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:

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.

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.

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: