, I fear that you may need to go elsewhere for your picture tutorials, at least until I can get the hang of this photo nonsense. Because you really don't want to see those Krazee Eyes pics, do you?