I'm a college student in a mountain town, although I'm originally from and have lived in two relatively large and urban areas.

I am a hockey-loving, rugby-playing, former fencer tomboy with a love for animals and Jack Kerouac's Bodhidharma.

I am not the "typical" BPAL buyer in the sense that other people imagine the customership of the company to be.

I do, however, have a scent problem. I've come across two things in my life that genuinely smell good on me: Oceanus (Body Shop) and Charlie White. Other mass-produced scents smell the same as they do on everyone else or they're absolutely acrid. In my quest to make my mother feel better about me before she gets old and decrepit, I've taken on the task of expanding my scent collection in an attempt to give her hope that maybe one day she'll have grandchildren. If I look like a girl and I smell like a girl, maybe I'll be less frightening to settle down with...or so her logic goes.

I ran across BPAL a few years ago when I was looking for something vampy for Halloween in a LiveJournal goth community. The lady that did such excellent work on my choker suggested I try BPAL for an appropriate smell. Until the recent past, I've been much too chicken to try anything.

Those days are over.

In lieu of some sort of quarter-life crisis with far-reaching consequences, I've begun my quest to smell like a million bucks. The dear boyfriend (hereafter known as DBF) is my guinea pig and 2nd opinion. My mom-by-proxy (MBP) is my third and by far has a better sniffer than I do.

By the end of this, I hope to have found scents that are good on me and trained my nose to work better for me.

Howdy!