Rambling: We're Home! And Decluttering.

So, we've been busy. Very busy. Not in a bad way; actually, in a very good way.

See, for years we've been living in two places, the Place Near Employers, and the House We Want To Call Home. For obvious reasons, we had to spend a fair bit of time in the Place Near Employers. But recently, our Employers have agreed that, OK, we can live in the House and use the wonders of modern technology to communicate with them.

Woohoo!

So we moved. Not just ourselves, but our stuff. All our stuff. Well, not absolutely all--we called the Salvation Army, and 1-800-GOT-JUNK, and like that.  But there was plenty left for the movers. And plenty moved to the House. And even more moved to a storage space that we will have fee-free access to until October.

And we don't want all that stuff in the House, because then the House would not be pretty. So before October, there will be garage sales, and donation runs, and recycling runs, and heaps of stuff under a "free" sign at the end of the driveway, and a certain amount of eBaying, and Craigslisting, and, well, in general, we'll be paying the penalty for far too many instances of "Why haul it back and forth? Let's just get another one."

But that's fine. We're home.

Blogging: Who? What? Where?

Just emerging from the chaos long enough to say that, no, the blog has not been abandoned. I'll be back!

Image: Wikimedia Commons. Click for information.

Link: Slow Blogging, at Perfume-Smellin' Things

I was just complaining about lack of blogging discussion, so I wanted to point to this fine post, about blogging.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Milk

OK, it's not so much a scent as a quest. Milk, milk, and more milk. I'm stressed. Also, stressed. Plus, there's the stress.

Things are changing. Things are uncertain. It's not as if the possible consequences of the immediate uncertain-changey things are all that bad--it's not death, or bankruptcy, or starvation, at least not unless I take the worst cases to wacky extremes. (I'm good at wacky extremes.) So I feel like a wimp being so stressed. But all the same, I don't deal well with change, and I deal less well with uncertainty, and there's a big bag of both of them, and you see what I mean? See? See? Am I making sense here?

Also, I went looking for a cow picture for this post, but the cows all looked so sad that I started thinking that I should go vegan and stop drinking the milk. This is bad.

Image: By Hokkaid-man. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTDays: Miscellaneous Tuberoses

Slacker! Me, that is.

OK, updating the perfume log:

Sunday was Tubereuse Couture. I enjoyed it very much; my taste for florals seems to be increasing, probably due to the spring weather.

Monday and Tuesday were sadly unscented.

Today I was hunting for something on a shelf and found a spray sample of Tubereuse Criminelle with the smallest drizzle left on the bottom. It took ten sprays to pump any of it out, but I can still very clearly smell it now, over ten hours later. I think that it's my favorite tuberose--definitely not the most wearable, but my favorite.

Thursday Update: This morning I noticed that the pre-shower 24-hour remnants of Tubereuse Criminelle have a distinct Little Kiddle note - a combination of plastic/rubber and flowers.  One more reason to love it.

Image: By Juni. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Scentless Saturday!

Today was mostly laziness. And two hot chocolates. And two chicken wings. And some Pringles. And there's a cherry turnover in the kitchen.

Dairy, protein, fruit, vegetables, carbs. Y'know, nutrition.

Really.

Image: By David Monniaux. Wikimedia Commons.

Ramble: Books and E-Books

Is all this cross-linking between my blogs bad? So often, I have a post that seems to belong in either one.

Well, anyway, a link to a ramble about e-books and a little bit about what I've been reading lately, on the other blog.

Image: By Andreas Praefcke. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Sushi Imperiale

Weeeeeeeeekend!

To celebrate, I wore Sushi Imperale. Even if spring is coming.

Image: By Mike1024. Wikimedia Commons.

The state of blogging discussion (Rant Rant Ranty Rant)

So... I like perfume. I want to talk about perfume. And there are bazillions of great blogs and forums for talking about perfume. Problem solved.

I like writing. I want to talk about writing. And there are bazillions of places to do that, too.

Cooking? Yep.

Sewing? Yep.

Blogging?

Nope.

Oh, there are plenty of places that talk about blogging. It may be the most overdiscussed meta-subject on the net. But they're not mostly talking about blogging, in the sense of talking about the process of finding an interest and talking about it with the world. Instead, they're talking about how to cash in on blogging. About seach engine optimization and pay per click and readership statistics and bounce rates and conversion rates and article spinning and backlinks and autoblogging and pagerank.

Bleah.

(And, no, I have no problem with people earning some money from their blogging. I just don't find the process the least bit interesting to talk about.)

And as if that weren't bad enough, many of the participants in blogging forums are only pretending to talk about these things, because all they really want is to get a link to their blog attached to their pretend-I-said-something-and-I'll-pretend-you-did forum posts. The actual discussion gets drowned in the spam and the pretend discussion.

I'm ranting this rant today because one blogging forum where I have traditionally participated seems to have finally, irrecoverably, been eaten by the backlink spammers. I hope that it can recover, and I admire the admins who are trying to beat back the tide, but I really don't think it's going to make it. And another group, one with a very promising premise, no longer seems to have a functioning forum at all--the site that this group trustingly set themselves up on apparently decided that they had better things to do than keep the forums going. So I don't know of even one place to discuss blogging. (Well, there's still #blogchat on Twitter, which while certainly not focused on nonprofit blogging does still have some good discussion. But the Twitter format has severe limitations.)

So what's the problem? Is it that there are simply not enough people who want to discuss the not-entirely-about-profit aspects of blogging? I suppose that there is a sort of weird double-layered aspect about wanting to express yourself about the way in which you express yourself. But if that were true, then surely there wouldn't be any forums about writing? And there are tons of forums about writing.

I think that blogging is a fascinating subject. Surely there's something to say about the phenomenon whereby ordinary folks can publish their thoughts and opinions and knowledge to the world. About the effects on individuals, on society. About... oh, there's got to be something to say there, if there were only places to say it. Just the recent flurry about perfume blogging, about the conflict between the "authority" bloggers and the non-authority bloggers, produced some really interesting posts, and some discussions that I'd like to see go on and on--in a forum.

I believe that there's plenty of potential discussion. So my conclusion is that any discussion of blogging attracts bloggers desperate for backlinks, and is near-instantly spammed out of existence. So is there any way to avoid this, short of setting up a discussion site that doesn't allow any backlinks whatsoever and hiring an army of hand moderators? Is there some quiet well-hidden forum that has already solved this problem? Or is there any way to make one that works? Please?

Rant rant gnashy rant.

Image: By Hannibal Poenaru. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Lostmarc'h Din Dan

Olfactoria's post about her own Perfume Purchasing Prohibition got me thinking about mine. It reminded me that the point of the is prohibition more perfume enjoyment, not frugality, so I dug out the current sample bag and rummaged around for something less cranky than my recent choices. The pick was: Lostmarc'h Din Dan.

Din Dan has just a little of the tapdancing happy that Sushi Imperiale has--I could imagine it as a distant cousin, doing a soft shoe in the sun instead of a fire-sparking tapdance in the snow. I've briefly sniffed it in the past, but without forming any conclusions.

Now, examined without the usual "Would I buy it? Would I wear it?" fuss and flurry, I find that I like it very much. The notes are said to be peach blossom, mint, lemon verbena, and lemon. That works for me. I love lemon verbena, but I think that, presented alone, it would get a little tiresome after a few hours. Din Dan seems to add just enough extra complexity to prevent that, while still leaving my main reaction at "Ooh! Lemony!"

Oddly, Himself read it as both bitter and musky; I need more noses on this. Do I read it as nonthreatening because I've been sniffing so many threatening fragrances?

Review Roundup: Perfume-Smellin' Things and Fragrantica and Basenotes and A Rose Beyond the Thames and MakeupAlley and surely there must be more?

Image: Wikimedia Commons.