perfume

It's been a while since I've tried a new round of perfume samples. I've been happily rotating through my standard fragrances, but I decided that I should try a few new-to-me fragrances, thanks partially to some suggestions from Angel B.

Today's mail yielded New Perfume Samples, part 1:

For those of you who haven’t talked to me this week, which to be honest is just about everyone: the kickoff for Tales From The Furlough is coming up very, very soon. Furlough #1 will take me to:

• Atlanta (3 nights)
• Detroit (2 nights)
• Minneapolis (2 nights, though really less than 36 hours)
• Denver (3 nights)

Crashspace has been generally secured, but there are details to work out. I estimate panic in approximately 48 hours. It’s a complicated, demanding itinerary, and I will have to be careful not to wear myself out early in the trip for fear of turning it into a slog, because what’s happening at the end of the trip (code sprint) is equally as important as what happens at the beginning of the trip (coordinating the wedding of two friends).

So what perfumes do you wear, you ask?

Old, odd, and unusual perfumes. Many modern-day perfumes smell one-dimensional and overly sweet to me. I think there's a trend now to create perfumes that are comprised of only perky and sweet ingredients, which I don't agree with. It's like smearing cake icing on your skin and calling it perfume.

It's hard to explain my idea that some parts of a perfume shouldn't necessarily smell yummy and edible on their own, because it seems contradictory — you want the end result to smell good, right? There's a reason that strong, even animalic undertones work well in perfume: contrast, dimension, and balance.

(Someone said once that their perfect perfume would be one that made her smell like herself, only more so and awesome. I thought that was a great description.)

My love of interesting perfumes came back to bite me last night. I joke at times that my sense of smell must have been intended to make up for my lackluster hearing and squinty vision, but it's a double-edged sword. Wear the wrong perfume on a day when my sense of smell is keener than normal (thirtysomething hormones are the gift that keeps on giving, sigh) and there's a very real possibility that I'll end up with at least a mild headache.

I came up with a disturbing, yet accurate, description for what the wrong perfume did to me last night. It felt like someone jammed a closed umbrella up my nose, and kept opening and closing it inside my skull. (This made it very difficult to focus on what was, otherwise, an extremely good dinner. Sorry, Jeff. Thanks for getting me home quickly.)

We’ve relaxed since getting here, having put down our daily lives on the floor next to our bags and picking up something simpler. We’ve flitted from restaurant to restaurant, snagging wings here, Chinese there.This afternoon, we went gifting, bringing Patrick along for the plan of getting him a birthday shirt. A simple plan, a dress shirt; help Patrick finally find a dress shirt he liked that actually fit, buy it for him and wish him a happy birthday.

Courtesy of Heather:

1. What cologne or perfume do you wear?
   Chanel No. 5. It’s my one indulgence.
2. What cologne or perfume do you like best on the opposite sex?
   Actually, I prefer nothing at all. Since I’m pretty sensitive to smells, I prefer people to smell like…people. There’s a difference between smelling like yourself and, well, smelling. I think you get it.
3. What one smell can you not stomach?
   Skunks.
4. What smell do you like that others might consider weird?
   I love the smell of bookstores. They have this wonderful paper/dust/age smell that’s wonderful. Such a powerful thing, memory…
5. How do you plan to spend your weekend?