Frog Blog

i'm writing this from my laptop. no great shakes there, but the fact that i'm writing from my desk at home is extraordinary. it's the first time i've been able to catch a wifi signal from home. it's wonderful! and it's free! i'm shocked-- it's only a 6% signal from someone in my neighborhood whose system isn't locked. occasionally, i can latch onto "apple" at 4% but they're locked so i can't log on. this is perfect. i'm not willing to part with the $70 required for internet connection at home because i have easy, free internet access at work. but once in a while... being able to access from home is awesome. i can blog! i can research for a book review i'm writing!

that's another new addition to my life: the occasional book review for my city's newspaper. it's a great way to be creative without a lot of commitment and the extra money is really handy. i've just finished my latest book and the review will be out in about a week.

well, shit! now that i can log on, i'm not sure what to even write about. my room's a mess and i'm about three quarters finished with the actual book review so my mind is elsewhere. so i guess i'll just say hello.

a few weeks ago a friend of mine had a hard time leaving a comment on one of my entries; if that happens to you, please email me and i'll try to fix the problem. ciao for now.

tomorrow i think i'm going to the perfume house to buy serge luten's "a la nuit." i've been wearing a sample all week and i think i'm ready to buy it. it's pricey but some friends of mine bought me a gift certificate to the store which will pay for more than half the perfume. yippie! i visited the serge lutens/shiseido boutique on my perfume tour in paris last summer. it was divine. if i'd known then how much i love serge lutens now, i would have bought a bunch of scents, especially the stuff that's not available in the united states. there's a lot of cool stuff not available here... but i suppose there's also a lot of cool stuff here that's not available there. like peanut butter. ? maybe peanut butter is cool. but it's fatty. perfume is not.

it's a nice night. it's rather balmy out. september here is full on indian summer, thank god. it's a nice transition into the rainy fall. i used to loathe september-- any month ending in "ber" for that matter-- but i've warmed up to september. i get sad when the summer ends. fall is lovely, yes, but it only shows a promise of winter, which is miserable. winters out here are mild compared to where i grew up, but rain is rain, no matter how you cut it. i told B we should do some really tradtional fall stuff this year: pick apples, eat a lot of corn and squash, go to a pumpkin patch, roast pumpkin seeds. i'm trying to think of ways to be upbeat. hard to do in the cold months. i see lots of reading and netflix in my future...

i bought that perfume i was talking about in my last blog: "a la nuit" by serge lutens. it's heavenly. three different types of jasmine! my love of perfume is growing. i'm trying to smell as much as i can. it's hard-- many department stores are stingy with the perfume samples. and to be honest, many of the perfumes in department stores make me want to gag. i've become a bit of a perfume snob. the cheap ones give me a headache. the other day a guy i work with came into the office and told me he wanted to plug his nose on the elevator because he was in there with 3 smokers. i told him it's the same for me when i'm stuck with someone wearing cheap perfume.

i'm still learning, though, and smell is so subjective. i'm trying to keep an open mind. there are a handful of websites that offer sample programs-- a cheap way to try extraordinary perfumes. so far i've ordered from two of them. i'm also trying to keep journals of what i have, what i've smelled, what i'd like to smell, etc.

there's so much in life that can bog you down: work, riding the bus with idiots, yuppies, people who don't watch where they're going, whatever. 85 percent of the time i'm all for living and letting live. the other 15 percent, i can feel so discouraged with humanity and america and people who drive too much. so i'm trying to think of ways to lift myself up during the 15 percent, and maintain lift during the other 85. perfume is one of my lift things.