Swapmania and Silver Foxes

By March

Nope, no perfume review today.  But I’m not completely worthless.  A number of you have asked about another round of Swapmania – our free-for-all perfume swapfest that we did a year ago at Thanksgiving, a total experiment on my part, and it was so successful we did it again last summer.  We got more than 1,200 comments the first time, and more than 900 the second time.  That’s a LOT of swaps.

Y’all have evolved some pretty complicated swaps – international, splits, and cool swaps for non-perfume items.  (I think at this point there’s an underground swapfest going on internationally for chocolates and other stuff we can’t get in the U.S.)  You have also swapped for hand-knit scarves, tea, cosmetics, etc.

Or you can just stick to plain old perfume, nothing wrong with that.

Anyhow, I thought we’d do another either later this month or in February, how do you feel about that?  I want to avoid a holiday weekend like Thanksgiving, a bunch of people were disappointed that time because they were out of town and couldn’t play.   Is there some date I shouldn’t do?  Does anyone have a strong preference?

Also, you can drop in comments here any past issues or questions you’d like addressed.  As far as I know, things have gone pretty fabulously, if you can deal with the insanity of the pace of postings.

The only thing off the top of my head I’ll put in here: I know some swappers are/were upset by U.S. residents who wouldn’t swap internationally.  From my own perspective:  I dread shipping internationally because of US customs issues and requirements.  Maybe because I live near D.C., the level of scrutiny and hassle is pretty intense.  So please don’t take it personally – it is not a trust issue.  If you live in a town or country where you just drop your package off with your local delivery wombat, no questions asked, it’s hard to imagine what a pain customs shipping can be.  I do want to note here that I have bought, sold, and swapped with people from all over the world, and never been ripped off or had a package lost.

Finally, your responses to last week’s going-gray post were amazing!  I really enjoyed reading them, although at some point I gave up trying to respond to all of them.  There were some great gray-hair tips and cross-conversations going on in comments.  I am stunned by how many of you are rocking the silver fox yourselves.  By the way, I just had the last stray bits of hair color trimmed from my hair today.  My stylist is working on maximizing the curls, and gave me another “blue shampoo” to try.  Sitting directly across from me was a woman, 60-ish, with long, white and silver hair, ponytail length. She was stunning.

image: Bill the Cat and friends… don’t you love that image?  Bill the Cat is the unofficial mascot of Swapmania until I get an email from Berkeley Breathed’s lawyers telling me to knock it off.