the truth: too much perfume

the currents - these are out at the moment and in regular rotation

i've been posting a "scent of the day" on facebook for a couple of weeks now. it was a kind of reaction to some facebook friends who post the song that's in their head when they wake up in the morning and i thought it would be funny. i've written before about my perfume collection but i never really owned up to how much perfume i really have. in fact, until i thought about this whole truth-telling thing, i never dared to count it. but now, i have. and it's not pretty. 47 different kinds.  on the bright side i will never have to buy perfume again as long as i live.

a peek in the perfume box

it took a decade to build up this collection, but bear in mind, i spent a few years passing regularly through an airport duty free. all of it is bought in duty free. not because the prices are better (i think they're pretty similar), but because they have the best selection - at least the good ones do. it's funny, i can pass by a department store perfume counter without even being tempted, but let me loose in the duty free in copenhagen or singapore and watch out!

the large majority of this collection was acquired before i began striving for a simpler, less consumer-oriented life and i'm proud to say that 2011 is almost over and i haven't bought any perfume at all. plus, i only bought one in 2010, so i have improved. i would actually donate some of it, but i'm not sure that the second-hand shops would take partial bottles.

as those of you who are friends with me on facebook know from the daily updates, i actually use perfume on a daily basis - and i don't tend to the wear the same one for two days running. i keep an ever-rotating collection out on the shelf in the bathroom and on the shelf in the bedroom - 5-6 each place - something to suit the season and any potential mood.

there are romantic scents, power scents for difficult meetings, feminine ones and unisex ones. there are ones which are bonded inextricably with memories of certain times and places. there really are only 1 or 2 that i don't ever use...jill sander sensations and calvin klein contradiction. both of those went weird on me when i was pregnant with sabin and i haven't been able to stand them since.

i recognize that this is probably a symptom of a larger disease of the soul, but i feel it's one that's in my past. and the daily enjoyment of my previous obsessive collecting actually lives on in a positive way, so although it was pretty excessive (wasn't everything in the naughties?), it wasn't all bad.

now it's your turn...what are you a little bit obsessive about collecting?

perfume review: tom ford white patchouli

i know i've mentioned it before, but i'm a perfume junkie. i thought i'd try to spread my perfume junkie ways by giving you review of some of my faves. so today, i'll do tom ford's white patchouli, which has been my primary perfume of choice this winter.

i acquired this one right before christmas. it seemed perfect for the holiday season because it's warm and spicy with the just the right undertone of smoky, rich patchouli that leaves you feeling wrapped in a richly embroidered indian shawl. it's not super feminine and definitely has a manly side to it, i actually think husband could comfortably wear it, not that he has. he's on mont blanc's individuel at the moment and he's got a habit of sticking with one 'til it's gone (silly men).

at first spray, i found the white patchouli to be a bit heavy and would class it in the same family as the old classic yves st. laurent opium, but that heavy, cloying sweetness fades almost immediately, leaving a lighter fresher (if that's possible) smokiness that i love. in fact, my main complaint would be that white patchouli generally fades a bit too quickly and it's definitely gone by the end of the day. but that could be my chemistry, i've seen some other reviews around that suggest it has great staying power. but, perfumes react differently with different chemistry.

i've been using this one pretty consistently since i got it in mid-december. it's a very good winter scent. it's plush, warming and goes well with a steaming mug of chai. in fact, it has some of the same notes as a good chai--a bit of coriander seed and a hint of cardamon. it feels sophisticated and luxurious and a bit like you should be wearing black when you've got it on (despite having white in the name). i think my use will taper off as spring approaches and i've already turned to hermes un jardin sur le nil on a couple of occasions to get that greenness i long for into my day. but, i'd advise you to keep the tom ford in mind next fall when you're getting your sweaters and tights out again, it will envelop you with its slightly mysterious, spicy goodness throughout the cold months.

give it a try next time you pass a perfume counter.

on collecting I: perfume

transitioning to fall

as regular readers of this blog are aware, i have long been struggling with trying to pare down and live a simpler life. i'd like to be less of a consumer or at the very least a more conscious one. but i struggle, because i worship at the altar of apple and i am an avid collector of many things...perfume, fabric, stamps, pretty paper, locks...i could go on.

and the rest of the week, i will go on. because i want to explore my need for collecting, what it is i like about it and hope to get to the bottom of what it is that drives me (or any of us, really) to collect. of course, this isn't the first time i've pondered this, but i want to do it again in the hope that i will begin to be more conscious about it and maybe also to remind me to actively enjoy these things i've so obsessively carefully chosen.

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so to start this off, i got out my rather shockingly large box of perfume (to which, i am proud to say, i have not added any new ones during 2011) and changed out the summery scents for a selection of late summer/early autumn scents. i think that scent definitely can help you transition the seasons, so i chose some with darker, heavier undertones to carry me into fall.

i also kept a couple of the summer scents out (sarah jessica parker's lovely and the michael kors island) because i'm expecting that since we've had such a rotten sunless summer, we will actually get some sunny days here in august (so far, that's but a pipe dream).  for example, chanel no. 5 eau premiere is a great transition fragrance - a lighter version of the heavy, serious no. 5, it's perfect for these windy, changeable days where fall and even a few leaves are definitely in the air.  and for the truly blustery, autumn days where there's no hint of summer left, i'm ready with paul smith woman and the tom ford white patchouli.

even if i don't put on other makeup or do my hair, perfume is a part of my everyday. i keep several bottles on the shelf in the bathroom and several in the bedroom. i use scent to lift my mood or to underline it if i want to keep it dark. scent can trigger memories or just give flashes of a feeling you had when you wore it. i wear perfume every day - it's as essential as my glasses. sometimes i wear the same one for a week straight, but more often, a different one - one that somehow matches how i'm feeling or how i want to feel on that particular day.

aside:  what's interesting is that husband also wears cologne every day - he calls it "smell-good," which i find charming despite being dubbed that by a long-ago girlfriend. the difference is that he uses up a bottle before starting a new one, so he's content to wear the same one for several months at a time. he doesn't have the same need i do to collect a wide variety, tho' he doesn't buy the same one over and over again, when one bottle is gone, he buys something new.

but i suppose the moment i enjoyed most of all with my seasonal switch today was that the sun had come out all gloriously golden in the early evening sky and the perfumes looked just gorgeous all lined up on my scale in the evening sunlight.  enjoying the collection, in all its aspects - whether using it or just looking at it - is a big part of what collecting is about.

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more collections coming soon...

scent of a woman

i love perfume. in fact, i'm a little mad for it. and i have a rather obscene amount of it. just in the past few months, i've bought:

1. tom ford - white patchouli
2. vera wang - bouquet
3. mac - creations hue: turquatic
4. calvin klein - eternity summer
5. burberry - summer
6. chanel - no. 5 eau premiere
7. kenneth cole - black
8. mont blanc - individuel
9. michael kors - island

part of it is because i am too frequently in a duty free. and it's not because the perfume is necessarily cheaper there, it's more because it's there in such a decadent, sinful array. they have it all (even the juicy couture now, monica). and no one is snotty to you like at the department store perfume counters. you can try everything (i cannot wear the juicy couture, for example and both me and everyone who had to sit near me on a recent flight to singapore wished i hadn't tried it). and you're quite unaccosted and unmolested by sales people (except in singapore, where they must be on commission, but you can deflect them by walking around on your mobile phone), which i like. i want to see what catches my eye and spritz it on myself, not have someone else trying to force something on me. i must have my own opportunity to commune with the perfume. to bond with the pretty bottle. to swoop myself in the heady scents. 

ever since my summer voyage on the volga river from kazan to moscow, in which i was wearing white linen breeze, i've realized that perfume and memory are intertwined. to this day, when i catch a whiff of white linen breeze, i am instantly transported to the volga. so, what is now quite possibly an unhealthy obsession started innocently enough. 

when i started my last job, i went on a familiarization trip onboard an LNG carrier. i knew i would want to remember it, so i fittingly bought ralph lauren's blue, since i would be sailing on the blue of the mediterranean. on my first trip to korea and the shipyards, i was so excited that i bought kenneth cole's black (the one i replaced in the past couple months, because i love love it so much) in order to trigger a scent memory later. it worked like a charm.

so, it seems that whenever i've gone somewhere special, i've bought a new scent. sometimes i get one because it's a small size and will fit nicely in my makeup bag for traveling.  somtimes it's because i've read about it in that infernal sunday lifestyle magazine. but mostly, because i'm a bit obsessed.  

what are you obsessed about?

daily delight - february 24

i couldn't let the month of daily delights go by without including what's a daily ritual - perfume. even through the pandemic, i put a spritz of perfume on every day. these two, both of which were given to me by my sister, have been in daily rotation. in fact, my barrel from min new york is getting dangerously low. i love its smoky, rich undertone and it's been the perfume of winter. but dirty flower factory by independent perfumer kerosene lifts me up and makes me happy like no other perfume. it meshes perfectly with my own chemistry as it unfolds during the day, the scent subtly changing throughout as i wear it. both of them are somehow related, but very different - maybe it's the deep, musk, ambergris undertones both have. dirty flower factory is lighter and brighter and more flowery, while still seeming lived in and down-to-earth. barrel, more wintery and smoky, like curling up with a peaty islay whiskey on a bearskin rug in front of a fire. i love them both so much and feel a moment of conscious delight every time i use them.

perfume review: brasil dream

husband is in brazil this week in a place called montes claros, which according to him is the titoveles of brazil (we met in macedonia, so we compare most places to there, doesn't everyone do that?). if you read the wiki link, you'll find a clue as to what husband is doing in brazil. (hint: it's in the "economy" section of the entry.) but, i digress. since he's in brazil, the time seemed right for a review of my newest perfume, estee lauder's brasil dream.

i picked this one up because i was hankering for a transition to the summer perfumes and i wanted a new scent for a new job. there are a couple of others in this series--emerald dream and bali dream--neither of which ever appealed (read: went desperately wrong on me), so i was pleasantly surprised at how much i liked brasil dream. and happy it didn't go wrong.

it's the perfect seasonal transition scent. not too summery and light, but with just the right overtones of summery and light...a bit of lemon, some bergamot. it will give you glimpses of summer without the direct heat of the sun. underneath, there's still some interesting darker patchouli and neroli going on. it's the perfect scent for this changeable time of year--cold and blustery one day, sunny and springlike the next. i don't really know what that has to do with brazil, not having been there, but admit that from the name, i expected it to be a bit more flamboyant, suntanned and well, half-naked with a feather headdress.  so i find it rather misnamed, tho' i don't really have an alternative in mind.

i did a bit of research and learned that this scent is a "travel exclusive," which means you'll only find it in the duty free of your favorite international airport and possibly in some onboard sales catalogs, not at your local estee lauder counter.  that explains as well the packaging, which is a nice flat bottle that tucks perfectly into your makeup bag. that was another selling point for me, since i travel a lot.

the perfume has a brightness i needed at the close of winter, but still has a heavier presence that lasts. i don't think i'll wear it into the summer.  it has a powdery fade that will seem too heavy then, but i really like it for now. and embarking on something new (like a new job) always requires a new scent. that's like a rule, right?

EDIT:  i should have noted that this is a really new perfume. it was just released in february.

MiN New York: and i'm officially a niche fragrance convert

if you've been reading this blog for some time, you know that i love perfume. i've always been a pretty mainstream perfume kind of girl and admittedly, most of my scents have been acquired through the years in the duty free shops of airports around the world. my sister has a good friend who is a scent aficionado and she has sent my sister to small, esoteric shops in paris after some amazing, exclusive scents. so it was no surprise on my recent trip to new york city, that monica had a couple of perfume places on her list. we lost quite a lot of one day of her stay (we won't say why, but a late show at a comedy club and a cheap bottle of wine on top of oysters and foie gras might have had something to do with it), so we chose to visit just one of them - MiN new york in soho.

just peeking in the window of this beautiful shop made me quiver with intimidation. if my sister hadn't been there, i don't think i'd have dared to go in on my own, thinking the experience and the prices would be far above me. i expressed a bit of that intimidation when i came into the dark, warm, richly scented interior, but the people in the shop very quickly put me at ease - one was the president of the company, an attractive guy with longish hair and a cool manner and the two sales girls, with their exotic accents and easygoing, totally not snobbish manner.  they quickly made us feel welcome and as if it was exactly our kind of place. i realized very quickly that i could get used to niche fragrances.

in addition to a lot of exciting niche scents from around the world, they have their own line of what they call scent stories. there are 11 chapters to their scent story book, each with their own personality and heady fragrance. we tried only three of them (your nose can't really take that many more) and we were also trying some of the kerosene scents (more about them in another post).

my sister fell in love with one called magic circus, which the folks a MiN describe as: "Turn of the century, a carnival travels at dusk. A scrumptious gourmand perfume. A splendid wonder swirling in enchantment. Candied nuts, cotton candy, caramel, sprinkled with pink peppercorns, bergamot, labdanum, geranium, patchouli, and woodchips." all of which rings scrumptiously true in the complexity of the scent. it smelled wonderful on her, but less so on me.  it was obvious that my sister needed the magic circus and she serendipitously got bottle number 72 (of 1000 - they only make 1000 of each of the scent stories per year), which is both the year of her birth and her lucky number. it was meant to be. i went away with samples of memento and barrel, as my skin chemistry can be temperamental with perfumes and so i need to see if they go bad on me over several hours (when that happens, it isn't good, believe me).

and in the end, tho' i had decided that i loved the barrel most, but was chickening out on going all the way back down to soho and spending $240 on myself, when my sister called and said, "can you get back to MiN by 6 and pick up your barrel, i've just ordered it for you." i couldn't believe it and told her not to buy me a christmas present for the next five years. but i also jumped on the subway and headed to MiN immediately. there was a film being made on the street right outside of MiN, so i didn't have quite the same slow, drawn-out experience i had when we had visited together, but that was ok, as i wasn't in the market for more scents right then anyway. i did grab a sample of barrel to send to my sister so she could test it out as well.

my bottle of barrel is #86 of 1000. as the MiN folks say of barrel, "Evident in the first sniff, a slight floral opening gives way to bold, beautiful notes that we taste in full-bodied dark spirits and wine. Peaty, smoky, smooth, and earthy, this is the scent of the selfless vessel that rest in halcyon, incubating the finest spirits throughout the years. A complex cocktail of spirits, spices, dirt, tannin, and woods: absinth, coriander, pink pepper, rum, myrrh, orange blossom, tuberose, oak, oak moss, leather, vanilla, patchouli, and vetiver." in other words, deep, dark heaven. and i would love to go back and try some of the other scent stories. i have a feeling my book of scents in nowhere near complete.

yes, i'm a brand hound

on the plane i was reading the hopelessly out-of-touch berlingske sunday lifestyle magazine MS (which strangely doesn't seem to have its own pages on berlingske's website). as i've written previously, my impression is that they keep the editorial staff of the very posh sunday magazine somewhere in an underground bunker where they have no access to the rest of news staff and as such have no idea whatsoever that there's a financial crisis raging.

but to distract myself from the fact that the plane was completely packed and the guy next to me had his elbow firmly planted on my side of the seat (damn those short flight small planes), i lost myself in a one-page article on all of the gorgeous new perfume bottles being designed by industrial designers like ross lovegrove (the new narciso rodriguez essence) and karim rashid (the new kenzo amour) and a must-have clear glass dildo designed by jean nouvel for yves st. laurent last year (see, i said they were out of touch).

and in thinking about the out-of-touchness, i thought briefly guiltily about my pass through the duty free. wherein i bought a new yves st. laurent mascara (the one that makes your real lashes look like fakes (thanks for the recommendation tangobaby)) and a new mac paint pot in painterly (love that name) and looked in vain for the wonderful new prada infusion de fleur d'oranger. i was a little shocked not to find it, as the duty free in CPH is generally one of the better-stocked i've visited (and i've visited a lot of them). so i had to content myself with a couple of spritzes of the sisley 1 and 2 (there's also a #3, but i didn't have enough arms) (#1 and #2 are wonderful and expensive (600DKK/$115 for 100ml), but are now on my covet list (especially #2), which just smelled better and better the longer it was on me.

i found the prada when i got to oslo (which is where i'd seen it in the first place) and because it's a small (read: travelable) 50ml size, i got it and some origins shampoo and conditioner (since that girl failed to pack any).

now that's an awful lot of brands. generally speaking, all of my skin care is origins--youthtopia, a perfect world, make a difference, checks and balances, modern friction--i'm a sucker for those clever names and all of them have scents that i can stand (as in not much scent at all to compete with all the perfume i've got goin' on).  i'm not loyal to one particular brand of perfume, as we well know, tho' i do think i have every scent ralph lauren makes, so that's the closest i come to brand loyalty on fragrance.

i'm a faithful user of estée lauder futurist age-resisting foundation (i love that age-resisting thing). the nail polish i have is overwhelmingly chanel with the occasional mac for the more wacky colors. chanel totally got me hooked way back in the mid-90s with vamp. i adored that color. eyeshadow is all mac at the moment, tho' i do a bit of bobby brown and the occasional dior. eyeliner goes between mac and estée lauder. lipstick is all mac at the moment, but there have been times when it was all estée lauder. (i think it's the same company behind both, so it probably doesn't really matter).

but the fact is that they are all brands, brands, brands. and i've been like this as long as i can remember making my own brand choices. but why is that? i no longer buy women's magazines and the only time i see ads for such things is the odd copy of vanity fair or when i page through the glossy mags at the hairdresser or when i read berlingske's infernal sunday magazine. so what makes me so loyal to the brand names?

i've actually tried with both foundation and eyeliner to go to more off-the-shelf sorts..max factor or l'oreal or the like, but honestly didn't like them as well as i like the futurist--it just goes on better and looks better and feels better (you get that? better.). and as for the eyeliner, many eyeliners will make your eyes water, which just kinda defeats the purpose.  i was a faithful l'oreal mascara user for years until i discovered the yves st. laurent and actually only went looking for it when i could no longer find the l'oreal one i liked (i think they stopped making it).

and i'd like to think that my faithful long-term use of good skin care products has helped me have less wrinkles than many people my age. (nothing to do with living in a place where the sun doesn't shine that much or the fact that i've never smoked. nope. gotta be the youthtopia.)

but am i just a victim of years of advertising and societal pressure which makes me think i need all that product in the first place. or is it just because i would rather douse myself in perfume than shower on a regular basis? or are the brands really better?

what brands are you loyal to and why?

perfume review: indalo

indalo - the scent of africa

a couple of years ago on my first trip to cape town, i grabbed this cologne called indalo in the airport on my way out. it used to have a really neat little beady thing around the lid, but sabin appropriated it long ago for some doll or other. it's actually a men's cologne, but i loved the deep, naturey, woodsiness of it and it has a spicy, nearly cinnamony warm undertone. although i ostensibly bought it for husband, i keep it on my shelf so he forgets about it, because i love it.

i save it for occasions when i have a meeting or other occasion for which i want to feel strong, capable, invincible and perhaps just a tad masculine. so i've been wearing it all week to psyche up for that interview at my old workplace (i'm interviewing someone, i'm not trying to go back there, let's be clear on that!). i've also been known to wear it to occasions where husband's ex-wife will be present, because i always feel i need a little extra strength on those occasions.

i don't think it smells masculine on me at all, it's warm and spicy and doesn't at all give one visions of cleft chins and strong male jawlines that classic men's colognes tend to do. i think that psychologically, knowing it's a man's cologne is what does it for me. if i didn't know that, i would probably think it was just fine for women, tho' it's not a girly perfume in the least.

it's actually exactly the right balance as a unisex perfume--not at all flowery or powdery, more to the spicy side, not too heavy-handed with the musk and definitely not bright. it lingers well and mellows in a good way as you wear it throughout the day. by evening, just the warmest woody cinnamon lingers on your skin, reminding you of the strength it gave you when you needed it.

they say that the name, indalo, is a xhosa word meaning "natural" or "of the earth." and i learned as well that there is a symbol of a man holding a rainbow from a petroglyph (we know i love those) in a cave in spain that's called the indalo man as well. that indalo is a good luck charm and i guess that's a bit how i look upon this cologne--using it to give me strength and luck on occasions when i feel i need a bit of extra, but i love the notion that it's natural and of the earth as well.

i don't know if it's available outside of africa, but if you're passing through the duty free in capetown, i do recommend picking up a bottle. you can pretend it's for the man in your life like i did, but you can wear it with confidence yourself. i find it goes very well with my hugo boss suit.

an egyptian adventure - part 1

after leaving russia by taking a train to the finnish border all by myself in 1994, i felt i was an invincible traveler. there was nowhere i couldn't go and no adventure i wouldn't attempt. it was with this attitude firmly in place that i arrived in macedonia on my fulbright to find the university and the library i needed for my research closed for several weeks for a winter holiday. finding skopje in january a bit drab and boring (not to mention empty, since everyone had apparently headed for australia or toronto to visit relatives) i did what anyone would do. i took a vacation.

i got in touch with a german friend who i had studied together with in russia and he said, "let's go to egypt, i saw some cheap tickets in a travel agency window." before i knew it, i found myself on malev hungarian airlines, squeezed in between my friend and an elderly muslim woman with a enormous duffel bag (from which i swear i heard a muffled "baa") that she intended to set across both her own lap and mine for the duration of the flight. i immediately told on her to the stewardess and they took the bag away and stowed it somewhere.

armed only with let's go egypt (and isreal. what were they thinking?) and the blankets we appropriated as souvenirs from malev, we stumbled out of the dark airport at midnight and allowed ourselves to be herded into a taxi and taken through the surprising amount of honking traffic for the hour to a random hostel owned by the taxi driver's cousin. not bad at $3 a night, but we were sure glad we had those blankets.

we took off bright and early the next morning for giza and the pyramids, talked into a day trip by an enterprising young "guide" (read: random dude with a car). before taking us to the pyramids, he had other plans for us, taking us to a papyrus "museum" where he surely would get a cut of anything we bought and then to a perfume shop. at that point in time, i traveled with a minimum of cynicism, so i was, in retrospect, charmingly open to the entire experience. the papyrus was lame, but the perfume shop was marvelous.

egypt, for centuries, has been famous for the essences and perfumes and oils that they make. we met this marvelous man, adel (thank goodness i wrote his name on the back of this photograph):

he had presence and bearing. he held himself very elegantly and you can see that his crisply-pressed clothes contributed to his manner. the room itself was wonderful--plush red velvet benches around a dark wood round table, pleated crimson fabric lining the ceiling. the bottles of mysterious and marvelous oils lining the walls. he showed us ingredients from all of the world's best perfumes and told us about how they were made. we were, of course, served sugary tea in small glasses. i loved the experience. i felt privileged to have met such a person and had such an experience. as a poor student, i bought a few small bottles of oils and a selection of the beautiful decanters as gifts. my friend bought a few things as well, tho' he later had buyer's remorse and felt taken advantage of. frankly, we hadn't spent enough money to have been taken advantage of.

as we were leaving for the pyramids, adel mentioned his carpet factory and that we should visit it and see the women (and children!) working on the rugs. but, we were anxious to see the pyramids, so we left him with a vague maybe.

it being early february and ramadan to boot, it wasn't high tourist season, so we had a good day at the pyramids. we were able to get tickets to go inside all 3 and we managed to escape the many offers of camel rides.  in fact, i'm quite surprised we managed to get this picture without any visible camel ride guys getting into it. they must be just out of the frame, because there weren't many tourists and they were quite desperate.

i don't entirely remember why, but i was carrying around a stuffed seal named schuster (i had a cat at home named simon). i think i found it whimsical to have a little arctic seal in the desert, so i took his picture everywhere. i even have a picture of him inside one of the crypts in the great pyramid. i remember that the locals were quite charmed by this eccentricity and often scurried to help me position him just so for his photo or suggested other poses. i definitely talked to a lot more people than i would have because i was carrying him around.

we did go back to adel's carpet shop and it was from him i that i bought the little silk rug that's now in my studio. i never saw the small children who he proudly said knotted the silk rugs because their tiny little hands were suited to it. i guess it was before that became politically incorrect.

i have mixed feelings about it because those kids doing that work are often providing an essential income to their families and would end up involved in all sorts of far more sordid activities if it weren't for the job in the rug factory. but i am glad i didn't actually see them, so i can still tell myself that perhaps my rug wasn't made by children. i must have been out of film at the rug shop because i don't have any pictures from there. alas, remember those days before digital? i think the camera i had was actually a clunky old kodak advantix with the panorama setting. i have to admit i actually really liked that camera, tho' i seem to recall that film was tough to find.

more stories from this journey later this week.

using data for good or evil?

today's haul from amazon

there was a time when amazon emails seemed to read my very mind. they suggested things to me based on the things i'd bought over the years and i felt like it was as close to browsing in a real bookstore as you could get online. sadly, they seem to have changed them and they're not like that anymore, now they're just sending me the same ads for crap electronics and pulp fiction that they send to everyone. i feel like we've drifted apart and they don't know me at all. and maybe in some way, that's a good thing. i'm less tempted when i get an amazon mail (in fact, i usually just delete without looking now) and maybe it means they're saving less of my data, so they actually don't know me as well.

many stores in denmark have gotten onboard the loyalty card bandwagon. the one i actually use is matas, which is a shop that sells makeup, perfume and body care products. i like the mails i get from them and i feel like they're using the data about what i purchase wisely, to target the mails to my desires. plus, they have cooperation with other shops, like clothing stores and even the shop where i got my glasses. you earn points when you shop and you can buy things, even nice things, with those points. thanks to my very expensive prescription, i've been able to get a nice hair dryer set, perfume, shampoo, hairspray, nail polish and lotion. they come in pretty packages and it feels like getting a present. in fact, i even gave sabin the hair dryer as a christmas present. it's a loyalty card program that i can get into.

but i'll admit that handing over that card feels a little like i'm voluntarily letting big brother look over my shoulder. if they're tracking my buying habits at the grocery store (you can also have a card there) or in ikea (where they appeal to your altruistic side by donating some miniscule amount to save the children every time you shop) or at h&m, what does that mean in the long run? and what are they doing with your data? do they share it with others? and if so, which others?

i just got a new cartridge for our soda stream in the local imerco (a homewares chain) and she asked if i had a card. i had one at one point, but didn't get it switched over to my current wallet, so i said to her that i did, but that i had just read an article about such cards and was feeling like i no longer wanted to use them. there was another woman in the store who, uncharacteristically for a dane, piped up and said she thought such cards were great because then the stores know what you would like to buy. i would argue that they don't. they only know what i did buy and have absolutely no idea about what i might have actually wanted to buy. they know what i settled for, because what i really wanted wasn't there.

i think with all of the nsa spying exposed by edward snowdon, i am more suspicious of such things. tho' i have no qualms, as i write here on my free blogger blog, and use my gmail in the chrome browser, at turning my every thought and interaction over to google. i am more suspicious of facebook, but still, i give them an awful lot of my data as well. i just can't see that they're using it wisely, as the ads they show me there have never had anything to do with what i like or would be interested in. google, on the other hand, really gets me, which is maybe why i don't find it evil that they have my data.

what do you think? do you participate in loyalty programs? are we already so entrenched in the matrix that there's no way out?

* thanks, bill, for getting me thinking about this. 

the scent of the summer

you know, if you've been reading for awhile, that i love perfume. i recently read this piece about finding your personal scent in the lenny letter. and it's all about layering. even before reading this, i had taken to combining a couple of scents - at the moment, it's been a rather unorthodox combination of the sweetness of  for her by narciso rodriguez and the spicy, greenish masculinity of vetiver insolent by miller harris, but it's felt like the right scent for me at the moment. i was relieved to read in the article that a note or two of something rancorous is in fashion, since this cold, damp summer combined with living in our old farmhouse, my personal scent is surely laced with a healthy dose of mustiness from the damp that seeps up through the brick walls thanks to high ground water. there's probably also a dash of litterbox needing to be changed and perhaps a vague aroma of spilled coffee thrown in, which may be a note or two too many of rancour.

when we were in lithuania, i ran into these beautiful scents, named after italian cities, in a high end perfume shop. i'm not even sure who makes them. i tend to have trouble with scents and my own body chemistry, as they can turn rather nasty on me, especially if they are full of synthetic ingredients. but i tried, over a couple of days, four of these gorgeous scents and they all just got more beautiful on me. tho' at €149 per bottle, i didn't buy one, having decided we were having a vacation experience, not a vacation shopping trip. but, i may have to try to find them again and buy one, as they were just gorgeous. the packaging is simple and elegant as well. they have everything one could hope for in a scent. maybe this autumn..i think florentia would be lovely when paired with the dusky scent of autumn leaves.

friday confession

i haven't confessed since that first one earlier this month, so i thought it was time...plus, friday confession was polly's original idea with it, so the day is even right.  it is friday, right? i've kinda lost track this week.

forgive me odin, for i have sinned...

: :  i admit this is just another way of doing one of those random lists i love so much.

: : i've used up a rather shocking amount of my kenzo eau de fleur de thé perfume this week instead of showering regularly.

: : sabin and i ate carpaccio for dinner three days this week. plus a soft boiled egg with spears of aspargus dipped into it. we always eat weird raw stuff when husband is away. and yup, that's a super cool heather moore skinny laminx egg cup cradling that egg.

: : i am fighting an urge to go downtown and see if there is anything summery and wonderful in the form of a dress for me. but (aside from the kenzo) i've done so well on extending austerity april into may that it would be a shame to break it here right at the end.

: : and i really want my own pair of converse all-stars, which are apparently affectionately called chucks, but which i can't really bring myself to call that because i am lacking the cultural reference for that name. but that's my own fault for removing myself from that culture for over a decade. i have the same thing with something called "wife beaters" that people keep mentioning. i have no idea what those are. anyway, i want light yellow converse all-stars. i don't know why that color, as i have nothing else that's yellow, it just that the thought of those makes my heart sing. i hope they make them in that color.

: : very often my kitchen sink area looks like above because it's where i draw the line as to how i want to expend my energy allotment for the day. so much for that feature on apartment therapy.

: : i am so relieved that all of my articles are done now and just awaiting the final approvals. and that the feedback that's come in from the various interviewees is very positive. that's a big relief. because my inner perfectionist is one tough cookie to please. and she had her doubts.

: : this week i spent an awful lot of time wearing my old green gap sweatpants and husband's big red gap hoodie, clutching my talisman stone and rocking back and forth in front of my laptop.

: : i took my talisman stone to the bathtub with me. after clutching it in my sweaty little palm all week, i thought it might like a bath. is that weird?  i showed my stone to my mom yesterday on a video chat and she said, "julie, get a life." i thought that was a little bit harsh. and i hope the stone didn't hear her.

* * *

and now for something completely different

i'd like to do a post as cyndy suggested, where you ask sabin and me questions and we post the answers, so please leave your questions in the comments. that is right, isn't it, cyndy?  my questions--with a look on the past and sabin's view on the same questions, but what she imagines her answers will be in the future. as cyndy says, "First car? First date? First day of college? First house? The list is endless..." so think along those lines in coming up with the questions.

and happy friday to all of you. i for one am looking forward to the weekend.

let austerity april begin

i know that if you know me, which you no doubt feel you do if you come here regularly, you think i'm pulling a little april fool's joke. it cannot be that our little julochka is embarking on any kind of project that has the word "austerity" in it. but this is no joke. inspired by my friend B, for the month of april (and hopefully beyond), there will be no shoes, no crocheted stones, no fabulous fabric (sorry heather i'll have to wait 'til may), no pretty paper, no items of crap from the spotvarer at the grocery store, no books (i have enough to get me through the next month), no pretty notebooks or binders from bookbinders design, no new clothes (not that i'm that bad about clothes (thankfully i live far from a Gap), it's really only when i've let that moron pack my suitcase), no new perfume.

just groceries and train tickets and plane tickets and the organic box. oh, and the cleaning girl. i refuse to give her up.

amazing the things we consider the necessities of life.

i wonder if i can hide under some of the rocks i found last weekend for an entire month...

a thousand and one memories

continuing on my niche perfume mania, i blindly ordered a couple of interesting-sounding scents from black phoenix alchemy lab. their scents are oils and very reasonably-priced, so you can definitely chance it and just order up a couple that sound good without breaking the bank. so i ordered kit (it had me at "pen ink") and café mille et une nuits. there are many other promising-sounding scents on the site and they were kind enough to send four samples with my order, so i will likely be going back.

when i put on café mille et une nuits, i was slightly put off by a sweetish, candy scent, but it soon dissipated and settled into a smoky, retro scent that transported me to the afternoons i spent studying at great midwestern in iowa city in the late 80s. like an underlying sweet waffle cone layered with smoky patchouli and freshly-ground coffee that brought to mind images of shopping the secondhand racks at ragstock and wandering into the soap opera for some bath goodies. i was reminded once again how scent is inextricably tied to memory and just a faint hint of an old familiar scent can cause a tidal wave of memories to wash over you. i've been so taken with it, that i haven't even tried kit yet.

have you ever been transported by a scent? tell me your story in the comments below!

molly's meme

molly (my very first follower) made up a meme. all by herself. and i mean, why not? someone's got to do it, right? well, she didn't actually tag me for it, but i'm going to do it anyway because i'm the fairy blogmother and i can do stuff like that. and plus, i'm going to pick up my blog campers today and so it makes for an easy scheduled post.

totally gratituous rock shot

here's what molly says about her brand spankin' new meme:

I've always had the problem of not being able to pick a favourite. I don't have one favourite movie or one favourite book, or one favourite food. Life's just a bit more complex than that for me. I'm 75% Gemini  - go figure.


So the idea here is that you list 5 items in each category, a favourite 5 - but not necessarily in order of favouriteness - to show the diversity/similarity/hilarity/polarity/ or extreme same-ness of your personal likes.


And then tag 5 peeps to do the same. And feel free to add or subtract categories as you like.
Down with meme imperialism!

and here are my favorite things....

5 favorite songs (this list would be different if you asked me in an hour or a day):
1. Hotel California - Eagles
2. I think I'm in Love - Beck
3. Citizen of the Planet - Alanis Morissette
4. Express Yourself - Madonna (this song saw me through a bad breakup)
5. My Sister - Juliana Hatfield 3

5 favorite films:
1. Fargo
2. The Princess Bride
3. Afgrunden (The Abyss) (1911 danish silent film--i loved it before i ever even came to denmark)
4. The Castle (it's a hilarious australian film)
5. Napoleon Dynamite
i had total deja vu writing this...but i think it's b/c of saturday's scheduled post (another meme).

5 favorite books:
1. Pushkin House (Pushkinskii Dom) - Andrei Bitov
2. The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen
3. Wind up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami
4. Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (just kept this one here from molly's list)
5. What I Loved - Siri Hustvedt

5 favorite crushes (there is a distinct old man theme going on here):
1. David Letterman
2. Hugh Laurie
3. Bill Clinton
4. Todd Benjamin (saw him moderate a panel last week at Nor-Shipping--i'm a sucker for a smart one)
5. Fox Mulder (yes, i realize he is a character played by David Duchovney, however, it's Fox, not David that I'm crushing on.)

5 favorite (random) things:
1. my pet rock
2. perfume
3. iPods
4. my Macbook Pro
5. iPhone

5 favorite things to eat (you knew i was going to have to add one of my own):
1. mango (especially in the philippines)
2. salty almonds
3. homemade pizza with wacky ingredients (pears & salad - potatoes & chicken)
4. watermelon
5. tapas - garlic shrimp, chorizo,...mmm, just thinking about it makes me hungry

and i thought that i would tag three new bloggers that have discovered me i've discovered recently and two old friends:

1.  just jules
2.  marinik
3.  delwyn 
4.  an open heart
5.  janet

and one more gratuitous rock shot, mostly because i put these on flickr the other day, but never blogged them:

lights out, slow skate

hit a radio station on the way home that was playing disco. it transported me instantly back to the community building on a saturday night, clad in well-worn whitish-grey skates with red laces. last song(s) of the evening, lights dimmed, holding hands in a furtive sort of way with some local farm boy....was it troy rommen (romeo & juliet, samson & deliliah...when we kissed, oooo, fire)...or was that later, at that junior high dance, after which i came down with a late (7th grade) case of chicken pox....doesn't really matter. amazing how both music and scents can transport you into a memory, especially of a place. it happened yesterday too, when i wore kenneth cole's black perfume. hadn't worn it in a few months. it transported me, several times during the day, to my first (and only) trip to korea--to that crazy o'kim's irish bar in the lobby of the westin. but that doesn't really have anything to do with lights out, slow skate, now does it?

the fifth circle of hell or weird wednesday gets even weirder

descending to the fifth circle of hell (wrath and sullenness)

my morning found me trudging up a staircase, following a fifty-something woman who had clearly eaten loads of garlic for breakfast, or perhaps just used it instead of perfume. i prayed frantically silently to odin that she was going somewhere else, but no, she was headed to the same classroom up on the top floor that i was. apparently odin was otherwise engaged.

because there is a gap of time between old job and new job, i have applied for unemployment benefits and one of the hoops one must jump through is to attend a two day "competence assessment" course during which one ends up with an online "CV" in a government system (the one which, if you recall, suggested after analyzing my education and experience that i do telemarketing). thus, you know that i have already placed my CV in the system on my own and am, as it were, well aware of my competence(s). so anyway, that's why i found myself following the clearly-afraid-of-vampires woman up the stairs early on a wednesday morning.

myself and 17 others were attending the day's sessions, which opened with the most patronizing 30 minutes of instructions and warnings i've witnessed in as long as i can remember. we were referred to as "unemployed welfare recipients" (very motivating) during the entire spiel, which included a whole lot of references to the apparently given fact that we were looking for jobs as chauffeurs and nursing home attendants (not that there's anything wrong with those things, but i didn't spent nine months on a fulbright in the balkans to lift old mr. hansen from his bed to his wheelchair). anyone who came in late was subjected to cutting and even more demeaning and patronizing remarks about their ability to tell time.

once i realized that i was making serious fingernail marks in the palms of my hands from holding them in fists to keep from screaming, i tuned out the capri- and thigh-length "sporty" boot-wearing woman's patronizing droning and looked around. nearly half of my fellow participants were in their upper fifties, four were clearly carpenters or bricklayers or the like, there were two who looked a bit like me and a few young women who looked like candidates for channel 4's the young mothers program.

the capri-clad woman with her asymmetrical haircut turned us over to an energetic bald man who told us straight away about his messy divorce and life with his three kids, who only spend half the month at his house. for otherwise cold, closed people, the danes surely do share some all-too personal details rather easily. he proceeded to throw every remaining scrap of political correctness out the window in what i eventually decided was a charming way (after i recovered from the shock that he outright called me an asshole for joining that more general union instead of the one for people with master's degrees). he actually said to a young girl who worked part time in a church, "what the hell does a kirketjener (her job title) do?" not really appreciating the irony of swearing about a church. i had to actually cover my mouth to restrain outright boisterous laughter at that one.

one of the women, who i thought i had spotted as a fellow academic, turned out to be a former computer programmer turned papergirl turned failed nursing student who left her 4-year nursing program after 6 years without finishing due to "ideological reasons." i came to feel real empathy for her, because i think she had a soft heart and it caused her to be unable to take the overwhelming reality of the world. on the other hand, i do think there are meds for that.

once i arranged not to be forced to go back for day two (i was clearly in the wrong room and apparently the wrong union), i sat back and enjoyed it. some of the more amusing stories that came out during the day:

~  a girl in her late 20s with two kids and no husband who wanted to be a mechanic because she liked cars (but had no training or skills in being a mechanic whatsoever and no idea how to get them. and she didn't even have a car).

~  a sweet (and very talkative) man of nearly 60 who had spent a lifetime as a salesman and had already applied for 500 jobs (he had a stack of documents to prove it).

~  a boy in his early 20s who said his ambition was to become a garbage man (after he attained the correct qualifications, including a driver's license, which he currently lacked).

~  a real asshole of a (self-declared) dyslexic bricklayer whose phone was in his coat pocket and kept ringing every 15-20 minutes all morning and who actually refused to turn it off or on silent when asked to do so (turned out he didn't know how to do it, so the future garbage man helped him out, but not until it had rung 4-5 times).

i'll admit i didn't get a whole lot out of the day, other than 11 pages of notes in my "blog about this" notebook. so perhaps it was worth it. but thank odin i don't have to go back tomorrow. so i can stay home and write some more about it, because there's so much more to share.

a weekend in denmark

i'm tumbling so many upcoming posts in my mind. when my inspiration/action correlation began to clear on friday, it provoked so many thoughts and ideas. so in the coming weeks you can expect posts on:

1. alice in wonderland
2. architecture
3. whether hyperlinks represent a topography of thought
4. nordic mythology
5. really tiny mushrooms
6. bullying in the workplace
7. whether it's possible to fast-track the process from inspiration to art
8. a perfume review (i've been thinking for awhile of doing these on a weekly basis)
9. hugin & munin
10. eyeballs

* NOTE: checking them off as i do them. 

but all of these things are still swirling in my head at the moment so for now, i'll just share some scenes from a winter-almost-spring weekend in denmark, some of which are hints to the above:

sabin's first riding lesson

it went smashingly and she's in love

mmm. latte.

and felt heat protectors in scrumptious colors (#22).

ATCs for sabin's swap

oops, we were supposed to mail these yesterday.

oh well, they're so good, tomorrow will be fine.

"where do i report my quest?"

lots and lots of world of warcraft

eyeballs (#23)

really tiny mushrooms

hope your weekend was full of laughter, candlelight , fresh bread, inspiration and a bit of fresh air.

the comfort of collecting

once again this weekend, i sought and found comfort in my craft stash. hours were spent making things by nearly all family members. sabin and her big sister spent several hours making monocules© on friday evening. on saturday, big sister raided the fabric stash to make a table runner for her mother and a pillow for her grandmother for christmas. i continued work on some snuggle quilts for my nephews. and it was all possible because we had all of the stuff right here, at hand - fabrics, clay, yarn, embroidery thread. when inspiration struck, we could immediately get down to work. and i felt justified in my pack rat ways.

and i looked around the house and realized that it's filled with collections of things. of course, i knew this, but i'm not sure i've thought that much about how much comfort and contentment those collections bring to me on a daily basis. from baskets of smooth stones to books to a collection of old (and new) cameras to the books that fill our bedroom and our dining room to the well-stocked perfume shelves in the upstairs bathroom. we're surrounded by our collections of things.

husband and i got to talking about the collections and what they mean. and why we have the drive to collect. husband has a tendency to explain everything through evolution. and he thinks collecting is the modern manifestation of the hunter-gatherer instinct. we don't need to hunt for our food these days, so that instinct manifests in other ways.  i know that i am constantly on the lookout (hunting, if you will) for interesting old locks and counting machines when i'm in the flea markets. and i gather interesting fabrics even when i don't necessarily know what i'm going to make of them - because i might need them for something or other one day. we indulge our hunter-gatherer instincts all the time.

collecting and acquiring is something we've discussed a lot as we try to decide how to approach our year of not buying things. one of the things we're thinking about is that we will only buy second hand (except socks and underwear, i'm sorry, but those have to be new) for the next year - at least for ourselves. sabin, on the other hand, will have to have new shoes and clothes, as fast as she's growing. but me, i can easily go a year without adding to my shoe collection and it won't hurt a thing. we don't have a fully-formed plan as of yet, but we're getting there. and we will undoubtedly find ways to indulge our inner hunter-gatherer and keep our collections dynamic. because the fact is that they also make us happy.

what do you love to collect?

* * *

i wanted to thank you all for your great insight on the photo of the last post. i'm really happy to see new people coming out of the woodwork. on friday, i'll let you know who has "won" the entirely subjective competition for the best thoughts on the meaning of that photo.