I thought I'd get my feet wet and put in for some Ebay BPAL from the Lab. LOL, I was outbid within minutes on Nuclear Winter (I was ready to go up to $20, it's almost $38 now). I've got a bid on Trick: Tp'd Tree. I'll see if I get it but it's close already. It would be nice but I don't HAVE to have it.
I do see Bed of Nails which sounds intriguing. It's under my threshold right now but would it stay that way? And I feel bad, 'sneaking in' and putting a bid in to take it away from someone else. How bad is that? Did I just say that I don't want to outbid someone?? That's half the fun, the chess game that is bidding and getting something. But BPAL is different. I don't feel like I'm taking it from some anonymous individual, I feel like I'm taking it away from my best friend. I don't know, maybe I'd feel different if I really wanted a scent, maybe then I'd be more cut throat. Or maybe not.
I am amazed at how high the prototypes have gotten, althought I shouldn't be. I've seen discontinued LEs go for close to $100 so non-released one of a kind prototypes bringing in $180 and $190 is nothing. But it's interesting, 4 prototypes and 2 are going for $50/$60 and 2 for $180/$190. Why? Is it the notes? The name? Or what? Makes me wonder.
Yay! Our 7/1 order was here at the PO yesterday. 7 bottles and 14 frimps, wow, Thank You Lab!!! Some of the frimps weren't quite our style but that's ok because I can use them as frimps/swaps/sales. I will need to pass frimpage onto my coworker who ordered one of the bottles.
But in ack-ness, I'm getting sick. My nose is trying to congest & my throat hurts. I'm tired. Not sleeping doesn't help the tired bit. I hope I am ok for the Relay for Life.
Mr Way, my CRF kitty, is asleep on my lap. I'm stretched around him in an awkward angle and he's got his head resting on my arm. He's a sweet boy. The fluids seem to be helping a bit. It isn't anything too obvious, he wasn't acting really sick before, but he's grooming himself more now. His coat is a lot softer tonight too. Yes, we give him brushes before and after his fluids but it's his whole coat nad it wouldn't make that much of a difference.
I still haven't found the right "stick your cat with needles" scent yet. Maybe in the next order or one of the private sales I've got coming in. I've got the scent for doing my injections every 2 weeks. Hmm, I wonder if Western Diamondback would be appropriate for Mr Way's stickings? I'll have to try that.
Going to finish watching the CSI Miniature Killer repeat. I don't remember seeing the end when it first aired. I'm exhausted but want to see the end.
I was really hoping to get this today, really needed to get it after a bad day. Just about ready to go to bed and thought "I'll just refresh my inbox". Desperate times call for desperate measures, yes??? Didn't expect it with it being 11pm here, 1am in Calif. But We gots it My Precious!!!
This will be our 3rd order from the Lab, mostly stuff for coworkers. I tacked an imp onto someone's 5-imp pack so they could get the reduced cost & I could get one of the many imps on my list, and we got Carol a bottle of Rose Red before it was pulled from the site.
Look *proud*
This ship notification is being sent to you by the U.S. Postal Service at the request of SHIPPING DEPARTMENT. If the "Shipped To" address information is not correct, please contact the Shipper.
A package with a Click-N-Ship label created on usps.com containing the following information is scheduled to be shipped on 01/25/2008.
From: Shipped to:
SHIPPING DEPARTMENT
BLACK PHOENIX ALCHEMY LAB
12120 SHERMAN WAY
N HOLLYWOOD CA 91605-5501
Our 7/1 order should be at the PO tomorrow (fingers crossed). I've got several private sales going, mostly decants so I can make our minds up about some of the stuff coming down from the Lupercalia & Lunacy updates. I have some decant supplies coming too, hoping to decant into 1ml rollerballs and stash a scent or two at work for the really stressful days when I need a boost and my scent is wearing thin. Also would be nice to decant some of the coworkers bottles into the 1ml rollerballs for the same reason. Also looking at picking up some wand caps for the same reason. Just nice little gifts for them this time around.
Bedie bye time. I've got our 3-legged right next to me purring, the deaf white one crashed out next to him and Freeway, our CRF kitty curled on his pillow on the coffee table. Eyeball (the one-eyed) is crashed out in a heap on the scratch post. Adorable little monsters.
Feeling pretty low & needing a BPAL lift. I'm hoping our 7/1 order that I got the CnS for is at the post on Sat. I've got some decants and imps coming but I don't think they'll be here quite yet. Maybe SH's Vampire Tears but that's all. She's so excited about it.
3rd night of my Baby's sub cutaneous fluids. He meowed tonight when Carol put the needle in. She didn't want to hurt him & couldn't do it so we switched out. He meowed when I put it in too. He was ok through most of it, struggled a bit at the end. He didn't want anything to eat after but I gave him some brushes & he seemed to appreciate that.
I've been going over our BPAL wishlist on my Excel spreadsheet & refreshing the decant circle forum & watching the LJ swaps page. Not only do I want to pick up some LE decants from our wishlist instead of ordering because of our new expenses for Freeway, but I know I'm trying to help myself feel better, trying to find That Perfect Scent or Those Perfect Scents that will bring me some comfort while I go through this.
I sent an email out to my enabled coworkers, the ones who ordered the last time, and gave them the links to the updates. I let them know I'll be putting an order in early to mid-Feb and that I won't be able to do any big orders for awhile after that. At the end of the day, SB came up and asked if I had my 'samples' (my imps). I told her no but that we were hoping for an order this weekend and if so I'd bring some in. She's got 5 imps on the 11/1 order.
I'm also looking forward to some decant supplies I ordered off an LJ person. They are 1ml rollerballs and some pipettes. I figured I can either give a rollerball/pipette to each person who ordered a bottle or decant 1 ml for them to have/carry around if they want (SH I think said that she wasn't comfortable doing it herself so I offered). I think they'll all appreciate that, they can then safely carry their imps and not loose their bottles.
Down. Thank goodness tomorrow is Friday but it's going to be a busy day for me. I'll have to just get through and I have a 3 day weekend. Tomorrow might be another Western Diamondback day.
I'm watching the live feed of Sir Edmund Hillary's funeral. I'm feeling emotional, melancholy already from it. We also took my oldest cat to the vet today. He was diagnosed last month with the beginnings of renal failure and hyperthyroid. We have been feeding him special food and have been giving him meds for the kidneys but he's been loosing weight. They are doing blood work today and we're going to have to do bloods every 2 weeks for awhile to see if we can get him stabilized.
He's my boy. We have 4 but he's the one I got after spending 8 months in Nepal. He's the one I brought over from the US because I couldn't bear to leave him behind.
I'll have to cut down our BPAL orders. We'll be paying for 2 different meds, the special food (which is expensive), blood work every 2 weeks and we'll also be doing sub cutaneous fluids daily. It's a lot of expense and it will start to pinch. I'd like to get an order or 2 in before it pinches too much. Maybe I can find a scent that is comforting for me through this time.
I've been eagerly waiting for my CnS for our 7/1 order. I know the lab is busy and I'm not worried, just anxious I didn't know how long it was taking to process an average order. But on the CnS chatter topic it looks like some of the people who have ordered 7/1 and are getting their CnS's today. Since ours was a 7 bottler I expect it will take a bit longer. Like I said, I'm not worried, just eager.
Following after the death of Sir Ed Hillary, NZ has lost another good man. Hone Tuware has died. I don't know a lot about him but have read some of his poetry and have a cd with some NZ artists speaking/singing his poetry.
Here's one of his poems. I hadn't read it before but it seems appropriate. Haere Ra Hone. May your ancestors greet you in the Afterlife singing Haera Mae Haere Mae Haere Mae.
Toroa ~ Albatross - Hone Tuwhare
Day and night endlessly you have flown effortless of wing
over chest-expanding oceans far from land.
Do you switch on an automatic pilot, close your eyes
in sleep, Toroa?
On your way to your homeground at Otakou Heads
you tried to rest briefly on the Wai-te-mata
but were shot at by ignorant people. Crippled.
You found a resting place at Whanga-nui-a-Tara;
found space at last to recompose yourself.
Now, without skin and flesh to hold you together
the division of your aerodynamic parts lies whitening,
licked clean by sun and air and water. Children will
discover narrow corridors of airiness between,
the suddenness of bulk. Naked, laugh in the gush
and ripple — the play of light on water.
You are not alone, Toroa. A taniwha once tried
to break out of the harbour for the open sea. He failed.
He is lonely. From the top of the mountain nearby he
calls to you: Haeremai, haeremai, welcome home, traveller.
Your head tilts, your eyes open to the world.
Yes, I has them.
Regularly too.
Since we've gotten our first BPAL order in Dec I've had dreams about the scents, the names, the bottles. Sometimes the whole dream is about BPAL, sometimes it's just a component. It makes for interesting and far more pleasant dreams than usual since they aren't work-related or about family or anything.
Last night's was cool, I dreamt that I'd woken up and gone onto the Lab's page to look at some of the scents (since I still haven't read about all of them yet) & instead of the Krampus image there was a grayscale image. I can't remember what it was, maybe a grayscale fluffy bunny or something like that, but done in a Victorian/Goth kind of way. The whole site hadn't been updated, only some of it. I can't remember the names of the scents, I think they were vaguely baby-related.
Yes, I am offically a BPAL adict!
I've confirmed with everyone at work so now I need to sit and organise myself and order their smellies. I was excited, looking forward to this but the news of Sir Ed's passing has taken that excitement away and has left a sadness in it's place. Not much to say.
We weren't originally going to put anything in on this order, but Rose Red sounded like something that would be nice for Carol. I told her about the description, read her some of the reviews and she decided she might like to try it. Since we can't do an imp of it I've put a bottle order in for her too. So that makes 3 Rose Reds, the Vampire Tears, Phobos, and an imp pack. I'd originally planned on puttiong an imp for Carol on Sharon's request for 5. Since we are getting her a bottle I figured I'd get an imp of Coyote for me. So yeah, another big order, 4 days after the last one! I had expected it to be only 2 or 3 bottles at the most. 5 bottles and an imp pack later..... And this after a 7 bottle order on the 7th. Wow, that's us for the year!
I walked home from the train station today. I realised that BPAL has re-introduced me to my nose. I was breathing deeply, I could say to experience the smells of summer but really it was puffing from being a bit out of breath from the hill. I was enjoying the occassion whiff of Satyr mixed with the different trees and plants; the cypress, the oak, the ?. It was really neat.
So what BPAL do you wear for something like Sir Ed's death? I have Namaste on my wishlist, that would be perfect. But going off my current list I guess it would be something like Mechanical Phoenix (for when he used the tractors at the South Pole)? Or Titus Andronicus because he was a classical guy, but then Titus was a bloody play and Sir Ed was a man of peace so maybe not. Just some thoughts.
Rest in peace Sir Edmund Hillary. May the mountains be just high enough for you and the days sunny and warm for climbing.
He wasn't just a man who climbed a mountain. He was someone who had a dream and followed it, when everyone at the time said that it couldn't be done. He was well-known in Nepal for his generosity. He didn't just go and climb their mountain, he tried to give back to the country that made him famous.
Tomorrow I need to finalise the order for the people at work. It's going to be a big one. And we've got a BPALer in Hamilton (hi Elizabeth!) and I've offered to put her Rose Red onto our order to help save her money on shipping. It makes it a bit lighter on the pocket.
Exhausted.
Had a bit of a grumbly bit at work. Won't go into it all but basically had 2 people kind of getting on me about a difference of opinion/difference of doing our work. I started feeling upset. Took a moment to put some Green Day on the headset and sniffed my Dragon Bone. It reminded me there is something bigger out there, that work doesn't matter. BPAL does!
Bed time.
I took our current imp horde into work to let someone have a sniffle. I ended up roping 4 people into sniffles. 1 had sniffled before but we've had the imps from pugmom since then. 3 of the 4 people are interested in doing an order!! Our order is in as of yesterday but if each of them want something I can put the order in for them. I know 2 of them (all 3?) don't have Paypal so I've offered to put the order in for them if they want. One is going for 5 imps so far, one for a bottle of Vampire Tears and one for a bottle of Phobos. I've passed the BPAL site on to all 3, I think 2 of them will look into it.
On the side, I got an email from the one I ordered Diwali from saying "if you haven't ordered it don't, order Rose Essence". Um, BPAL doesn't just have a rose essense. I tried to tell her that yesterday when she mentioned it. And when I told her that & asked if she still wanted the 5ml of Diwali she said yes. I know I can hold onto it for a couple months and swap it once it's off list (more likely to go when it's off list) but really, we are out that $ and wouldn't have ordered it if I didn't have to.
So & for enabling (we let one person try my wife's Phobos and gave the other person the Vampire Tears imp we had been gifted with). And & for enabling coworkers so that we can do group orders and keep our shipping costs down.
Second order has officially been sent/paid for via Paypal. The imps from the first order haven't grown cold yet and we've officially become adicted
Here's what I put in for us, 5mml bottles of each of the following:
hers:
White Phoenix
Noche Buena
Phobos
mine:
Mechanical Phoenix
KRAMPUS 2007
Satyr
Diwali has been ordered for a coworker. Neither of us liked it when we were gifted the imp and it only made sense to gift it on to someone who would appreciate it. Really glad I was gifted the imp before choosing to order it!
Yay for another order--very dangerous. I want to order them all and just sniff and sniff!
Re the previous entry: Blood Lust seemed to be good for today. It helped keep me calm and focused. Tomorrow maybe I'll do Mechanical Phoenix. I'd like to go for Satyr but it might be too early in the week for it.
Tomorrow is our first full week at work in 2 weeks. We've had 2 short weeks due to the holidays and our most of my team has had the time off on annual leave. I'm not looking forward to a full week at work and I'm not looking forward to most of my team being back. It's been nice and quiet without most the people there. Yeah, I've missed one or two but the rest of them can be a nuissance.
And there is one in particular that isn't going to be fun. It's partly my own fault for the situation but she holds blame too. I noticed that she has on occassion left work. She's had her reasons but it seems that the harder stuff is left behind for me to pick up. I didn't do most of her training but when I have offered to show her some of the more complicated stuff I've heard things like "I'm not a morning person", "I'm too busy", "I've got it written down somewhere", "I'm not having a good day", "I'm tired", "It's too late", "I learn better by doing" (but when I offer to let her do so she can learn then she's got one of the other reasons). When I talked to her last time about how it seems she takes a particular type of easy stuff she said it was the way she was trained (which is odd because I know the person who trained her and I know she didn't do things that way). I thought it was resolved until I started noticing again some of the more difficult types of work were left behind and work from certain geographical areas was being left behind. And someone in one of those geographical areas that I never seemed to see work from made a comment along the lines of "Oh, I guess I should have asked X to do it". It was random, especially given that up to that point we hadn't divided into geographic areas.
Then, one day just before Xmas I was finishing up a complicated request I had picked up. It was afternoon time & I noticed there was a complicated request that came in while I was engaged in it. This other person left it. Ok, not too bad as there is the chance that she didn't see it when it came in and it was too late for either of us to pick it up. The second day we had meetings and stuff that took up part of our day. On top of that I had some documents returned in the new stuff that I had learned. It was complicated and someone else was helping me sort it. Between that and the stuff I'd already had to do for that day, I wasn't able to pick up anything new until that afternoon. And yes, it was still in there. I was stressed and peeved. It had sat in there for 2 days and I knew I wasn't going to be able to do it at that point. I put it in my work queue because I konw there was no way in he!! she would at that point. Being upset and stressed I grumbled to 2 people in my old team about it. There was my mistake. I grumbled to someone about it instead of locking it in. One of these 2 people went and told her and she went to the team leader. I was told in my monthly meeting that I was "slagging her off" to the old team. No, not quite. Then the team leader made some comment about how certain work takes priority. WTF? Like I wasn't doing that work too?? WHATEVER. I knew it was no use saying anything but I did say that I told one person (I later remembered telling 2). I couldn't figure out how it got to my team leader. Both the coworker and team leader went on vacation right after this. I didn't learn 'til relatively recently that the person had been told that I'd said something & went to the team leader about it.
So now I have people I know I can't trust that I used to trust.
I'm not sure what BPAL I want to wear tomorrow. I'm considering Blood Lust because I feel like I've got to go to battle when I got work now. I could consider Dragon Claw, for the "sharp" factor. Or I could go with something more 'sophisticated'/masculine cologne-y like Mechanical Phoenix, the Music of Eric Zahn, Titus Andronicus or Black Forest.
Wow, didn't realise I had that many choices. And we've still got an order to put in tomorrow night. I'll give my Diwali away because it went really nasty on my skin. Like, along the lines of cigarette butts soaked in coconut and burned on a rubber tyre pyre. Yeah, that good on me. I've held off our order in case the person I'm giving the imp to likes it & wants a bottle.
On that note, I should get to bed. I haven't been sleeping well and got grumpy today. I am sure lack of sleep contributed.
We got an enabling package from pugmom! She totally spoiled us with imps of Mechanical Phoenix, The Music of Erich Zahn, Diwali & Dragon's Bone for me and Vampire Tears, Belladonna, Frumious Bandersnatch and Salome for Carol. Wow, really really cool of her!
My spreadsheet is updated now and I'm testing Mechanical Phoenix. She sent it in plent of time for me to smell and test it before the lab pulls this Anniversary scent. It's definitely on the order list!
I be a very happy and a very nice smelling Vulture now. Every vulture should have something to cut the smell of carion!
I had an idea today. I thought it would be great if Beth could come to NZ and smell some of the typical Kiwi smells here. She'd be able to expand her single notes and add another dimension to the scents on offer. I would love to smell her interpretation of the NZ bush, with it's pungas and kauri and rimu. It would lend itself well to masculine scent, earthy and wet and natural-bush. I would love to smell her rendition of manuka/kanuka flowers, it would be a nice feminine scent. Not the tea tree kind of scent you get in essential oils but the sweet-florally scent that you get from the bushes when you walk through a patch of them. Then there are things like the native clematis, the flax, the pohutakawa and the Earina orchid (http://www.kaimaibush.co.nz/Orchids/orchid_frameset.html) I used to have one of those until it died. For such a tiny orchid it has an amazingly powerful scent. If I could get them to live I'd offer to mass-grow them and produce essential oils for Beth to use! I think for now I'll see what essential oils I can find. If all else fails, 'cause I don't remember seeing flax or clematis scents anywhere I can see if Cal will let me buy some of the nice lotions based on these scents I got at Craftworld for my Secret Santa. I'm sure Beth wouldn't mind getting them to at least smell the fragrance, and to use for her and the labbies if she'd share.
I could see either a whole line based on Maori mythology (don't know if they'd go for that, she'd have to investigate it since they are sensitive about people using their culture to make money) or on Lord of the Rings or just on NZ native things (ie--a scent incorporating flax called The Tui or something like that.
I'd like to pick up some essential oils made out of native plants/scents and mail them to the lab for her with the idea. Even if she didn't go with it, it's a nice thought. Though I can dream about her coming here to check things out and we pick her up and take her around places in AKLD like the Waitaks and the Botanical Garden to check the possibilities out.
PS- along the dream of Beth creating Kiwi smells and showing her around, I imagine we'd bring her back to our hovel and make her manuka-smoked lamb shanks and for desert pavolva with passionfruit and kiwi fruit. I could see her adding pav as a scent that the foody-loving customers would...well, eat up.
