Decide to make scrambled eggs for dinner. Break eggs. Pour milk into eggs. Milk comes out chunky.
Pause.
Sniff.
Well, my BPAL clogged senses are obviously still good enough to detect THAT.
*sigh*
Guess I’m having…um…cold pasta salad and toast for dinner.
A huge pack of imps arrived today, courtesy of the lovely Reece, and god, I see what you people mean–opening these things is like Christmas! Eeee!
Tried “Baku.” Intensely, powerfully anise. My wrists smelled like I was wearing black licorice handcuffs.
Within five minutes, it had vanished completely, leaving no trace behind. Huh.
Well, that made it easy to test the next one…”Poisoned Apple.” Intensely tart apple to start, like getting smacked upside the nose with a Granny Smith. (The bottle smelled vile, actually, but I’m learning to say “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”) Then the apple calms down quite a lot, and there’s something…else…thing…vaguely spiced, maybe a musk. (The description says opium, so maybe that’s it, although in my day, when we smoked REAL opium, it smelled like flowers and diesel. Actually, I would probably wear that, it was a really interesting smell…)
Verdict–I quite like “Poisoned Apple.” Light, after the first assault, but rather sexy.
ETA: Tried Loviatar. Pleasantly musky for a few minutes, then turned to powder. Angus was fascinated by it, though.
Tried “Hellcat.” Cloyingly honey and fruit. Oddly familiar. Sniffed for a few minutes, and then went “My god! I smell like a Bed, Bath, and Beyond!” It’s that EXACT smell. Oy.
Having a devil of a time washing it off.
Tried “Isles of Demons.” Great name. Smells a little too perfume-y for me at first blush–definitely floral, definitely sweet. After a few minutes, the musk starts to come through, which is nice, but the topnote–crap, these terms are starting to make SENSE–is still too sweet for my tastes.
Hmm, all this smell-testing is definitely a learning experience–I’ve realized that I automatically don’t like perfume that smells…perfume-y! Mind you, I’m not entirely sure what it is that is registering as “perfume-y” in the back of my brain, whether it’s one particular ingredient or an inherently floral or sweet note, or what. Still looking for one that makes me go “OH GOD YES!” the way that, say, the pumpkin pie Whipped from Villainess does. *grin* But I’m sure I’ll run across it eventually!
All of these reviews are tagged “bpal” by the way, so theoretically you oughta be able to get ’em all together…
Tried “Whip.” Roses and leather, theoretically, but it vanished almost completely on my skin–I got a floral whiff, made a mental note to sniff again later, and then poof! nada. It wasn’t an obnoxious floral, suspicious as I am of them, it just…went away immediately.
I tend not to lather on the perfume, of course, so possibly this is one that just requires heavier application. Will try on a day when I’m not going out of the house, and am unlikely to gag random passers-by if I overcompensate.
Also tried “Hellfire.” It’s an oddly pleasant smell–tobacco and cologne kinda, hint of leather, but it’s not coming across as insanely masculine on me. It’s not ragingly sexual. (Named after the “Hellfire Club,” beloved of Victorian writers.) Seems to go a bit powdery on me after awhile, though, a bit like the Snake Oil did. (Is powdery something that actually happens? Am I on crack thinking this?) So once it dries, I smell a bit like a grandmother who took up smoking and vice. While this image appeals to me, I’m not so sure about the evolution of the smell…
As a follow-up, a male friend of mine obligingly guinea-pigged the De Sade (It’s nice to have friends who will also do things “for SCIENCE!”) andI’d say it’s definitely a scent that works better on men.*
I gotta remember to blog these as I do them–I tried Nyarlathotep over the weekend, and bugger if I can remember it. Something incensey, not unpleasant, but I gotta try it again to jog my memory.
*He then wanted more. The crack-like potential of this stuff is scary.
Phew!
I have been busy!
Monday was seriously awesome. I went to the zoo with a webcomics colleague, and a very nice zookeeper took us on a behind the scenes tour. I got to pet the oscelot! She licked me! Eeee! (My friend and I wandered around for about an hour giggling at random and going “Eee! Ocelot high!”)
And they had vampire bats. The bats have little feeders full of blood (with anticoagulants, of course) and they land and hitch themselves along the ground and lap at the feeders. They are adorably hideous. I spent way too long watching teeny vampire bat tongues.
We went to look at the bobcats afterwards, and my friend was crouched down in front of the glass. One of the bobcats stopped in front of her and looked at her thoughtfully for a moment. “Hello there!” she said.
The bobcat promptly turned around and sprayed the glass an inch in front of her nose.
It took awhile for me to recover from that.
Other than that, busy, busy, busy, work work work, and when not working, I’m running off to Game Night or hanging out with friends. This last week has been pretty insane on the run-around-like-chicken-with-head-cut-off front. (And to think I used to worry that I’d have no social life…)
Theoretically I have the weekend off. Theoretically. Probably this just means it hasn’t filled up yet…
And now, back to work!
Tried “Dee” last night. Smelled woody. (Not woodsy. Like woods. The description includes rosewood.) Interesting wood with a hint of incense. It’s a nice smell, it’s also, oddly enough, a completely asexual smell, and if I’d meant “unisex” I would have said “unisex.” This is a perfume that does not make me think about sex, or being sexy, or whatever.
This was noteworthy, because for whatever reason–“You’re a raging pervert,” is an acceptable answer–I generally think of most perfumes in those terms. Would you want to smell like that in the bedroom? Is somebody going to sniff this and think “I want to lick that off?” You know. Arguably I am indeed slightly deranged, but smell is a very basic thing, as is sex, I think they’re often linked in the human brain. Pumpkin pie Whipped? You better believe I think about whether that’s sexy.
“Dee,” though…my brain doesn’t go “sexy.” However, it also doesn’t go “Unpleasant!” as it normally would. It’s not a turn-on. It’s not a turn-off. It just…exists. It’s a pleasant odor. It is a vague hermetic kinda smell, heavier on the books than the alchemy. I could see wearing this at home while I’m working, just as a kind of pleasant mood-elevator, but I don’t know that I’d wear it out on a date.
I am currently testing “Snake Oil.” I just applied it, and it smells, oddly enough, EXACTLY like the powder my grandmother used to use after the bath. I therefore do not think of it as an erotic odor, although I gotta say, the only way men would have fallen at Grandma’s feet any faster is if she’d used hand grenades, so possibly she was on to something.
Funny, though, about smell and memory–I haven’t thought of that powder for years, but it immediately takes me back to when I was a very small child and would take baths at her house, and she’d let me use the powder and her deodorant (a roll-on, very cold) in a bathroom with ceramic tiles of stylized orange pagodas framed and hung on the walls. And the time I snorted soap bubbles to see what they smelled like, and had to be taken to the emergency room with a nose full of bubble bath.
We’ll see how it smells in a few hours…
Demo went well!
Well, at least I think it went well. I may be deluding myself, of course, but I had fun, and there were several people who asked very intelligent questions, and a trio who drove up from Charleston who were a lot of fun to talk to. I’m told there was a medium sized turnout for such a demo–people come out mostly for the painting demos, of course, and they’ve got plenty of those, so those of us working with the Freak Media of course attract fewer. *grin*
My thing is that I’m not much of a teacher, but a good conversationalist. So it tended to ramble a bit, and I would stop to sing the praises of various totally unrelated media. (Quoth the manager: “Aaagh! Stop using all these supplies that we’re discontinuing!” Ursula: “If you discontinuing the PITT pens, I have no sympathy for you whatsoever.”) So hopefully it was at least fun!
They want me to do another one on this topic, since people seemed interested, so I’ll probably wind up back there next month. (Yay! More gift certificates!)
Off to perform a demo on a topic that I don’t know nearly as much about as I should! Wish me luck, gang!
Okay, TWENTY imps arrived in the mail today. My desk smells like a New Age bookstore, possibly with an S&M dungeon in the back room. (It’s all the leather notes…)
As I can no longer distinguish between smells after whiffing about three bottles, I’m gonna have to do this one at a time…(and my apologies to the people who cringe at odor reviews…mine will at least be short.
So! I started off with De Sade. Because…um…I did. (Quiet in the peanut gallery!)
This is basically leather. Really leather. Leather squared. I like leather quite a lot, but I think I’d rather smell this on somebody than wear it myself. Mellows out quite a lot in an hour or two, but still has a vaguely bitter undertone (that might be my skin chemistry. Then again, the Marquis de Sade was arguably a very bitter little man…) Rather masculine, overall–I think “aftershave” more than anything else.
Did not particularly make me want to break out the whips and chains, which is just as well, because I’m drying laundry on every flat surface in the bedroom and would have no place to put them.
I showed up to my buddy Joe’s cocktail party last night, and the first words said to me were “I hear you smell like pumpkin pie!”
To which the only possible response was “Yes! Smell my cleavage!” (Well, it smelled like pie, damnit, and my hands smelled like soap.)
She did so, and pronounced it very pie-like. “Oooh! Is that the Smashing Whipped from Villainess?” “Yes!” “I gotta order some…”
From the tone of the rest of the evening’s festivities, we can make the following determinations: A) everybody I know reads my damn blog, and B) an astonishing number of both men and women will smell your cleavage if it smells like pumpkin pie.*
And of course, C) that if anybody asks WHY I want to smell like pumpkin pie, I will immediately hold forth on the findings of the Journal of Neuroscience, and increased percentages of penile bloodflow by odor, which just goes to prove that a geek chick with a bibliography for her perfume is a dangerous thing, particularly to innocent bystanders. (Hey, they asked.)
This led naturally…or at least organically…or at least after the shots…(“See,” Joe explained to a colleague, as I downed whatever the hell tangerine concoction he’d handed me, “Ursula will generally slam anything you put in front of her, just as a matter of pride. I try not to abuse this knowledge…”**) to three of us chicks sitting in the kitchen sniffing one another. “You smell like pie!” “You smell like soap!” “Soap?” “You smell like…err…people.” “Is people a good smell? Do I smell bad?!” “No! It’s…um…like…person…” “Soylent Green perfume!” “Aaaah!”
This probably doesn’t bode well for the future when those samples start arriving. God help us all.
A lovely evening all around…
*More women than men, actually. I won’t swear that a couple of the latter didn’t have ulterior motives, mind you…
**This from the man who introduced me to absinthe and Gray Goose…but to give credit where it’s due, he at least always hauls me out of the bar afterwards. This actually follows the pattern of most of my friends, who are pure evil but are somehow driven to keep me from wandering into traffic anyway.
I write & illustrate books, garden, take photos, and blather about myriad things. I have very strong feelings about potatoes.
Follow Ursula