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  • Silvertree

    Mod post: No wishlist posts in blogs

    By Silvertree

    Please be aware that we do not permit swap-related content on profiles or in blogs. Please post this content only in the For Sale, Swaps, and Wanted forums, or in the Wishlists topic. ~from Swapping 101  Thanks!
    • 5 comments
    • 4,198 views
Filling the Periodic Table
 

The last stages of burnout.

he exam is on wednesday. I am barreling full speed ahead towards it. Today I am at work (8 hours of distraction intended to save my sanity.) Tommorrow I'm home studying all day.   Overthe weekend, I spent each morning taking a 4 hour timed practice exam (Last May's test saturday morning, and last November's on sunday) Then the afternoons/evenings were spent working problems in areas I was weak on. Tonight, I will be doing more of the same. Tommorrow is the last all-day push to make sure I have firmly memorized everything that needs memorization. No theory, just drilling myself over and over on all of the equations.   So yeah, I am barreling headlong towards burnout. It's a race against the clock at this point. I am already looking up chiropracters to make an apointment for next week to try and undo some of the damage from spending 2 months hunched over a desk. This morning, I woke up with such a pain in my neck that I had to pick my perfume this morning that wouldn't conflict with the smell of the IcyHot I had rubbed into the entier back of my neck and shoulders. I went with Lick It. It definately smoother out the sharpness of the menthol in the IcyHot. There's a layering combination you don't hear about often.   And my parents are coming into town on Friday. The apartment is in shambles, so wednesday after the exam, I will be cleaning like *mad*. Actually, I suspect it won't be that bad. I'm planning on getting a handful of big rubbermaid containers to pack up with winter clothing, spare bedding, etc. and put on the top shelves in the closets. I don't think the problem is so much mess as this apartment has kinda crappy closets, so storage has been a problem. Once I organize that, I think the rest of it will just be vacuuming, laundry and a little thoughtful aranging. Which isn't nothing, but it's not insurmountable.   Rusty was supposed to be cleaning house this weekend, but #1) his standards of what constitutes "clean" are a lot lower than mine, and #2) he hasn't developed that skill of breaking down big tasks into smaller, manageable components, so to him it *does* seem insurmountable. It's irritating, but I've pretty much given up on the idea that he will ever wake up in the morning with a burning desire to keep the house clean and organized.   I'll be putting off planting the balcony garden until the weekend, since there won't be time for both cleaning and planting on wednesday.   So this is what burnout looks like : mild panic, physical pain, and distracting myself in daydreams of cleaning house. Wow - so miserable, yet so banal.
antimony

antimony

4
Fishnets and Frankincense
 

Self control: Gone, gone, gone!

I was planning to not order any BPAL this month and now, at the ides of May, I am considering what could almost be classified as a rather large order. Self control: gone, gone, gone!!   I want to order Litha, because the honey mead and honeysuckle elements can not be resisted. I also need a 10 ml of O, because I use it almost like I breathe air. Then, yesterday, I decided to test Kumiho again and I believe I must have a bottle. I am also terribly intrigued by Baobhan Sith; it sounds like it could be a winner. I love grapefruity scents. When it gets totally hot and steamy in July and August, I know I won't be wearing Smut as an everyday scent. I need my options. And there are my rationalizations.   I can be pretty cheeky in my lack of concern about "appropriate" daytime workplace scents. In interest of juxtapositions, it's kind of fun to wear "business appropriate" clothing and a smoldering scent. Hee hee.   I get my hair done on Wednesday, and I can hardly wait. Last visit, I told the most wonderful Brandi not to cut very much off the bottom. She complied with my wishes, but suggested that next time, it might be a good idea to neaten up the edges. She's no fool; she knew it would grow so much and get so freaking long that it would be driving me nuts by now. We're planning to put some more blonde highlights in it just to add to that summery kissed-by-the-sun look.   Speaking of the sun, maybe I'm attracted to the scent Baobhan Sith because they were the "ghostly white women of the Scottish highlands" and I'm part Scottish and I'm just about that white. This weekend, I purchased some of the tanning body lotion and it's helping. I'm not looking to become the San Tropez tan girl, but it would be nice not to have legs that look like a couple of glo-sticks heading your way.   Today's BPAL: Smut and O (aka Smut-O-Rama) Today's underwear: Tangerine bra and bikinis with a retro tattoo design print Today's music in the CD player in my car: "Polaroids" by Shawn Colvin
valentina

valentina

3
Denise's Cool Blog
 

I'm getting out of control!

sacred_poetry had 11 imps (and one freebie to sniff) listed for the bargain price of 20 bucks! So, well, i bought it. None were even on my wishlist! I just wanted it, and figured i could easily resell or swap out anything I didn't like Here is the list:   Smut Pumpkin Patch #1 Mistletoe Lick it Thunderbird Nosferatu, Jabberwocky Danse Macabre Faustus Carnal Villain Stardust (empty sniffie)   I'm excited! I like trying new things, because I guess I never know what I'll end up liking
eviltemptressdq

eviltemptressdq

0
Fishnets and Frankincense
 

Musings

Tonight I'm going to my home town (a small town an hour and half away) to put in my appearance at a post-Mother's Day mother-daughter dinner at the care center where my mother lives. My mother has Alzheimer's disease and while she's still coherent enough, she typically thinks she's still a teacher in a school, only this one is a boarding school. Hey, whatever works.   I'm the youngest of three kids -- my brother is 12 years old and my sister is 10 years older. My brother used to call me Boo-Boo when I was a little kid, probably derived from the Yogi Bear cartoons, but also a pretty apt descriptor of my appearance on the scene. Somewhere in between the birth of my siblings and my birth, my mother really, really changed. My memories of my mother are more akin to my nieces (the oldest being 12 years younger than me) than my brother's or sister's. And they're not especially pleasant. When my mother started showing signs of dementia, I thought she was getting abruptly nicer; my brother and sister thought she was getting meaner.   So when I tell people that my mother has Alzheimer's and they say they're sorry, I tell them thank you, but it's OK. It's a tragedy for my mother, of course, and for my siblings. For me, it's watching someone who never especially liked me leave and be replaced by someone who doesn't mind my existence. Of course, it would have been so much better for her to have retained her brain functions, and simply have come to terms with the demons that I represented. But it didn't work out that way.   I think a lot of her anger towards me was due to my "Boo-Boo" status and the fact that I had the audacity to represent the gene pool on my father's side of the family. I was also very close to my maternal grandmother when she was alive, and I think there was also a certain jealousy there -- my mother didn't want to share her mother with anyone, much less me. My paternal grandmother died when I was about 3 or 4, and I barely remember her. No one really talked about her that much, even my father. But with my mother's loss of short-term memory, she talks a lot about the things still stored in her brain. I've found out a lot about my paternal grandmother's personality as a result of those little memory fragments, and my internal reaction is typically: "Oh, that's where that came from..." Meaning, those elements in my personality that seem rather foreign when taken in context to my siblings.   Ah, so I looked like my father's rogue uncles (that's another story), I was her mother's favorite grandchild and she had to watch her mother-in-law's personality bubble up out of me. It was probably too much for her to take. Not that it excuses how she treated me, but obviously she was too angry about too many things that I embodied.   I'll never know her reasons for being so angry -- part of the rules of my family were to not talk about feelings or ugly behaviors. Disassociation rules the day, and I've learned that it's a waste of breath to try to force issues. And over the years, and with a lot of help, I've developed equanimity around the matter. It was my only choice, really, in order to break the cycle of anger and lashing out.   As a friend of mine once said, we all need family, but they need not be our relatives.   It will be a nice day for a quiet drive, a little visit, and then a drive home. My mother won't remember yesterday was Mother's Day, but she will be happy to see me, happy to get attention, happy to get the teddy bear that I'll give her (for that is the level she's at), and happy to see me leave. And I'll feel the same way, although in so many ways, I left the family a long time ago.
valentina

valentina

1
Emain Macha
 

Mother's Day

She was a Missouri girl who grew up on tornados and married far too young to a man who knew only how to be cruel. It took her years to tear herself away from him, running -- always running. I did not understand, as a child, why we were always moving.   But once she found the Ocean she could never leave its side again. She loved roses and irises and the great wide Pacific, and she was wise enough to know when to teach me and when to leave me to discover the truth on my own. She was always there for me, though, when I really needed her. She was, always, so beautiful, with enough love in her to fill all the oceans of the world.   We scattered her ashes out at sea, just off the Catalina islands into the Ocean that she loved so much, and sometimes, on days like Mother's Day or the anniversery of her death, I will go down to the waves and toss her a bouquet of roses, although the waves always toss them back, laughing, as it to say "you silly girl, flowers are for the living."   I miss her.
Macha

Macha

2
Denise's Cool Blog
 

Reviews of Swaps!

Well, I just caught up with all my reviews of scents I've tried so far (yay!). Seems I have 6 imps now that are ready for HennaFairy to sniff... then swap off (to her or whomever). They are: Cordelia, Catherine, Bayou, Medea, Undertow, and Ultraviolet (or, as I call it, Urinal Cake). Ew.   On top of that, I wanted to start a list of people I've completed swaps/sales with here, and just sort them Good/Bad... with "*" meaning I got frimps. So far? I have yet to have a bad experience *knocks on wood*:   GOOD   Ah Xia SOLD TO... paid right away   zenvodunista * (BPAL)   purplegirl * (BPAL & more!)   ReedSong *   neuilly   Chouchen * (BPAL & more!)   ancilla   Beatrice33 * (non Bpal)   aidenraine * (non Bpal)   caramialove * (3 BPAL frimps!)   Hennafairy * (all frimps, I guess! We're friends. hehe)   pink.owl * (non-Bpal)   aedes   Caltha   ayelienne * BPAL (LE!)   jejunery * BPAL (from Wishlist! YAY)   SevenSins * BPAL   Hayet   Allidavie   Maewitch* BPAL   cybra111* BPAL
eviltemptressdq

eviltemptressdq

1
Sourball Ho!
 

More randomness

--We were testing our DSL on a streaming radio station and I wanted some '80s music. I picked a random station and it came up "ew Wave and Alternative" on iTunes radio -- HAHAHAHA! I listen to ew wave!   --sophia_helix had a general rant/complaint/statement a couple of days ago regarding people begging for LEs, like "OMG I NEED THIS LOL!!!" I can see where she's coming from. Everyone right now wants Monster Panties or the C12 blends, like those are the best things Beth has ever created. The fact is that Beth has many many blends that are great and are GC and wholly available.   I completely understand the lure of the LE: there has been many a blend that I bought simply because it was only available for a limited time and what if I love it and I'll never sniff anything like it again and and and *falls over dead* But then when you get them, they're not better than a GC blend just because they're LE. I can name a bunch of GC blends that I love and a bunch of LE blends that were meh.   In conclusion: don't fret over not getting a 5ml of Storyville. There are many other blends that are great.
dawndie

dawndie

0
Sourball Ho!
 

Random drunken thoughts

--I placed an order today; I got bottles of Litha and Obatala. I ordered only 2 because of the extra April Fool's bottle I ordered -- it's complicated. Basically I limit myself to 3 bottles or about $50/month, and if I go over in one month I try to make it up the next month. Oh, never mind, it's stupid   --Happy Mother's Day to pet moms too! The blog of valentina, she posted her puppy pics and I know DH has our cat pics posted somewhere but I'm an intarweb doofus and don't know how to access them. We have 2 cats, Cookie and Shadow, who are very sweet and very shy. We've had them over 11 years, since they were 8 weeks old.   --One funny Mother's Day story: we were living in Cincinnati and were in some shopping area north of the city on one Mother's Day, maybe 1997. Of course every restaurant was packed and we espied a Kenny Rogers Roasters. We had never eaten there, but had always made jokes, like "Is the piped-in music all Kenny?" and "Do all the workers have to wear fake white beards?" Yes, we crack ourselves up. Anyway, we ended up eating our words as everything was seriously good -- the chicken, the sides, it was like the Seinfeld episode where everyone was addicted like crack. We were moaning at the table, it was some good eatin'.
dawndie

dawndie

2
Filling the Periodic Table
 

blah, blah, math, blah

I've been studying all day.   I just stomped out into the living room and had a very nice ranty monologue about how the two problems on the May 05 exam that involved Buhlmann credibility with Poisson distributions were very easy credibility problems, *but* one expected you to just look at the distribution function and just *know* that it's a Pareto distribution, and the other relied on knowing the formula for solving gamma integrals, which I guess is just one more thing to memorize, but seriously, has nothing to do with Buhlmann credibilty at all, it's a computational technique.   Imagine me going into a *lot* more detail about my displeasure. Imagine my boyfriend smiling sympathetically, and nodding in all the right places. Then asking me, "did you have a nice conversation with yourself?" It wasn't mean the way he said it, just cute.   Anyway, It's going to be a tough 4 days, but I think Wednseday, I have a pretty good chance to nail it.
antimony

antimony

0
Emain Macha
 

Writing Frustrations Part II: When Worlds Collide

Apologies for the pun. I just couldn't help myself.   So I have found that the hardest part of writing (for me, anyway) is world building. It wasn't something that I gave any appreciable thought to when I first started these novels. I just wrote in generic "fantasyland" (if you've read any fantasy or played an RPG, you know the place.) Everyone speaks a common language in fantasyland, and there are orcs and elves and a lot of heaving bodices and knights in shiny armor with big swords and wizards wear robes because...well...because. It's all the bastard step-child of Tolkien and Gygax and whatever else was sort of smushed together to make these stories. Elves are very pretty and very arrogant. Orcs are very savage and very tough. Magic exists, although it seems to have virtually no effect on the structures of societies, except maybe in as much as the villain usually is one, and maybe the hero too (or at least his mentor.)   And it is SO extraordinarily difficult to stop playing in fantasyland. There are so many tropes that are simply taken for granted, especially for a dyed-in-the-wool DnD geek like myself. For a long time, I didn't even realize what I was trying to rebel against. I simply felt this vague sense of dissatisfaction with the writing.   I was, at least at first, working with intellectual property started by my ex-husband, a brilliant man, but not necessarily a man who cared to think through the ramifications of his decisions on a meta level. You see, we had decided to write our first novel in his RPG game universe, because we thought that would make our job easier — the world building already done. Quickly though, details began to nag at me. Why did the seemingly vestigal royal houses of the Empire still persist when they did nothing and ruled no one? Because he liked it that way. Why was there a mysterious Emperor who roamed around incognito and messed around with the heroes? Because...and this one was a hard one for me to deal with once I realized it...he really liked the Emperor in the Saberhagen books, and so he introduced his equivalent in ours. Why the monotheistic God vs. Satan overtones to the books? Because my ex-husband was, at heart, still a Catholic, and he could not picture a universe that was not dualistic. Why were all the names FRENCH?   It did not bother him at all that he referenced anachronistic terms and ideas that did not just shatter suspension of disbelief but often crushed it into a fine paste and used it as spackling compound.   I know it sounds like I'm being very hard on my ex-husband. Perhaps I am. He was damn good with tricky plot complications, and a genius at pacing, but when it came to world building, he just didn't care. Not a bit. If it was good enough for Eddings or Salvatore, it was good enough for him.   I quickly found it was not good enough for me.   I began...changing things. Let's come up with an explanation for the Royal families, first of all, and why is the military structure set up like that anyway? He would complain and we would have these little catfights over details, and finally he relented and I starting making modifications in greater earnest. And then came the divorce and I insisted on the copyrights, and then well, then I could really start disassembling the whole universe and putting it back together again, a process that has been ongoing.   In the meantime, I'd come across a few authors who had a rather profound impact on me: Steven Brust and Glen Cook. Steven Brust had taken the common clichés and turned them on their ears — he made little secret that the Draegarans were "elves" (the "humans" to the East even called them that) but he plays delightfully with language (the word the Draegarans use for themselves translates as "human" which the humans think is rediculous because THEY are clearly the "humans" which the Draegarans think is rediculous because THEY...) and because he never calls any race by some stale generic noun, it all feels very fresh (perhaps it would not have, however, had I been more familiar with the nuances of Hungarian culture.) Brust also showed me the inverse of Clark's Law — that in any society, sufficient magical ability would be indistinguishable from technology. Sure, people would use magic to blast their enemies, but they would also use it for the most prosaic means if it was possible to do so — fireballs are nice, but instant communication and good lighting is better. Cook showed me that with any advance in technology, magical or not, any sufficiently organized ruling power of the land will be quick to move to control that power, and if they don't, they will quickly be replaced by someone who did. Only if that authority feels it is safe to do so will the advance be allowed for non-military uses. Plus, Cook's lands just didn't FEEL like anything in this world (at least not until later books with that somewhat transparent overlay of India.) Language barriers were often a problem, the monsters felt unique...tasty stuff.   But constructing a complex society from scratch is HARD. Excruciatingly hard -- it is a daily example of how imaginative one ISN'T. I can understand, I really can, why both Brust and Cook fell back on the easy out by using reflections of Earth cultures (Brust using Hungary and Cook using India later in his Black Company series.) I wasn't, I admit, very happy with that solution. It does have the advantage of feeling very complex and real (because it is modeled on things that are complex and real) and it is, on a base level if nothing else, easy to identify with. You rarely need to be told, for example, that an Indian-like society with a death goddess is going to have assassins. It's understood before the first cultist ever shows his strangling cord. I started up a free wiki (because it is an excellent way of seeing what you have figured out and what you haven't) and began to write down information, encyclopedia-style, about my world. I wondered if I was putting far too much time and effort into something that might get a passing sentence. Maybe.   Then my boyfriend bought me a book by some fellow named Steven Erickson. Now if you want to see what really taking the time to do your worldbuilding before you ever set pen to paper or fingers to keyboard can do for you...this man is the one to check. out. An anthropologist who evidentally started doing the fantasy novel thing as a bit of a lark, his skill at crafting societies, cultures and the broad sweep of history is really what makes these books shine with extraordinary brilliance. I won't say his work is "original" (at least three of his races very neatly fall into the categories of "dark elves," "shadow elves," and "light elves" and Mother of Darkness/Dragons is named Tiam) but these are really minor quibbles, and the unwillingness to do without elves is a faux pas I've unapologetically committed myself. Erickson's inspiration came from his example of how thorough world-building could support a story and provide it with power, scope, richness, and meaning. It's been so hard to work on the worldbuilding when I could be getting into the writing, mucking about with words and sentences, getting my hands dirty, but Erickson's books have given me an excellent lesson in the rewards of patience.   Anyway, I highly recommend you pick him up. He's a hell of a good read.
Macha

Macha

0
Fishnets and Frankincense
 

The Kidz

Happy Mother's Day (in advance) to everyone out there who's a mom to a human kid, and also to everyone else who has pets, since they certainly do become our babies!   So here's my kidz... Mugzy and Ella Bean. Mugzy's a Boxer and Ella Bean is a Basset. Mugzy and Ella were both abandoned dogs found during cold, snowy winters.   Mugzy was found wandering down a country road by a farm family, who located his then owner. The owner said to shoot him. Thankfully, they knew they had a sweet, sweet dog on their hands and turned him over to Boxer Rescue. The poor little guy had pneumonia, but he recovered nicely and came to live at my house 5 years ago. The Mug-Bug is the sweetest man on the planet. He is utterly devoted to me and he follows me everywhere. Now that he's getting to be an older guy, I cherish every day that he's still here.   Ella Bean was sighted wandering near the Interstate in a rural area. Her rescuers had quite a time catching her, because she'd probably lived on her own for a while. She was eventually captured and turned over to a shelter. She was a wreck when she came to live at my house; she was stressed, skinny and extremely distrustful of humans. She has a big lump on her ribcage, the probable result of being kicked. But two years later, she's a squishy, happy, devoted little soul. Basset feet are the cutest things on the planet. I never knew I could be so endlessly charmed by dog's tooties!   We all work out our maternal instincts one way or the other, don't we??
valentina

valentina

4
Denise's Cool Blog
 

Forum order received!

from jejunery:   eos bayou catherine titania (frimp!)   Titania was on my wishlist, too, so special thanks to jejunery for thinking about what she sent me .   That one ALSO seems to be my favorite out of the 4! YAY.   *still didn't get my bottles from Germany. I want to cry *
eviltemptressdq

eviltemptressdq

0
Whiskers and Whispers
 

Killing my wallet.

I stink of: Death on a Pale Horse, Perfumed Garden, and a bit of Aegis.   Whoa, what an update that was. Another formidable slew of beautiful stinky things. Lotus Moon is even more intriguing than I expected. I love lotus, and I adore rose and amber too. I'm curious as to how the opium and pine will play along. I'm hoping the pine doesn't amp like in Hearth 05 when it went a bit OMGPINE!!! for a moment before becoming nutty-sweet, and that the opium is the same yummy kind as Red Lantern and Sleepy Moon. Litha-oh mah gawdz. I'm hoping Beth does all the sabbats this year-if Beltane and Litha are anything to go by, anything is possible. (in other words...more Mabon, pleeeeaaase?) I had to get this summer solstice scent-it's got a lot of ingredients I'm not familiar with and a lot of stuff I really like-and it has mead!!! Those Salon scents seem so awesome-pricey yes (thank goodness for decant circles!) but I bet those scents are going to be worth every buck. There's something almost like they are LEs, even though they are GCs-maybe it's the new, exciting, expensive and unusual ingredients? They all look so tempting but the one that grabbed me, predictably, was the Egypt one. I mean, looking at the notes, I know it is going to work. It reminds me of one of my favourite non-BPAL scents, a perfume called Isis with honey, myrrh, cardamom and amber amongst other things. It also seems like the ultimate kyphi scent, with yummy red musk instead of the usual wine used in that incense blend. Don't get me wrong, I looooove Cairo (the wanderlust scent) but it doesn't smell like any of the kyphi blends I have-this one seems like it will though. Other Salons I might want to take the plunge with include Bat-Woman (I love those nocturnal scents that Beth makes!) and Lucretia (VANILLA MUSK!!!), Orpheus (may be a tad masculine but dammit, it's Orpheus! Mythology rocks!) and The Death of Sardanapal (this seems very exotic and resiny-spicy, hopefully the lemongrass won't take over) and all of them really, but since I am a bit broke from my orders, I'm going to get decants for now and then decide....   Talking of killing my wallet, my credit card took a real battering today, not just with BPAL. I bought new shoes-I needed new trainers (that's Brit-speak for sneakers) and Lush moisturiser-am I the only girl who uses Cosmetic Lad? I call it Cosmetic (insert Little Britain impression here) Lady! I just love it's texture and it's scent-white chocolate orange, yum. I also bought some posh chocolate because as I said before in this blog, I don't do cheap choccy as much as I used to. Pink peppercorn white choc is more my thing, yum.
yeahbutnobut

yeahbutnobut

0
This Old Snark
 

A spoonful of sugar...

Perhaps in the midst of the hair-and-dust-raising activities of "packing up", Snarky will think back on her and The Mister's history together. Like many couples these days, they met online. The first month of their acquaintance was spent practicing the simultaneously high and low tech tradition of courting over email.   Their exchanges were refreshingly open and honest from the get-go. She was finishing her degree in a field she did not respect, and he was working in an industry that no longer interested him. They found a kindred spirit in eachother's restlessness.   Sometimes they made simple poetry challenges to eachother. One day The Mister asked Snarky to compose a quick poem using words no longer than four letters. Here's what she came up with:   soft paws pad pad pad pad purr cat eyes look at you a grin? (too fast to tell) now she goes zoom! on your lap pad pad pad pad stop "mine" say her eyes you nod, "yes"
darkitysnark

darkitysnark

0
The Road to Santiago
 

Adventures in decanting and blending

I've been working with a variety of TAL oils in order to get myself mentally prepared for this journey and on days when I need to get myself to a very strong place I'll wear several at once on appropriate places on my body in addition to annointing talismans and burning annointed candles. I have room in my bags for five imps of BPAL, which will live in a ittle Tic-Tac box, but I can't take my TALS in their bottles, and I don't have imps of those. So with the utmost respect for Beth's amazing talents regarding the creation of the TALS, I blended my most important TALS together into one tiny bottle (about 2 imps-worth) so I can have them with me. After focusing long and hard on my goal, I went heavy on my daily staples White Light and Anthelion, added several drops of Lionheart and Determination, a few drops of Fiery Wall of Protection, and just a drop each of Charisma and Crown of Success. I added each component until it felt right, and there's my Pilgrimage Blend. I was tempted to add a touch of ACMD, but this is not a blend for material gain, but for spiritual support-- what 12th-century people walking this route would have sought.   This has been a stressful, weepy morning, but in the process of blending these oils together, my heart has lightened and my spirits lifted, I feel optimistic and motivated (even though I would love to just go back to bed). One of the things I want to do is take a picture for Beth of a vista on this pilgrimage that embodies the feeling these oils give me. Somewhere along the way, I'm going to come across a view that makes my heart soar, like these oils do, and I will know that I need to stop and embrace the moment.
Heretic

Heretic

0
Denise's Cool Blog
 

The update...

is a bit overwhelming! Last night's Lab update is my first as a BPALer, and I'm sort of flipping out! How can I begin like this! LOL. There are TOO many new items! I may be crazy, but I'm pretty sure they do not normally add so many new items at once *scared*   *wallet runs and hides*   I'm definitely ordering Litha. Lotus Moon doesn't really appeal to me, so hopefully when I sniff HennaFairy's whenever she gets it I won't like it. LOL. As for the Dragon scents, I know I am not getting any of those (dragon's blood scent honestly makes me gag. oops). And the Salon!?? Yikes. I love the way all of that is laid out, and designed... but since they are GC, I'm not going to freak out and order a ton (as they won't be leaving any time soon). Phew.   Then there are THREE new categories sitting on the Lab's page waiting for debuts. AND more will be added to GC & the Salon!   So, my plan is to order Litha before it is over. Then probably just an imps pack of 6, to get a few items on my wishlist that I don't tend to see on people's sales/swaps lists.   still awaiting my shipment from Germany. It BETTER get here before the Meet N Sniff in NJ next weekend!! grr...
eviltemptressdq

eviltemptressdq

0
Do you have a flag?
 

Woah.

Has it been a month since I wrote anything here? Sheesh. I thought it had been maybe a couple of weeks.   I would really like to start writing more in this blog because I don't have any RL friends who are into BPAL, except my husband. My LJ journal is mostly just full of entries that have a company's name in the title and then a list of all their products I've tried and whether or not I liked them. I suppose it's not helpful to anyone but me.   And I don't want to be all over the place making all kinds of posts everywhere about every BPAL oil I try because I don't want to be a pest. Plus, it seems like it's very easy to irritate people on the Internet, so I'm cautious about that. (If someone heard me talking it would sound different from the way text looks.) People tell me that I have an extremely expressive face, and I also gesture with my hands a lot, and all of that gets lost when I type.   So I guess I'll just post here. It seems pretty unobtrusive. And I'm pretty sure no one is reading this anyway.
filigree_shadow

filigree_shadow

1
Do you have a flag?
 

The true state of my collection.

ETA: I actually wrote this on about April 8th, I just never figured out the Publish button thingie until just now.   Allrighty, figuring out how to set up this blog wasn't too rough.   I wanted to start a blog because my BPAL habit is getting out of control. Not in terms of sheer numbers of imps and bottles, mind you -- that would be silly. Clearly I can never have enough BPAL. The part that is out of control is the organization of it.   I have a box for keeper bottles, a box for keeper imps, a box for swaps, and a box for imps I haven't tested yet. I also have a box for frimps from the Lab because I like to keep those separate so I know which ones were "straight form the Lab" for swaps. Everything in my "keep" boxes has labels on the top. The imp labels are color-coded by scent category.   I have a color-coded spreadsheet that lists all the oils, their categories, their notes, a basic summary of what I read of their reviews, and my own thoughts on them.   And apart from that, it's a DISASTER. I forget I bought an imp from my wishlist and I buy it again from someone else. My to-be-tested imp box is overflowing. I can't sell or swap anything to save my life, so I end up with like 3 imps of Jabberwocky that I'll never wear. I begin to panic because I'm terrified I'll swap something that has been tampered with before I got it unbeknownst to me, and then I'll get blacklisted in the whole community, so I start to think I need at least 2 of everything before I can sell it so I can compare them and make sure they both seem legit. I have reviews of some scents and not some of others, and I've already swapped away a few imps that I didn't write reviews/thoughts for, so now I'm thinking I'll have to buy the buggers again. And the biggest horror of all: What if my tastes change? What if my skin smells different today because I used the Decadence smooch? What if something I thought I hated and swapped away turned out to be something that I will love 1 year from now? I better just keep everything...   I keep telling myself I will NOT buy any more until I get this situation straightened out. But here I am at 11:00 on a Friday night trolling the sales posts to see if by some miracle someone has an imp of Spanked they want to sell. Sigh.
filigree_shadow

filigree_shadow

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Do you have a flag?
 

My poor blog...

My blog never gets bumped whenever I add a new entry. Sigh. Poor little guy. It hurts his feelings.   And even though I have written several entries, in the blog list it still has a big fat ZERO for number of entries.   I wonder what this "Publish" button is for...
filigree_shadow

filigree_shadow

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Sourball Ho!
 

Update!

I'm as giddy as a schoolgirl with this update. This was the first one in almost 2 years where I was actually online and then noticed Beth's announcement. It was exciting! Like a rollercoaster, woo! *bounces in chair*   The Salon scents that sound great are And There Was a Great Cry in Egypt and Death of Sarandapal. Both have honey, which due to my love of O are tempting. Plus Litha sounds nice, but it sounds like something with the specific goal of annoying my allergies with all those plants So I'm on the fence, but I have a couple weeks to decide. I knew Lotus Moon wouldn't work because lotus is bubblegummy on me, and paired with pine it became a no-no   This was a great end to a craptastic week.
dawndie

dawndie

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HennaFairy's Blog
 

icons

well eviltemptress has been so good at the icons i've been intimidated... but i have a new favorite scent tonight, and so i made an icon for it!     edited to add another one! or more...           usual disclaimers, do not hotlink, save to your own site (photobucket.com rocks!)
HennaFairy

HennaFairy

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