(no subject)

I feel as if I am revisiting my late teens.

A couple of weeks ago I realised I was running out of perfume for almost the first time ever. I used to know all the main perfume types, so I assumed it was just a matter of doing what I did in my late teens and waltzing up to the counters and testing just the types of perfumes that would be good on me, then saving up for the one I liked (actually, I believe I dropped hints for 21st birthday presents but don't tell). Either that or buying Chanel #5, which is my top favourite perfume of all time. The latter proved unaffordable and the former impractical. Someone has invented a new branch of scent and so all the old categories have changed and I need to rediscover scent patterns.

What I have done is to buy 7 little perfume samples - just 2 mls of each. It cost me about $10 all up. I will spend the next couple of months trying these out, slowly, and then I will work out how they fit against the modern perfume wheel. *Then* I get to wander into shops and try out specific perfumes. And then all I have to do is worry about the money side of things (hah!). While I was buying my samples, I tried out the D&G main perfume (all citrussy) and it is not good on me.

My test list curently reads:

D&G - no
Chanel #5 - I wish
Eau de l'artisan- unknown
Ellenista - unknown
Sicily (another D&G one) - unknown
Elizabeth Arden Red Door - unknown
Chloe narcisse fleur de narcisse - unknown
Versace versus - unknown
Lacoste pour femme - unknown

All perfume samples gratefully added to my test (OK, so I *like* playing around with scent samples - running out of perfume is a great excuse). And if anyone knows what sorts of perfumes are like each other, please say, because that will make my life just that much easier.

And, for the record, I just made chocolates. Something about summer heat turns me way more girlie than I am the rest of the year. If I am not careful I will start squeeing.

(no subject)

Congratulations to all the short-listees for Aurealis. (And I still think that the Young Adult novel list is worth reading through - don't stick with the short list.)

(no subject)

Some of you know that I have been waiting to get broadband/TV/phone in a neat little package from Transact. Well, as of today I have been waiting over 15 months. Expect little updates as I get more and more annoyed. Feel free to direct anyone you know who works for Transact to my irritation. My block of flats has cabling, but they cannot seem to connect me to the system that most of the ACT is on. Fifteen months. My TV is all fuzzy as the analogue signal gets worse and worse. Noen of you can ring me unless I specially get off the computer for the call. And my phone bill is stupidly large and is mostly local calls for dial-up access. If anyone in the ACT knows other decent options for that TV/phone/internet combo, please feel free to let me know. Fifteen months is a very long time.

(no subject)

My blog is suddenly bigger than Ben Hur. Well, it has more updates than Ben Hur had fallen chariots, anyhow. This one is to tell you I sold online rights to a story to a new magazine "The Deepening." You can read it on paper in Encounters (CSFG Publishing 2004) or you can read it online http://www.thedeepening.com/

I felt so bad about running out of stories to sell that I have written another one. Just so's I can have one hanging around to keep my longer fiction company. It is about PMT. There just isn't enough PMT-based SF being published right now.