Well, I can tell I’m feeling uninspired–I’ve done everything tonight except write something in the big blank box that’s been staring at me on the “Write Post” tab… I have a lot of ideas bouncing around in my head but somehow they’re not resolving themselves into comfortable categorizable posts. In the absence of that sort of inspiration, here are some things that have been interesting me lately:
Chore Wars: Wow, someone was unbelievably inspired to have come up with the idea for this site. You can register a group online (your household), and members create characters that win adventures and prizes and experience points by completing household tasks. Clean the bathroom? 20 experience points. Sweep the kitchen floor? 5 experience points. Your imagination (as the organizer of the tasks and adventures) is the limit. I’ll tell you what–if this had been available when we were growing up, my mom would have been on there in a heartbeat (I just had a conversation with her confirming this), and my brother and I would have been battling it out to get to the cleaning first in order to beat each other out in the adventure. I daresay my dad would have wanted to get in on the fun, too! Cool idea. If/when I ever have a household to run, I think I’ll have to do something like this. I’ve actually been toying with the notion of getting a group of single apartment-dwellers together as a group to do it… except I know I’d always be on the losing end of it.
BPAL: An “underground” perfume marketer. These people are coming up with amazing combinations of scents based on cool essential oil combinations, and they’ve got a following, too. I don’t know what it is about perfume sites online… words and scents don’t combine well and it’s touch-and-go to capture an idea of what is really going on (I think this is what makes wine-tasting sound so weird when you have a bunch of informed wine tasters). But the way that they characterize scents just makes me want to buy up huge lots of them! By the way, I can tell already where my scent-tastes lead me… it probably gives you a clue when you hear that the top contenders for my must-buy list (so far–I haven’t gotten all the way through their site) are such titles as: The Lion, Baghdad, Al-Shairan, Silk Road, Morocco, Cairo, and Scherezade…
What makes it even more fun is that these are meant to be worn and to interact with a person’s skin chemistry in a way that makes them even more distinct to each wearer. I’ve found this to be a sticking-point for me… my skin chemistry is unusual in that almost every perfume I’ve tried ends up smelling like some version of powdered-sugar. Lemongrass smells like lemon bars, dried grasses smell like raisin bread… etc. (The other weird thing that happens to me is that my skin practically eats through metal–any jewelry that I wear for extended periods of time ends up pitted and compromised. Not sure if they go together, but still.) Anyway, the people at BPAL (aka Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab) have something to help here, too… a series of forums where people review every distinct perfume and you can read if something that is supposed to smell sharp and citrusy instead ends up smelling like baked goods on a few people… Incidentally, that’s probably why I favor those spice scents… if they’re going to smell like baked goods on me anyway, they might as well smell like gingerbread and pumpkin pie, right? Jasmine tarts just don’t sound tempting–besides, florals give me a raging headache!
Work when you were planning to be on leave: I’d set it up to be on leave for this week and next week, but due to a confluence of circumstances, my leave never got approved and sent on to the powers that be. Somewhat resentfully, I came in to work on Monday morning, and got a short-notice tasker to write 12–count them, 12–point papers. Most of the words were already out there, but I had to convert their format and make them all parallel in structure… not a lightweight task. I was quite pleased to see that I managed it within a 5-hour period, and I did a good job! And then today was another productive day, though more painful… a similar length of time went into a staff meeting where we hashed out the best way to reorganize the branch and divide workloads. How is it that you can have some of your most productive working days ever on the very days when you hadn’t intended to be there? (By the way, I just bumped back my leave… I’ll be taking those weeks but starting Thursday instead of Monday.)
Perhaps it’s the unaccustomed spurt of work productivity that leaves me feeling uninspired… for once, I’m using my creativity and problem-solving in an appropriate way! Anyway, it’s been a good–if slightly exhausting–couple of days. Here’s hoping that I can have a similarly productive day tomorrow!
Posted by Kjirstin 
