Petronia

I've finished and uploaded the Yukikaze FST, but the server is having a blip at the moment and files are inaccessible by web (is also why the SSBB covers have disappeared - FTP works fine). Will post when it's up again. Karakura mixtape is next in line; now that I've shoved a few deadlines off my plate I may even be able to post the string of Bleach drabbles I've been accumulating.

Tiga's set last night was ace, I wish I remember more of it. XD No, that's not true, I remember as much as I need to, i.e. the list of songs with which I sang along, including tracks like "Zdarlight" to which there are no lyrics, and tracks like "Dare" where I bawled out the whole thing word-for-word at the top of my lungs without figuring out the name of said song, and in fact did not dredge it up until... thirty seconds ago. It was sort of nerdy.

( partial setlist, order of play v. approximate )

There were other Tiga album tracks, obviously, but I'm not sure which ones they were. The album does sound a lot better in a club setting, not least because the vocals are dropped in the mix and vocoded into "texture". :P

Today I am of course cocooning (ohshi how am I going to make it through MUTEK deaaaath) and playing through the smorgasbord of music I downloaded yesterday, including 300MB worth of JoJo prog rock from jokersama and angrybabble. XD Last Sunday I went out with Erin and Tania and the three of us hit up the Saint-Catherine Lush store.

• Sweetie Pie shower jelly
• Ultimate Shine shampoo bar
• Irresistable Bliss shampoo bar (haven't tested this yet - only bought it because they give you a shampoo tin if you buy two. However it's being discontinued, so if you want to try it or stock up now's the time.)

( thumbnail reviews )

Next up: more on JoJo part 5 I guess? Also summaries of Yukikaze book 2, and reviews of other novels I have read lately (I don't know if I'll make a book list for the challenge though, since I don't naturally conceptualise my reading material that way XD).

So far no one on the fic meme has said anything that I would have said re: distinguishing characteristics of my fic, which only goes to show. (I would have listed items like "Canadian spelling", "Everyone always has a beverage of some kind in hand," "abuse of adverbs like 'oddly', 'strangely' and 'actually'", and "No one is ever cold, even when they should be." That last is wish fulfillment through fiction. =_=)

Last night I took a long bath and read Witch Week. :P

( Christmas Party (Lush bath ballistic) )

(I think I didn't do a review of the Hollywood bubble bar I used last time. It's less spectacular - the bar is white and has a pleasant rose-based floral scent - but unlike Christmas Party you can smell the perfumed bubbles all the time you're in the water. All these Lush products soften and moisturize the water so your skin isn't dried out no matter how long you stay in, but the bubble bars are better value because you only need to use 1/3 to 1/2 of one at a time.)

( Witch Week )

Next up is The Lives of Christopher Chant, and then I will probably read Howl's Moving Castle.

fantabulous, your card arrived. ^_^ ametatsu, your card and package idem - I am indeed having fun correlating the sketches with the characters. XD (Sometimes I feel visual artists always have one up on writers: words are just words but pictures are real.) Also, BPAL ♥!

Last night I opened all the imps in my room and sniffed each one, then picked the one I liked best to try. XD

( Venice. The review is long and gushing. )

While I'm here I'm going to make another pitch for Lush's Godiva shampoo bar, which is my new Favorite Thing Ever. It cleans just like Hybrid (the black licorice one), but according to the Lush cleric it has three conditioning ingredients to Hybrid's one, and it smells like JASMINE not licorice. Note that I capitalize. The website also lists ingredients like ylang ylang, cypress and gardenia, but essentially you have to be a jasmine fan. Leave it on a soap dish and you're hit in the face with WHOA JASMINE every time you open the bathroom door. If you have one of those little sieve things for catching hair before it falls down the drain, you find little white jasmine flowers in it after you shower. But it's not the in-your-face scent of the bar itself that's the thing of beauty, it's the scent it leaves in your hair afterward: light and maddening and as close as you can come in a Montreal winter to buying a jasmine flower bracelet from a street vendor.

...As beeblebabe said the Lush clerics seem insane but there's seriously something in the product that makes you want to sl0re. XD I've literally been fantasizing about pushing this stuff onto other people. Maybe I'll go on the Yamane Ayano comm and claim this is what Feilong uses on his hair. I'd believe it, I still laugh at Takaba's-friend-Kou's logic in that one - not "He's so pretty, is he a model?", but "He smells really nice, is he a model?"

In a way it has to do with Mirage of Blaze. Haha no really. I'd never been in either of the Lush stores in Montreal - a whiff at the front door tells one it's not the sort of place one browses around in unless one has half an hour to spare and is in the mood to be accosted by salespeople who're enthusiastic and friendly in the way of priestesses on the lookout for potential acolytes - but I went into one on a main shopping throughfare in central Amsterdam, because I was in a foreign city with money in my pocket, and when I went back to Antwerp that night I could have a bubble bath if I liked. I bought a bunch of bath bombs (they're called "bath ballistics" at Lush), including one I had to get because it was called "Youkihi". XD; Turned out to be worthy of the name. It worked like something out of Harry Potter: draw a bath of plain hot water, drop it in, it explodes, and suddenly you have a pink, jasmine-scented bath filled with a cloud of gold glitter and little floating flowers. The water is moisturising. I stayed in it for hours out of sheer novelty. The only downside to the thing is that it leaves a pink, glittery ring around the bathtub.

The other one I tried, the "Sakura", wasn't as flashy - more delicate scent and didn't change the water colour - but neither did it leave a ring around the tub. That was the one I got for Cedric, largely because they have a giftbox with it and the 17 Cherry Tree Lane soap, and I've always wanted to get Cedric something cherry blossom themed. XD XD Still have a couple of others left I haven't used, because if I want a bubble bath at home it's a big production.

Was given the catalogue in Amsterdam and read it on the train - it took the entire two and a half hour ride, being the size of a respectable weekly tabloid. So after all that brainwashing I went to the Lush store on Drummond to buy birthday presents on Friday, and a couple of things for myself: lemon soap and shampoo. The lemon soap is what they call a "buttercream", meaning that it's like 20% soap and 80% glycerine and lemon juice and whatnot, and has the same consistency as soft wax. It's sold in chunks covered with bits of candied lemon peel. (When I got home late that night I stuck a slip of paper on it saying "THIS IS SOAP DO NOT EAT".) The shampoo is solid and both looks and smells like one of those round black grainy licorice candies, blown up to the size of a hockey puck. This in no way endeared the stuff to me (I don't like licorice) but the Lush priestess said it was the one recommended for oily hair. Amazingly it does work as advertised. Gives a fine, not abundant foam, but cleans thoroughly and leaves my hair softer than when I use baby shampoo - the last is not even a requirement given that what I look for in a shampoo is the dish-soap ability to get the damned grease out without me having to use half the bottle in a single rinse. Of course Lush stuff is sinkingly expensive and I have no idea how long it'll last. (The slip of paper on this one said "THIS IS SHAMPOO DO NOT USE AS HAND SOAP".)

Might start reviewing Lush like other people do BPAL, if I keep buying. I got Erin this shower gel that looks and smells like chocolate syrup. XD

Caught up with Monster to episode 65. Then I randomly watched Utada Hikaru's video for "Be My Last" and it was about - get this - people having ominous flashbacks to childhood memories. IN PRAGUE.