The Thessaliad Redux

So let's say you're someone who's been selling a bunch of BPAL imps and bottles they wanted to get shot of. And you take an order from someone in another country for one bottle and a bunch of imps. About a month later, you realise that, while the bottle is gone, you still have those imps. The customer in the other country hasn't been in touch with you to say that they got the bottle but that the imps were missing. So you, being a conscientious seller of such things, get in touch with the buyer and ask if they ever got the bottle. They tell you that no, the order never arrived. So there you are with the imps the buyer asked for, but no bottle. Whoops. After reaming out the person you put in charge of sending out the orders, what is your course of action?

a) Apologise to the buyer, explain the situation and offer a replacement bottle from the ones you haven't sold yet, hoping like hell there's something in there they want.
b) Apologise to the buyer, explain the situation and tell them that you are going to order a replacement bottle from a local distributor ... unless there's something they prefer from the ones you haven't sold yet.
c) Apologise to the buyer, explain the situation and tell them that you are going to order a replacement bottle of that scent or any other general catalogue item that the buyer might want to make up for the inconvenience ... unless there's something they prefer from the ones you haven't sold yet.

In this case, I am the buyer. A particularly charming young lady on LJ was the seller. And I got option C. So for the record, miss_twilight is pure awesome (so seriously, if you happen to trip over any of her posts on the BPAL addict forums on LJ? And you like anything you see there? I recommend her highly), and I am getting a bottle of Shoggoth, which I have been looking for forever. Seriously, I thought the only way I was going to get my hands on that scent was to go through the BPAL site, which ... well, there are issues there with British shipping and card purchases and I prefer to avoid it where possible. And I at least still have the imp of the bottle I ordered in the first place (Sea of Glass, my first BPAL courtesy tithenai along with Sudha Segara). I wouldn't have minded both - I mean, I wouldn't have ordered it if I didn't like it; I ordered the bottle of Summer's Last Will and Testament on the strength of the imp, after all - but ... whole. Bottle. Of Shoggoth. I should feel bad for the whole thing where I'm getting something for a little bit less than it's worth, but I can't feel too bad because if I was going to get exactly what I ordered, the buyer would have lost money anyway to replace it and it was not my mistake that lost me the bottle in the first place.

Incidentally, still working on the whole WoD perfume thing. There's just not much to say until my bloody empty imps get here. But they're shipping from, like, South Korea or something so I am not panicking yet. I need more bottles and I desperately need a few more scented oils before I can make half of what I want, though. And if you could see the collection I've already amassed? The fact that I can still say that is scary.

*ahem* I had massive attack of migraine today. This was not fun, as you can well imagine. It's a fair bit better now, in that I can actually see straight and my head doesn't feel like someone's drilling in it. This was not so much the case this morning, when someone in the local area close by my open-because-of-the-muggy window was doing construction work. Sure, it's damn near impossible to deal with a migraine at work, where impromptu meetings happen maybe a foot away from the back of my chair a few times a day and I'm trying to type near-indecipherable, heavily-accented pseudo-English through a nasty tape hiss, but it's better than someone drilling. Still, I dosed myself with the knock-out painkillers (I pray this goes away entirely soon because I cannot afford more knock-out painkillers and average OTC paracetamol does not work) and when I woke up, the construction work had gone away and my head felt better.

Peering out the window this afternoon, though, netted me an interesting sight. In the back garden three doors down sits a blue box. With doors. Over which are written 'Police Public Call Box'. Yes, the neighbours three doors down have a freakin' TARDIS in their back garden. I just wish I knew which flat it was so I could leave a note saying, "Awesome TARDIS, guys".

And, to continue the theme of 'a Warcrack mention with every post' ... why are there level 85 Alliance NPCs in a level 30-40 zone? I went in what I thought was just a tiny touch over my head earlier (fighting level 35-36 bears with my level 33 paladin to get at gold and iron deposits in Western Plaguelands) and was doing really well until I wandered down the road and smacked into what I think was a Draenei and a Human. I just had enough time to mouse over them and read, "........What do you mean, level 85?!?" when ... smush. Dead belf. I have since moved back to Northern Stranglethorn. Amazing how good the mining is in a freakin' jungle ... plus I have all those quests. Mostly killing things. Woo.

First of all ... way to go, New York!

*ahem*

This is my break time between various bits of Flatmageddon. It is good that I have a break, because I am having a hard time feeling my arms and both my ankles are made of dull, achy pain. It's been a long, long morning.

It started with me waking up at ten to seven in the frigging morning. Without even the alarm being set. I don't even know. Anyway, at around 10am, a charming fellow turned up with my bookshelf. Huzzah! I then spent nearly an hour and a half putting the thing together and let me tell you, Argos furniture is not as easy to put together as Ikea furniture. Thankfully, I have screwdrivers. I don't have a hammer so I can't exactly put the back on ... yet. Still, it'll do for the time being and now I have a bookshelf that doesn't lean precariously! Yay! And it's the perfect fit for where I had in mind and I can even reach the bathroom light switch! Awesome!

Anyway, so by then it was about 11:30, my arms were kind of numb and I thought I'd best look up directions to the post office. Which was about when I noticed that I'd got the opening hours for the post office bass-ackwards; it's weekdays that it's open from 8am-1pm and Saturdays that it's only open 'til midday. And it's a twenty-minute walk. So I threw on the first pair of shoes I could step into and fled. Which is why my calves hurt; clogs + power-walking = BAD IDEA. Nevertheless, I got to the post office before it closed and now I have the first batch of essential oils yay! I also noticed as I fled the house that there was a brown envelope in my mailbox, which I assumed (correctly) contained BPAL. So on the whole, it's been a good day for Things Arriving At My Door. And I actually still have a bottle of jojoba oil and that means that the perfume creation can start more or less whenever! WOO! I'm a little lacking in pipettes and bottles but I'll think of something. I always do.

I've just scoffed down lunch and am more or less going to crash for a little while before my man-with-van stuff gets here. I have the cash to pay the man, so that's okay, and I'll worry about unpacking everything later. I should probably have a bit more of a tidy-up so there aren't bags and boxes and bubble wrap all over the place but ... not now. Not yet. Maybe when things hurt a little less. I mean, seriously. OW.

...Maybe there could be a nap. That'd be nice.

So ... there's going to be more perfume. Blame again, y'all. You know who you are.

Look, I have all this perfume. Some of it came to me as incredibly thoughtful gifts. I thought it was time I started ... y'know, wearing it. So even if I'm not going out anywhere, I'm taking to actually wearing a little bit of scented awesome, courtesy Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. Currently I'm wearing Al-Shairan, which starts off a little overpowering but is a bit better once it dries. I don't know entirely how that works, but it does, so I'm just going to smile and nod. Still, I don't think it's a favourite. I think it's actually making me sneeze.

Of course, this prompted me to actually take a look at the huge list of perfumes that I actually want and compare it to the stuff that people have for sale or swap on the various BPAL forums to which I ill-advisedly belong. And someone had, like, a whole bunch of ones on my list. (Unfortunately, because my list is so long, I didn't realise that there were more on my list available by said person, and am strongly considering swapping out a couple of the ones I did buy to fill the 8-for-$10 requirement for the ones that are actually on my list before the charming entity from whom I bought them goes to the post office. But then, sometimes there are surprises in the offing when I get random stuff, so ... pondering on a Sunday as I know the post office is closed, like, everywhere on Sunday.) And they had a bottle of one of my favourites for sale. So ... there are eight imps and a mostly-full bottle of The Lady of Shalott winging their way to me. I'm pleased. But still ... man, more perfume? What is it with BPAL? Do they infuse the perfumes with some kind of addictive chemical? What?

Aaaaanyway. I'm not the sort of person who makes new year's resolutions, but there is stuff that I'm determined to be better about from here on out, as decided a week or so ago. For one thing, a look at those X-rays of my elbow following my rib-sprainy slip-and-fall got me kind of worried about the whole 'not getting enough calcium because of the lactose intolerance issue and thus all but asking for osteoporosis' thing, so I'm getting myself back into the habit of daily calcium supplements. Also a daily glass of cranberry juice (small, because I hate cranberry juice) because doctors have told me that it's a good thing for me to be intaking due to potentially TMI sorts of issues. There's the perfume thing that goes along with a general increase in attention paid to my appearance - it's not like I'm going to go overboard or anything but like with my BPAL, I have a collection of flavoured lip glosses that I really need to start wearing more. I've been pretty good about the flat but I'm still determined to keep it reasonably tidy. Well, as tidy as I can when there's a lack of storage space, anyway. Y'know. Try to keep my house in order, literally and metaphorically speaking.

I tidied up today, cleared out the fridge, did some shopping and now I'm going to start some laundry and ponder actually writing. Y'know, something that's not the daftest Dragon Age fanfic I've come up with to date. (And yes, that's counting the Wizard-of-Oz parody thing.) I finally found the handwritten completion of my chapter-by-chapter synopsis notes and maybe getting those down with the rest will inspire me to get back to the next HIPPIE book. I've bashed away at it a little since bailing on NaNoWriMo (shaaaaaaame!) but it's really time I got it up and running again. So I'll have a look at the completed chapter synopsis and see how I go.

So ... yeah. I was going to use the last LJ post as a filler post and just edit it to put this lot in, but ... well, in the end, the list just proved too long to do anything with but make a whole new entry. The grumble, however, still stands. BLAAAAME.

( Cut for atrocious length - this is just ever so slightly ridiculous. )

I suspect I may already own Shanghai, Tisiphone and Vechernyaya, but I'll have to check.

[Edit: And one definite strikethrough. I remember I picked up "Ode on Melancholy" in a random "Need to order ten or they won't ship to the UK" deal. Still, I do adore that one.]

This represents five pages' worth of list. Five pages, single spaced for the most part, Arial font size 10. Five bloody pages. Can people even wear this much perfume? (Yes, I suppose they can; 365 days per year, something like 182 names on the ISO list, that's one perfume every two days, nearly exactly. Still!)

*ahem* Anyway, there's a bit of typing marked "URGENT!!" so I'd best get to that.

When I got up this morning early afternoon, dodgyhoodoo was bored and looking for ways to fill up a half-hour before going out. Therefore, he did the heavy lifting portions of the "let's gut one of the household PCs for spare parts" operation. He didn't have to, but it's nice to have some of this out of the way. It's been formatted now, and all it needs is to be hooked up in the Eshu-case.

Therefore, here's what I'm going to do: I'll make sure all my documents are saved and tucked away neatly, make sure that the up-to-date HIPPIE-writings are moved to thumb drive, pay up my FFXI content IDs, and then I will shut Eshu off. After that, I'll head to the local supermarket to pick up cola, smokes and lunch-food. After scoffing down lunch like it's going out of fashion, probably in front of something DVD-like, I will install the shiny hard drive and hope like hell that doing so doesn't end up with me killing the computer entirely. I'm pretty sure it won't, but I prefer not to go into these things with screaming overconfidence because then it comes as a surprise when something goes wrong. I prefer to be pleasantly surprised, thank you. Anyway, following that will be the tidy-up and the shifting of 40GB of music to its new home, if all went well. So ... glee?

In other news, I can has BPAL imps. A charming individual on bpalmarketplace was selling them a bit more cheaply than one can get on BPAL, and the shipping cost was better. We're talking better to the tune of $20 USD here. So I'm happy.

And I leave you with one last thought before I sign off for the afternoon, sponsored by the bizarre brain of dodgyhoodoo: "the teriyaki moo-fish". Think about it for a minute - the mental images involved are great.