Petronia

I haven't made the final wordcount yet, but I'm sure I've broken the limit. What I've learnt from this experience is that I blog a lot, since all I did was can the majority of my entries for two weeks. XD

First, a recounting of my birthday weekend! It was totally worth the exhaustion, even though I am errrm basically down with a cold now (low fever, called in sick so I don't have to face the -30C outside temperatures, sitting bundled up at home guzzling chrysanthemum tea and writing Very Big Post). ^^;

( Birthday parties (contains photos) )

( Wighnomy Brothers / Dan Bell / Akufen @ Nuit Electronik 2006, Saturday 25/02/06 )

( Belle & Sebastian @ Metropolis, Sunday 26/02/06 (contains photos) )

On that note: ( Requested songs, unrequested songs, wanktastic and grossly sentimental musicblogging )

Please note mp3s will only be up for a week, as the entry is public.

And now the fic for the Mile Long Pole challenge. It's sort of awful, I'll probably be spending the rest of the night editing it. XD; ( Have some Orbital to go along with first. )

( Yukikaze fic, 1,500 words, roughest of drafts to be honest )

Friday evening (that is the 17th, since I'm writing this on the 22nd XD) I read The Lives of Christopher Chant.

( Desultory notes on the book and DWJ's common tropes (cut for spoilers). )

Much as I think Lush's forte is in the bath ballistic and bubble bar lines, I don't take baths often enough (the only time I can really take a bubble bath without bothering anyone by running the water upstairs is on weekends, and I often go out on weekend nights). So this is yet another shampoo bar review, as well as short notes on regular soaps. :P

( Seanick )
( Angel's Delight )
( Milky Bar )
( Gratuitous Violets )

When serendip was in town she brought her BPAL imps, most of which she said she was meh about, and gave a number of them to me. ^^; Erin also took a few. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to write more reviews, Jae. XD

( Cathode )
( Undertow )
( The Lady of Shalott )
( Kuang Shi )
( Silk Road )
( Moon Rose )
( Lilith )
( Skuld )

And finally, the first two chapters of Traffic. In which absolutely nothing much happens, I'm warning you, so don't get your hopes up. :/

( Part I: Fei Long )
( Part II: Winston )

I have been really bad with answering comments this past week or so. =_= Apologies. I wish I could claim it was because I was writing but in reality I've been stuck on one scene for the entire week. The Chinese expression is 钻牛角尖 - "climbing inside the bull's horn-tip". It best describes the mental trap that occurs when an obsessive-compulsive approach to problem-solving meets a failure of lateral thinking: for instance when one becomes determined to solve some casual math puzzle to the point of neglecting real productive work for hours, or when one adopts a brute-force method to complete a task and fails to realise there is an easier, more efficient way, because one is too fixated on toughing it out. More generally, it's losing sight of the forest for the trees. You are funneled into a point, and are left with nothing to do but bump your skull against said point until you wear a hole in it - or it wears a hole in you.

Work has also been picking up. But at least it's interesting work. ^^;

( Black Opal - the proper review )

I realised I forgot to tag people for the seven songs meme. So - vonbrigthi, orochinemo, serendip (if you haven't been tagged yet and are not actively trying to avoid it XD), pere_chan, fantabulous, one_if_by_land, insaneneko.

iatros, received card on Friday (I think?). Should've mentioned it over the weekend. I have to say, thus far yours is the twee-est. XD Graphology also predicts your success in the medical profession. XD XD *is shot*

I forgot to do a BPAL review. ^^;

( Aizen-Myoo )

This stuff is revolutionizing my perfume experience, haha - largely because the imps are portable. My current top three (Venice, Aizen-Myoo, Delight though I ought to add Phantasm) go in a little prescription pill container so they stay upright and airtight, and that goes in my bag. I can put a little on in the morning, let it wear off during the day and replace with something else for the evening, without having to go home in the interim. V. proper and ladylike.

One hitch, I can no longer put BPAL oils on my left inner wrist because my fake leather watch strap absorbs all of them and even soap doesn't get the scent out. It's like wearing an unidentifiable blend in a scent bracelet. XD;;

Procrastinating from writing the current ficlet onna card. Dammit, this LJ is full of "content" already and I keep adding features all the time. XD;

( Delight )

( Shanghai )

Will someone more accomplished than me make a good joke out of the fact that the BPAL search engine is at spicybrains.org?

Forgot to mention in the other post that Sakki also sent a sketch onna card. ♥ (Haha he almost looks like me these days, clothes/glasses/accessory-wise... if I had even more hair...) fabulous_papaya's card arrived as well. XD

The odd thing was I got up the next morning still able to smell the bpal oils, and went and slathered Polo on myself. XD I think I'm not a big fan of a patchouli drydown, I like amber better as a base note. But the more I smell patchouli, the more I get this left-field urge to play Pink Floyd - it's quite amazing.

***

Lady Sovereign = awesome, all 45 minutes of her. The venue = TEH SUCK MOST AMAZING, including the 20-minute trek on slippery iced-up sidewalks from the nearest metro station, the non-working stage amps and the boggling crush at coat check winding down two flights of fire-trap stairs. No encore because everyone has to be kicked out by 10:15... what? At least the walk back wasn't too bad, I caught the bus.

Sure of the order of the first few and the last few, not so sure about the middle: Blah Blah Blah / Random / Tango / Nine to Five / Sad Arse Strippa / something I don't know the name of but that involved a broom and being beaten over the head with it / Ch-Ching / Fiddle With the Volume / Hoodie / Public Warning (I think this is new?)

What I heard of Guislain Poirier (the opener) sounded pretty good but I'd turned up late and was tired enough that it took me a while to get into the gig groove, so wasn't able to formulate more of an opinion. Crowd was expats who knew how to dance and hipsters who turned up out of curiosity and desire for edumacation. Lady Sov was funny and quite charming in a sassy teenager who likes to make burp jokes sort of way, but it was impossible to see or think of her as any older than fifteen, which put the mosh pit into a sort of high school end of year talent show atmosphere, only with more talented talent than usual. And this although she was constantly chugging beer. XD; She had three Boreals lined up, drank one, gave the other two away to the crowd (!), drank half a glass of some sort of hard lemonade, spilt quite a lot of it, shared the rest with a guy in the audience, was offered a joint by someone in the front row (BONJOUR MONTREAL), kicked the amps often in frustration, took off her hoodie, her jumper and her shoes and thus did part of the set in socks. Also there was a moment of WTF hilarity when someone in the audience insisted on a personal acquaintance with the girl described in "Tango".

But yeah. Does teen pop potential equal at least in part the ability to get "sophisticated" twenty to thirtysomethings to hallucinate they're fifteen again? Cos that was definitely the odd thing.

***

Pandora game might be too hard without hints at that (btw I find the first three songs are always the most useful in terms of identifying the sound, after that the algorithm tends to wander off and must be reined in more or less forcibly by the user). ^^; Um, 'tis dance (duh) and German, but not Kompakt.