the cost

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

Henry David Thoreau

aol lacks proofreaders

Or people who can spell. On their music videos site, in the "Hear New Songs First" category, they spelled Nelly Furtado's song "Promiscuous" as "Permiscuous," although it is correctly spelled in the "Top 100 Music Videos" listing.

shampoo accessorized with toothpaste, nyc hotels

So, someone tell me why drugstore.com thinks that toothpaste and dental floss are the perfect accessories for Neutrogena Triple Moisture Cream Lather Shampoo.

My theory? Poor categorizations. Like Amazon. Although drugstore's search engine is better.

In a completely unrelated question, anyone have recommendations for NY City hotels?

stain removal

I was freaking out because the permanent ink at the bottom of my bottle of face wash seeped into the plastic of my shower unit. But! This site had wonderful recommendations. I can state that a denture tablet sprayed with hot water and left overnight will get pesky stains out.

Shampoo is great for getting makeup stains out of clothing.

And when you cut yourself shaving and don't notice until it's on your socks, hydrogen peroxide is great. I actually ran across a site which said shampoo works well too, but I haven't personally tried that.

desnuda by emanuel ungaro, The Emperor of Scent

I may be a fan! It smells soft and refined. A bit on the delicate side but interesting. Something a bit spicy and lightly sweet.

I can't remember who recommended this, but it's quite lovely so far. Not quite me, but not bad.

Chandler Burr's book The Emperor of Scent is excellent. The intelligent, clear writing is a relief to read after scanning through too many poorly written best sellers and I really enjoyed his highly accessible treatment of the science described. Luca Turin sounds absolutely fascinating. Very readable. My father enjoyed it too.

styling my hair... not!

I tried blowdrying my hair straight today. Just for a more groomed appearance because none of the styling products I own seem to be able to do anything with my currently wavy and frizzy hair.

I lost patience after 5 minutes. Straightening hair takes too long! Hee. I am so impatient.

In other news, I bought Coty's Sand and Sable perfume. A big bottle of summery gardenia. But there's something about the coconut? mixed with gardenia that I don't quite like. I prefer The Body Shop Indian Gardenia over it. I guess I'll just break Sand and Sable up into little samples for my friends to mess around with.

I also found Le Feu D'Issey Light at the duty free shop in Narita Airport, and because it smelled interesting and has been discontinued and is in the absolute cleverest little red rubber casing (you rotate the bottle inside it's case until the nozzle is higher than the rubber casing, then you can spray it; rotate it back for normal storage). I still can't decide whether to resell it or open it up :D. I want it, but it's pure materialism speaking.

I finally (finally!) got to try Yves Saint Laurent's In Love Again. The sample atomizer is kind of poorly designed and dribbles after you spray it, although the logo is cute. The scent is rather nice but a little duller than I hoped for. I wonder if the sample had gone bad? No fresh grapefruit tang. Pretty weak sillage too. Ah well. I need to try 4711. Maybe that'll give me a nice grapefruit.

I also spotted Flower by Kenzo Oriental in the Chicago airport, but they didn't have a tester so I couldn't justify buying it. They did have a tester for the recently discontinued Carolina Herrera Chic, which didn't impress me at first but the drydown was nice and rather chic (harhar). Not addictive though, so I am safe from that lemming.