Short hits and winners for drawings

While I’m waiting anxiously for the Unicorn and those little The Different Company new things to hit my desk, I’m going through some samples to see if something will catch my attention.

Let’s see what we have here — first of all, have any of you tried that new Sonic chili, cheese and Fritos wrapped in a tortilla thing? Go… get… now. Or get the ingredients and make them yourself. Comfort food non compare.

With my bottle of Castelbajac I got a sample of Elizabeth Arden Provocative Woman. The marketing hype: “There is something beneath the surface of every woman. It´s always there – ready, waiting. If she decides, it can silence a room or turn a grown man into a mere puddle. Introducing Elizabeth Arden Provocative Woman. The new fragrance. Men will melt.” :::rolls eyes so hard they get stuck in eyebrows:::: Good lord…. Notes of water lotus, ginger lily, midnight orchid, papaya blossom, pink freesia, white sand, red amber and hinoki wood. The notes sound awesome except for that water lotus, and unfortunately, that’s all I can smell is water lotus, the one note that blows in that list. Much into the drydown, about the time it starts to get a little interesting, it just almost vanishes. If this would have held up a little more in the dry, it would have gotten better marks. I vaguely smell some amber and wood and (white sand??? puhleeze)… well, that’s pretty much it. That aquatic note is a killer on this one, and I doubt I’m turning men into puddles with this, mostly just into, “Would you please get that away from me” which is the normal response in this house.

The lovely SA from Barney’s Armani counter has moved on to be a personal shopper, but before she left, she loaded me up with all of the incense series samples from Comme des Garcons. I slapped on some Zagorsk, with notes of white incense, pine, pimento berries, violet, cedar, iris, honoki wood, and birch wood. This is just stunningly lovely, just woody incensy goodness with the iris and violet floating around very lightly to keep this from being “just” a woody incense scent. This may wind up in my FBW list, though I’d be quite happy if I could get all of the Incense series in a little coffret. Couldn’t they just do all of them in 10 ml apiece coffret? That would be so totally awesome! Maybe I’ll get them all and make my own coffrets, dagnabit. If anyone is down to do that with me on a big split, let me know.

I spilled my Serge Lutens Bois de Violette yesterday. No matter how much I adore BdV, there is nothing about a spilled bottle of it that is attractive, it’s just an overdose of cedar and violet. So what’s the cure? Bois Oriental. Just enough cedar to be interesting and know it came from the Boises (beaux?), but it is softer and lacks the sweet that Bois et Fruits and Bois de Violette have, and that makes it beautiful and soft, which is turning into one of my favorite of the Beaux.

Now, as a follow-up to my TeeVee Post from last Friday. A couple of you asked if you could avoid getting cable now and watch some of these shows anyway, and the happy answer is… YES!!!! CBS and ABC have put most of the episodes of series up on their website, at least for the current season, and watching them there is as good as television. They make you sit through a commercial or two, but it’s a 30-second commercial or less, and it’s less add time than regular teevee. You normally can see the episode the day after it airs. So why buy cable when you can just go watch it online? Some of the best television out there, Grey’s Anatomy, Lost, The Nine, etc., are on the internet and easy to watch. Now, NBCs site has some weird thing going on where you have to have some kind of chip to download episodes? Works great if you have it… doesn’t if you don’t. Whatever. I just to go iTunes and buy any episode I’ve missed or get a season pass. Figuring cable is $30 a month or so, you can get a season pass for all episodes of a series for 30-40, so if there’s only one thing you want to watch, you’ve saved a bundle. Or you can just get episodes your Tivo screwed up taping or that you missed for $1.99 each. You don’t need an iPod to use iTunes. It will play the episodes right on your computer.

GEEK MOMENT WARNING!!! Another very handy thing to have for plane trips is a video iPod. Most of my plane trips are short, less than two hours, so no movie, and I get motion sickness if I read too much. Now I download a couple of things I’ve had no time to watch to my video iPod and catch up on the plane. It’s also great for the treadmill so I don’t have to drag DVDs upstairs and sort out what I have and haven’t watched. Sure, the screen is small, but for personal use, it is an amazingly great video picture. P.S. — if you have Tivo and get the 2.3 TiVO desktop, anything you record on Tivo, you can transfer to your computer and convert to iPod, PSP, Treo, Nokia, etc., that take an MPEG-4. Sorry for that nerdy moment, but the fact that I can now convert all my saved Nip/Tuck Tivos from this year to watch later I think is just awesome!

Winner of the Black Orchid sample is Natalie.

Winner of the Your Choice From my Collection drawing is Leopoldo.

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