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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
    • 6,604 views
Is Anybody Out There?
 

Anxiety

I am actually in a full-blown panic over never finding a bottle of House of Mirrors. Beaver Moon to a lesser degree. This is sort of scary. I think I need some rest. But it's really, really freaking me out. Seriously, though? House of Mirrors seems to have vanished from the swaps. (I know there are a couple there, but what if nobody ever wants to sell it again? )   And it's not like I have any real reason to be afraid I'll never get my hands on either of them ever again. It's irrational. That's how I know it's a panic attack.
smallvoice

smallvoice

0
Is Anybody Out There?
 

Update mania

I think I've figured it out. I sold the two bottles I had up for swap. If I can choose between Dorian and Alice, I'll make a big (for me!) order now and then snag one or maybe even two CD scents. Possibly a set of decants. Possibly a few decants eventually. If there are 13 scents, that's $65. Cripes. I don't know why that surprised me so much, heh. (I'm guessing about the 13 scents.) So I'll grab decants of whichever ones interest me most and then... gah. What about the BPTP update? The one it was insinuated/suggested would be a lot like the inquisition... That's what is keeping me back now.   Ugh. I'm just driving myself nuts.   An observation about shipping prices: It usually more than pays for itself in frimpage. That's kind of cool.
smallvoice

smallvoice

0
Do you have a flag?
 

Entire GC Swap Reviews - pink.owl Package #7

pink.owl #7 package Dana O'Shee, Santa Muerte, Satyr, Thalia, Venice, Wilde.   Dana O'Shee - Offerings of milk, honey and sweet grains were made to placate these creatures, and it is that the basis of the scent created in their name. Smells like cherries and honey at first. Then it gets milkier and sweeter and the cherry scent fades out almost entirely. I have a feeling that this would be a lovely scent if it weren't for my skin chemistry making the honey smell like play-doh. It's done the exact same thing all three times I've tried Dana O'Shee over a span of several months, so I'm pretty much giving up hope at this point. I'm glad this smells great on other people, but it's never going to work for me.   Santa Muerte - A deep, resonant scent, both comforting and soft: lovers’ roses, solemn chrysanthemum, dark vetiver and dazzling cactus flowers. Disclaimer: I love vetiver. Santa Muerte is lovely. Gentle and cozy. Like cuddling up with a good book under your favorite blanket on your favorite comfy chair. It does kinda smell a little bit like cocoa at first, and then it smells a bit like cleaning products, but that's just the wet phase. It's pretty without being aggressively floral, soft and lilting. Santa Muerte was one of the first 5mL bottles I bought from the Lab. It was great to wear in the springtime.   Satyr - Unleash the bawdy, unrestrained passion of the satyr! A ferociously masculine scent: sexual, vigorous, and truly wild. Yummy yum. To me this smells mostly like Scherezade with clove when it's wet -- kind of like an aggressive Scherezade. And it's a really dark brownish-red color, so of course I'm going to like it. There's nothing soft or gentle about this scent. But even though it's dark, it's not a brooding darkness. It's kind of playful. If there is civet in this, that's okay with me because the Lab's civet note smells pretty good on me. Nothing like poo at all. I ashamed to admit that I have about 4 imps of Satyr and I haven't given a single one to my husband yet. I just let him try it a few minutes ago for the first time, and it smells fabulous on him! Even better than on me. Rats. I guess he gets the imps.   Thalia - Good cheer. Plumeria, pear and white champagne. Hmm. Plumeria, is it? I thought that scent was gardenia until I looked at the notes. This is a very yellow oil, and it smells like a very yellow flower. The pear gives it a nice crispness, and the champagne gives it a bit of a sparkle. Over all I like it, it's just a little more flowery than what I usually wear. This is one of the BPAL blends that doesn't suit me personally but that I find quite pretty. I also think it would be nice layered with one of the grapefruit scents.   Venice - A complex, voluptuous scent that captures the robust beauty and of the Italian Renaissance: lemon, red currant, wisteria, red rose petals, heady jasmine, Florentine orris root, waterlily, red sandalwood, violet plum, and violet leaf. It smells lush; I don't know how she did that. It's also slightly sweet, but it's kind of a fruity sweet, not what I'd consider a floral sweet. It doesn't have as much jasmine as I was afraid of, and the tiny amount of lemon I can smell doesn't bother me as much as lemon usually does. It's a pretty floral that smells rather grown-up. It gets slightly heady when it's dry, but not offensively so. However... even though it's nice at first, after about an hour I don't like it. It smells like pretty floral soap. So this is one for swaps after all.   Wilde - A sophisticated traditional gentleman's cologne, with just the slightest taint of patchouli's passion, tonka bean's decadence, the philanthropy of bergamot, moss' cynicism, the sharp wit of lavender, and the hopeless romantic longing of jasmine and thyme. This is one of my hubby's favorite GC oils -- he tried an imp of it a few months ago and then immediately bought a 10mL. It really is a great cologne, it smells wonderful. I can definitely smell a clean, crisp lavender in it, and it's just very slightly herby. The bergamot is a nice touch. Very gentlemanly, but not necessarily in a prim way.   To my nose there is no mistaking this for a woman's perfume because it smells very much like a traditional cologne. But that could be because my hubby wears it all the time.
filigree_shadow

filigree_shadow

0
Eoywin's Blog
 

On Birthdays

Today would have been my mom's 55th birthday if she was alive, and it's Todd's 31st birthday, so I feel a bit conflicted.   I find a bit creepy that my mom and my husband have the same birthday. Mostly because he never met her, and we didn't start dating until after she died.   Birthdays are a big deal to me, so I try and make the people I love's birthday a little special. This weekend, I took Todd out to eat and to the movies. He doesn't really like birthdays, so that's about all the fuss he'll let me make   Today I'm taking him out to lunch, and finishing his cake (I was too tired to frost it last night).
Eoywin

Eoywin

0
Sourball Ho!
 

Cheap estate sales!

We set a record this weekend: we went to four estate sales and didn't buy anything. Which got us debating and deciding what is an estate sale, because 2 of the houses didn't qualify in our opinion. (We pulled these assorted addresses from a list of the local paper's, so estate sales were listed differently than garage sales.)   One house was a young family obviously in the process of moving and had all their crap out in the front yard, and you could go into the living room and see the old-timey piano (which was pretty cool, actually), but you couldn't go anywhere else. That is not an estate sale!   The other one, after we visited we were creating this whole backstory: stylish anorexic bobblehead mom and her bobblehead daughter wanted to sell ex-husband's stuff (because they got the house and some of his stuff in the divorce), but couldn't muster the carbs to lug the furniture out to the driveway, so they called it an "estate sale" so they didn't have to move from the couch after the filling lettuce leaf they had 3 hours before. Yes, we amuse ourselves It was a few pieces of totally overpriced furniture, and when I asked if they were selling the house they said "no." So it wasn't an estate sale or even a moving sale! Rip-off!!   So our new rule is: if there aren't other cars in front, we're not going in. The first place and the last place totally passed that rule; the last place a bunch of cars and had so much stuff, we couldn't even look through it all. Most of it wasn't great, though, and the lady in charge wasn't giving any deals (even thought it was 3:00 on a Sunday) and at one point someone asked about the shoebox full of old postcards and she said they were $1 each! Ripoff!!!   The first place was awesome: a local actress from the 1930s who built this beautiful house on a hill in this cool hidden part of town. We were having total Hollywood Hills flashbacks -- the house was seriously beautiful, gorgeous floors and ceilings and archways and staircases. There was almost nothing left to buy, but I was so jazzed to be able to walk through it, it was this great house and they had pictures up of her in her heyday. I left dreamy-eyed   That's what I like: seeing a cool old house, that people lived and loved there. I like taking a piece of that back with me -- not like a vampire, but an appreciator.
dawndie

dawndie

0
Is Anybody Out There?
 

A confession

I am all over the place tonight. So I have this horrible confession to make. I'm too embarrassed to make it on the forum, though I might as well be.   Everytime somebody dies, I resent my dad for still being alive. I don't have the energy to actively hate him, though when I think about it, I do.   I wonder if anyone will hurt when he dies.   Gah. This isn't productive. I need to get out of here for a bit.   I was going to postsecret that (with less words, of course), but I think I'll just leave it here.
smallvoice

smallvoice

4
Is Anybody Out There?
 

Birthdays and selfishness

I have about $50 in my paypal account. I really want to do whatever the BPTP event is going to be. I totally support the price increase and all that, but... I think I'm going to spend it on GC scents.   I don't have anything for my husband's birthday. I don't have any ideas about what to get him. I... may actually not use it on BPAL at all. If I spend a ton of money on myself and don't have anything for him, that's just... wrong, to me. Wrong.
smallvoice

smallvoice

0
Filling the Periodic Table
 

It's sunday night, you know what that means!

It's been a great week in the garden.   Four Morning glories this morning:   And check out the crazy moonflower bud that will open soon:   Another angle showing of the strawberries' prison break:   The current extent of the tomato jungle:   Clusters of growing tomatoes:   Some of the making of tonight's tomato/basil/mozzerella sald:   I have my first ripening pepper!   Remember what the Experimental tomato looked like just three weeks ago? Look at it now:   Finally, the roses are blooming again! Something like 10 buds all over the plants:  
antimony

antimony

0
Fishnets and Frankincense
 

Mullet haikus

It is too hot outside for me to entertain the notion of writing or even thinking rationally; however, in an odd, Jungian-like bit of synchronicity, I discovered a web page of "mullet haikus." Now I will have something mysterious and Zen-like to say to my mulleted buddy who greets me outside of Meadowlark Coffee when I make my morning coffee runs. So for all the mulleted samauris out there, and for everyone who encounters them, here are few choice mullet haiku offerings:   This super cool hair and a bucket of chicken: What more could I want?   I liked that foreign legion movie so much, I grew me one them hats   O! SQUIRREL brother, Your tail, my hair We are one Yet I must eat you   Lynyrd Skynyrd didn’t win no spelling bees Who cares? They rock the trailer   Metallica is for first graders Nothing rocks harder than Winger   Dogs urinate where they so choose And so do I Red and blue lights flash
valentina

valentina

1
Is Anybody Out There?
 

A project imported from my wishlist

Odd little project: I'd like to try scents that don't have a lot of reviews, so I'm going to list some here. (But this is not my wishlist, this is just for my own reference.)   Anathema   Death on a Pale Horse   Les Infortunes de la Vertu Loralei   Nero   The Black Tower The Bow and Crown of Conquest
smallvoice

smallvoice

0
Do you have a flag?
 

Entire GC Swap Reviews - cordia Package #3

cordia #3 package Bloodlust, Dirty, Grand Guignol, Nuit, Rage, Szepasszony, and Zombi   Bloodlust - Dragon's blood essence, heavy red musk, Indonesian patchouli and swarthy vetiver with a drop of cinnamon. What I got straight away was cinnamon and vetiver. Then the cinnamon burned off (fortunately!), and the scent brightened up a little. I could smell the dragon's blood and vetiver most strongly. Then the red musk. It definitely smells red to me, dark red. It settles into a lovely dark musky blend... heavy and sweet. I really like it when it's dry. The thing that really irritates me about this blend is that I really don't like it at first -- which surprised me. Red musk is my favorite musk, and I love dragon's blood, patchouli, and vetiver. But for the first ten minutes, it's nose-crinkly to me. I bought a 5ml of it several months ago and I don't think I've ever even opened it. The thought of going through the first 10 minutes is unpleasant enough that I don't wear the oil at all, even though the dry stage is fabulous. I think I'm going to have to try harder to remind myself of how much I like it when it's dry, to distract myself from remembering the wet stage.   Dirty - A fresh, crisp white linen scent: perfectly clean, perfectly breezy. Smells like a crisp white floral. Lily? Extremely feminine. Quite breezy too -- it seems like it's floating. A very clean, pretty scent. Not overpowering, either. Nice!   Grand Guignol - Our Grand Guignol perfume is a shot of sweet apricot brandy; just enough to settle your nerves after a ghoulish, gory brush with the macabre. Yay, Grand Guignol! I like it a lot! It smells to me a bit like an apricot tart. It reminds me a bit of peach cobbler, one of my very favorite desserts of all time. The brandy really warms up when the perfume oil is on my skin, too. I like this one mostly because the fruit note doesn't smell artificial on me (as fruit notes sometimes do), and it's also not overpowering. It's almost a delicate scent... which is how I like fruity blends. I don't want to walk around smelling like a giant piece of fruit, I just want to have a vaguely sweet and pleasant aura.   Nuit - Her perfume is starry and crystalline, a jewel-clad and glittering paean to night: dazzling white musks, white rose and night-blooming jasmine with the soft moss of moonlit meadows, a waft of Egyptian incense, and a gentle breath of moonflower. I expected Nuit to be beautiful and captivating. What I got out of it was a snootful first of jasmine and then rose. The problem is that jasmine and rose are two of my least favorite floral notes because they tend to be quite strong on my skin. Nuit does start to seem musky after the rose phase, but not enough to make this something I'd want to wear. This just isn't the sort of floral that I like.   Rage - Black amber erupting with a dark volcanic surge of fiery dragon's blood and a burst of melati, rose geranium, mandarin and black currant. Initially it kind of smelled like a burnt orange. It's not nearly as dark as I thought it would be, but it smells a little bitter. It's an interesting scent... just not the hot fiery scent I was envisioning. Also it doesn't seem to be very strong. It's ending up smelling kind of farty. I don't think this one is going to work for me...   Szepasszony - A chilly, tempestuous whirlwind of clear, airy notes, slashing rain, and a thin undercurrent of white flowers. Other reviewers described this as a cold aquatic floral -- I think it's chilly but I wouldn't call it cold. It smelled a little bit minty at first, but that didn't last long. It's kind of breezy and aquatic, with some pretty white flowers. It smells fresh and clean to me, totally inoffensive. A little bit like soap, but often the aquatic scents smell a little like soap to me. This is perfect for a day like today, when it's 91 degrees but the RealFeel is 102. Ugh.   Zombi - Dried roses, rose leaf, Spanish moss, oakmoss and deep brown earth. I tried this a long time ago and hated it. I tried it again as part of the Entire GC circular swap, and now I realize it's not as bad as I thought.   I am not a person who can wear the dirt scents. This smells like pretty dirt, because of the roses, but still dirt. Fresh, earthy, black, fertile dirt. I find the scent interesting and intriguing, and I wouldn't mind burning a candle that smelled like this. But as a personal perfume it's not for me at all. It's all right after about an hour (more rose than dirt), but it's still not something I'd choose over other BPAL blends.   I will say in Zombi's favor that I find this scent infinitely more appealing than Graveyard Dirt. And the dirt scent in this blend is not as overpowering here as it usually is on me. I think Zombi is my favorite of all the BPAL blends that have that earth note.
filigree_shadow

filigree_shadow

0
Eoywin's Blog
 

A little sad

It could be the time of year, but I've been feeling sad and unwanted the last couple of days.   Sadness comes from the fact, mostly, that my dad has sold my childhood home. I'm a little sad that I haven't been there since April 2005, and I won't see it before he sells it. And of course my mom's deathday (and birthday) coming up very soon makes me sad too.   The unwanted comes from wanting to go to various meet and sniffs, but not feeling like anyone really wants me to come.   Of course, not getting enough sleep and having to come to work on a Saturday leads to these feelings as well.
Eoywin

Eoywin

0
Is Anybody Out There?
 

White musk scents to try

Is Chinese musk the same as white musk? I've seen it used several times and wasn't sure. So these are white musks, golden musks, and musks of indeterminate color. Dragon's Musk (with 5, one is bound to be white!) Aeval (I didn't like this one the first time, but white musk warrants a re-try) Black Pearl Fae Lampades (sensual musk could be white) Lurid Ode on Melancholy Zephyr Death on a Pale Horse The Bow and Crown of Conquest The Great Sword of War (Yeah, it's red musk, but it sounds so perfect.) Bluebeard (I'm pretty sure I tried and disliked this one) Imp (not white musk, but golden musk sounds so lovely!) Kitsune-tsuki Kuang Shi Villain (citrus musk) Grandmother of Ghosts Pietho (warm musk probably isn't white, but it sounds pretty) Queen Mab (Chinese musk) Thanatopsis (pine, juniper and musk... yeah, those first two scare me. This is way low on my list.) Cordelia (Chinese musk- this has all my favourite things in it.) Juliet Oberon (orchid too!) Endymion (tried once already) Psyche Vicomte de Valmont Berenice (if I can find some!) Usher (as above) Mantis (golden again, but sounds lovely) Fallen (golden musk) Aglaea (musk type isn't specified [except 'bright'], but sounds like it could be white) Euterpe Urania Zorya Bengal (skin musk)   I think that's all, for now!
smallvoice

smallvoice

0
Is Anybody Out There?
 

Epiphany and other thoughts

I think I just figured out a note I love! Finally! I mean, I know there are blends that work well on me, but I've never been able to really truly single out a note... and that note is white musk. I tested Katharina just now, and it was a little sharp going on, but then I noticed that it has white musk in it, and so does Whitechapel, so I figured that maybe it would dry down differently on me- and half an hour later, it smells fantastic. It's the same musk- I can actually pick it out. That is freaking awesome.   I need to lose weight. This is not an epiphany, obviously (the white musk thing was the epiphany). It's just... incredibly important to me. I was explaining this to one of my bridesmaids earlier this week. I want to go out with my husband, and have people look at us and think: "What is that girl doing with that guy?" Here's why: I think he deserves that. I want to make people sit up and take notice of him.   Please don't take that to mean I'm putting down his appearance; I'm very attracted to him. I just know that he doesn't have the physical appearance to match his heart- and trust me, if his phsyical appearance really did correspond to his heart, angels would weep and traffic would stop and there would be no more war and he'd be able to turn tap water into Shub Niggurath (the BPAL blend, not the Lovecraftian critter, because that would be seriously freaky- can you imagine? He'd have to get special glasses or something, because otherwise he'd unleash this terror onto the world... but yeah, getting off the subject here...) with a piercing glance and.... yeah. All that stuff.   He's that special. He deserves someone fantastic.
smallvoice

smallvoice

0
Shiva's Blog
 

My Wishlist

I'm now in Alto, NM   Wishlist   5mL Cathedral Dorian Dublin Embalming Fluid Samhain 06 Snake Oil   IMPS Al Azif Anahata, Death Cap, Dublin, Eclipse, Euphrosyne, Luperci, Montressor, NEMESIS Snake Oil Sri Lanka, Terpsichore, The bow and the crown of conquest, Tombstone, Tzadikim Nistarim, Zephyr, Any TAL decants Chakra decants   I like dark, sweet, heavy, resiny, incensy, some patchouli, creamy, vanilla, foody scents. I dislike florals, although when well blended, sometimes they're okay. See my "top ten" list for examples. Fruits are frequently doable.   yay bpal!   I am not so much into perfume anymore. I am WAY into knitting, so if you have yarn you want to swap for perfume, that would work well. I'm also in need of body cream, as I am freshly moved into a very dry environment. I also would consider swapping for bath products, like bubble bath, bath bombs, etc.
shivashiva

shivashiva

0
Fishnets and Frankincense
 

Friday afternoon!

Hells bells, there are a number of very thoughtful new entries over here on Blog Island. Not me. I could try to follow suit, but there is very little in the way of profound thought in my brain today. My excuse? It's Friday afternoon!   Here's something to do!   Get yo' pimp name here homey hunny! http://www.playerappreciate.com/pimphandle.asp     Big Playah valentina Flava
valentina

valentina

8
Birdsongs
 

Back into the water ...

Another day, another attempt at a blog ... I keep thinking bloggy thoughts lately and then end up surfing away all my internet time.   As it turns out, sharing a house with my boyfriend, best friend, & brother was The Worst Idea Ever. Pfui. Nobody gets along, and it is all very tense. And they all complain to me about each other instead of talking directly. Except for Chrissy, who apparently hates everybody now because we're all too noisy. C'est la vie ...   I am trying to embrace positive thoughts. For instance, I totaled my car in June during the move (it was a nice four months of car-ownership ), but the house we're renting is two minutes walk from the bus stop, and by extreme good luck the bus route that runs nearby is the one that curves around & goes right by my workplace. Also, the bus is airconditioned, where the car was not, and I have forty minutes each way to read, so I've been going through books like mad recently. See? All positive.   This morning I dug through my to-try imp box and found Baghdad. There's the saffron note that works so well on me in Underpants! Days off are perfect for imp testing - I sit around & drink coffee while enjoying some new fragrance, and by the time I'm ready to shower & get all gussied up for the day, it's worn off & I can decide what known scent I'm in the mood for.
spanishviolet

spanishviolet

2
This Old Snark
 

Maturity

There are so-called "young souls" and "old souls" and all the souls in between. Snarky has often surmised that she possesses a "middle aged soul" - old enough to know better (she entered her teenaged years with a deep breath and a "well, here goes nuthin'") but still young enough to make all the same stupid mistakes (oh, it went alright).   Her best friend has a teenaged soul. She is impulsive, headstrong, and unable to take the right path until she has exhausted all the wrong ones. Snarky used to refer to her as her "Drama Friend" (we all have at least one of those, even if we are typically the DF in our relationships), often with a bit of condescending affection/scorn (weird how some friendships are so close to antagonistic symbiosis).   Last night Snarky was on the phone with her friend for over two hours - most of it was spent with DF venting and unloading and Snarky listening.   Two years ago such a conversation would leave Snarky exhausted and resentful. It would make The Mister grouchy for stolen time. And worst of all: nothing would have changed for her friend.   But today, Snarky feels fine. Rested, even. It's not that Snarky has disconnected herself from her friend and doesn't care about what she is going through (in short, two words: "emotional incest" Snarky always learns new terms/concepts from her acquaintances that open her eyes and make her extremely grateful for her own dull and boring existance that does not require the aid of therapy speak in order to be defined) it is that Snarky finally had an a-HA moment a few crises ago and realized that in order to be a good friend, she didn't have to live through the experience with those friends. She could just listen and observe and support.   Small epiphany as far as epiphanies go (surely "brightly colored mushrooms are bad for the eatings" ranks higher) but an important one for Snarky, who used to be an empathetic walking open wound for everyone.   And The Mister was really quite OK with not having a wife for two hours. The Snarks are cultivating an appreciation for the concept of "alone time" and have experienced the added bonus of more enriched "together time" for it.   Best of all, Snarky's best friend has really broken through to some new, exciting territory. Of course right now it's scary and overwhelming, but she's calmer now and is finally, finally able to really work toward something better.   So, Snarky feels compelled to give a small for emotional maturity both for herself and for her friend. Snarky always knew she would finally begin to feel more comfortable in her skin (on the personal, bodily level as well as the larger socio-political sphere) in her thirties and is relieved to see that bit of middle-aged soul prognostication come true.   But she will try very hard not to pull a muscle patting herself on the back about it.
darkitysnark

darkitysnark

3
Filling the Periodic Table
 

Check out my boss-repelling aura.

Oh. My. God.   My boss called me in to her office this morning to tell me she just put in her two weeks notice. I'm happy for her, she's going to a larger insurance company where there's more upward potential for her (she's already the senior actuary in our little division) But dude, again?   I first came on board with this company last September. I was brought on to work for a guy who was crazy smart. Unfortunately, his work style did not mesh super-well with the rest of the office. He ended up jumping ship this past spring to go be the chief actuary at another small company. I wasn't too bummed out, since I ended up wotking for *his* boss, who was also a super-actuary She's the one who quit today.   This is even more familiar, because when I first got hired out of school at the big consulting firm I worked for in San Francisco, I got hired by seriously one of the most brilliant actuaries I have ever met, and worked directly under him for the coolest 6 months ever. Then he got headhunted away to be chief actuary at a big insurance company. After that, I ended up working for a couple of mediocre-by-comparison managers who totally didn't inspire me, but at least they didn't quit (Well, one of them did, almost right after I did - that would explain why he was so happy for me!)   Part of me has gotten into the habit of thinking (is it me? Do they hate having me work for them so much? But you know, that's really just not it. Somehow, thanks to good interview skills, good luck, whatever, I have managed to maneuver myself into these great positions. Even 6 months working under a mega-egg-brain is so much more educational than 3 yars working for someone who's just average. Unfortunately, having a mega-egg-brain opens a lot of doors, and those are the kind of people getting chief-actuary-type jobs thrown at them. And until i get to management-level, I won't be reporting directly to chief-actuary-level people.   I guess the only thing to do is keep doing what I'm doing now, maneuvering myself to work for managers who are right on that susp, to learn as much as I can right now.
antimony

antimony

0
Fishnets and Frankincense
 

Zippity-do-dah!

Yes, today I am in a tank top and a skort. The tank top is one with a retro Wonder Woman design on it, but it's distressed-faded looking, so the image of the Amazon doesn't jump right out at you. Most of my coworkers are used to my Wonder Woman fixation, although there are plenty of people who don't know me, who look upon my shirt with great curiosity. Or maybe it's just stupid men who will use anything as an excuse to look at a woman's chest, even one equipped with my middlers.   When I went into Meadowlark coffee this morning, the only people sitting outside were three relatively normal young women. No mullets. Maybe Wednesdays are Mullet Mornings at Meadowlark? You show up with a mullet and get your lattes at half-price? I'll have to ask them if that's the case.   I must now discuss a particularly annoying word pronunciation idiosyncrasy. I tend to wince at most odd pronunciations/mispronunciations, but some just drive me batty. One is when the word Buddha is pronounced "Beyoo-dah." I always think of "zippity-do-dah!" Then I get into associations with Zippy the Pinhead and the Buddha. I can just see a cartoon frame of Zippy saying: "Zippity-do-dah, I'm the Be-yoo-dah!"   And then there's the word emu, denoting the large, flightless ostrich-like bird. It can be pronounced either e-mou or e-meu, but whenever I hear e-meu, it annoys me. This is no doubt due to my provincial preference for the e-mou version, because at times, my accent comes dangerously close to bordering upon the Scandinavian/German influenced "Fargo" accent, as in: "Ya, fer sure, that was an e-meu runnin' across the road, Margie. Where'd ya think he was goin'?"   I'm sure that somehow I could weave together an idea about a Coen Brothers movie that would include emus, Zippy the Pinhead, Buddha, mullets and Wonder Woman. But it's lunchtime and I don't want to. However, I'll close with the thought that I'm pretty sure if he were around today, the Buddha would just call himself "The Dude."
valentina

valentina

4
Forum Updates and News
 

Nothing can stop this

Always wanting to improve the process of how the updates are done (so to avoid massive amounts of downtime), we tried something new this time. It worked out pretty well - we were down for.. well, I'm not particularly sure how long we were down. I was working on some tweaks to our mod center when it went down, and the upgrade happening meant I couldn't continue, so I ended up running errands and by the time I got back (about 45 minutes later), it was all up and running. Much better than the six hours plus of downtime the last time we did a major upgrade!!     In other forum notes, we ended up switching the link engine software code, because what we originally purchased was not as integrated with invision as it claimed to be, and it turned out to be incredibly difficult to get it to work. And I say that as someone who had to entirely rewrite how the swaps feedback integration worked (though, part of that is because we had a double-integration going on; instead of just having an integrated log-in, I also had to tie in the "items being reviewed" into the forum). We just have a little bit more to do with it before we'll put it up as live, mostly procedural issues.     Completely unrelated: I don't believe I mentioned it here, but we did have a small hiccup a few weeks ago -- some corrupted tables. Thanks to our "lessons learned" from last March, instead of being down for two weeks, it was dealt with so quickly that I doubt many people even noticed the downtime.     And now I must jump in the shower so I can head to work! Ta.       Entry Title: Love   (Side note: of all the bootlegs, this studio demo is probably one of my favorites. Once they move everything to iTunes, you should totally try it out.)
ipb

ipb

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Fishnets and Frankincense
 

Diva overload

Today I decided to put on some Monster Bait Underpants because I hadn't worn it in a while, and then I put a touch of Bengal over the top. This blend could be called "Panties on Fire." Hell yeah!   That "hell yeah" reminds me -- because the t-shirts you buy at Bob Schneider's concerts have that on the front -- Bob has a new recording coming out on August 8! Ah, something to live for! Bob can set my panties on fire, I tell ya. Plus I really do like his music.   I decided to get all dressed up this morning because I was having one of those days that, when all else fails, be a diva. On the way into work, I decided to stop at my favorite locally-owned coffee house (this town is big into non-franchise coffee houses) called Meadowlark. There's outdoor seating for the smokers and people who generally just want to hang around outdoors, and often there's a real blend of denizens at the outside tables. I've seen residents of a nearby halfway house for mental health center clients sitting at one table and a stockbroker sitting at the next table.   This morning it was a group of characters that I've never seen before at the outdoor table. They were unique. I walked past them and one of them, who had a mullet and was wearing a "Got Milk?" t-shirt, looked at me and said: "Wow, baby!" I walked into Meadowlark and the barrista behind the counter looked at me and said: "You're so fancy today!" I think I may have diva-ed myself to excess...   It's going to be a skort and a black tank top tomorrow!
valentina

valentina

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