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So, I recently got kind of hooked on watching YouTube videos of, like, make-up how-to people and I guess, like, lifestyle vloggers? And by hooked I mean I watched like four or five which is an outstanding number for someone who normally won’t watch a video longer than thirty seconds, especially when you take into account that a lot of these clock in the 12-15 minutes range. My tv has a built in YouTube app that recommends things to me, I’m powerless against its inscrutable algorithm.
Anyway, these color-coordinated, put-together, spotless-apartment-living, spend-more-on-make-up-in-a-month-than-I-have-in-five-years ladies kept mentioning Bath and Body Works candles. And I guess it sort of stuck in my head and then Crystal and I had to go to an almost-city so she could see her dentist and there’s a Bath and Body Works in the mall there and then the next thing I know I was coming home with eight candles? I think I was drunk. Or maybe lightheaded from sniffing every single candle in the store. Repeatedly.
I like candles! They’re great. I don’t buy a ton, but we do have a mix of real and battery candles scattered around our place. They look pretty cool and all and Crystal is really into this thing where we have a little row of them in mason jars in a windowsill. And we buy the occasional scented candle — I just sent Crystal on a mission to buy one while she was at Walmart the other day in fact — but I’m not, like, crazy about candles. So, you know, I didn’t expect to come home with eight of them.
In our vegetable wax and lead-free wick induced haze, we bought:
Lemon Mint Leaf — Freshly cut lemon balm and spearmint leaves give a refreshing lift to a blend of vetiver and citrus — My girlfriend chose this one because it is eerily close to the basil-lime dish soap we use and love. Haven’t burned it yet, but has a good cold (what I learned on the internet is called) throw. The sales associate said it’s one of the most popular candles in their store. It’s too spring-y to burn now, but come March I think it’s going to be our go-to.
Sweater Weather — Cuddle up with an aromatic blend of eucalyptus, juniper berry, and fresh sage that celebrates the arrival of sweater weather — This is amazing. I smelled this one pretty much as soon as I set foot in the store and came back to it over and over again. We knew we wanted a big fall candle and it came down between this one and Leaves because despite having very different descriptions, they smell incredibly similar, but Sweater Weather just had something that Leaves was missing. I’ll definitely be buying Leaves eventually though.
Harvest Coffee — Relax with this rich, robust blend of roasted coffee beans topped off by creamy vanilla foam — I don’t like coffee at all unless it’s masked with a bucket of milk, sugar, and whipped cream, but I love the smell of it. This one gives off a great smell when it’s unlit, but once it gets warm it is way, way too sweet and caramel-y. I’m not really a sweet candle person (I learned in the Bath and Body Works yesterday) but if you are and you like coffee, you’ll probably love this one.
Bergamot Woods — An aromatic woodsy blend, highlighted by bright bergamot, fresh lavender, and deep green cypress — I love this one, love love love it. Like, can’t stop opening it and sniffing it and worrying about “wasting” it. It’s what fragrance people probably classify as a masculine scent and those are scents to which I am frequently drawn. I see it pop up alongside reviews of Flannel pretty often, but I did not like Flannel at all, so clearly this scent thing is weird and subjective. This has a good burn smell and a good, lingering throw.
Marshmallow Fireside — A sweet-toasty end to a snowy, fun-filled day — toasted marshmallows and sumptuous vanilla cream blend with the comforting aroma of rich smoldering woods — This was Crystal’s pick and I fought her on it in a lazy and unengaged way because I just thought it was way, way too sweet and was being obstinate about it, but now I can’t stop sniffing it. It’s got a nice sweet note that isn’t too cloying and there is that woodsy undertone that I think I was just missing in the store. Looking forward to burning this post-Halloween.*
Sparkling Icicles — As sparkling as the ice at the local skating pond, this fragrance features a citrus bouquet, bergamot, and a touch of holiday moss — Another one I love love love and another fairly masculine scent. I actually picked this one because it smells like the pine forest/river rafting section of Soarin’ Over California at Disney California Adventure and I plan to burn it and listen to the soundtrack and cry a lot. Just kidding. Kind of. Nice and woodsy.
Fresh Balsam — The invigorating aroma of evergreen woods on a clear, fall morning features crisp eucalyptus, fir needles, and cedarwood musk notes — Forget what the official descriptions says about fall, this is straight up Christmas, balsam is the smell of Christmas, and this one hits it just right. Not too woodsy, not too green, and it doesn’t smell like those little green Christmas tree car air fresheners.
Winter — A season full of fun in the snow is captured in notes of pine needles, clementine and winter woods — This one has some of the same initial scent as Sparkling Icicles, but it’s much less masculinely woodsy and much more cinnamon bark and pine. It’s more foody than floral, but not super sweet or sugary. I initially liked Snow Day better, but the more I smelled it, the sweeter it got, so Winter won out.
The big candles are $20. I still can’t get over that because it just seems absurd to me. I looked them up on the internet beforehand and I was like, “No, no way. $20 for a candle?! Who am I, Howard Hughes? I’m not lighting up the Spruce Goose over here!” And then I walked into the store and smelled them and just sort of stumbled from rack to rack, saying, “No, no, these are ridiculous. Twenty dollars!” until my arms were full and Crystal had to check us out and pull me bodily from the premises. To be fair, the little ones were 3 for $12 (3 for $10 online, but their shipping seems outrageous to me.) and that’s not terrible.
My official review is basically this: these things smell pretty great and there was an awesome variety of scents and even if I can’t get over their price — $20 dollars! — they’re pretty much worth it, especially if you’re not burning them all day, every day. Each is strongly scented but not in that chemical, headachy way and two of the three I’ve burned thus far have had an incredible range, smell great after being extinguished, and linger in a super pleasant, not overwhelming way. (And the third just isn’t my favorite personally, a ton of people probably love the crap out of it.) Plus, the labels peel off so easy, like, window-cling easy and if you care about that, you know exactly what a big deal that is.
Just give in and buy some already so we can, like, high-five about it or something. Jeez.
*: I think you should be aware at this point that I’ve been reading the official descriptions of these in Dana Carvey’s Church Lady voice. Important.
I am missing Disneyland today.*
Well, to be fair, I am never not missing Disneyland, but today is wielding a particularly powerful ache for it around my ribs. Sort of haunting and cold and sad.
 
This is partially because I spent a couple of hours last night reading posts about Disney projects that never came to fruition in their original forms — Port Disney, WESTCOT Center, Disney’s America, and The SS Disney — and partially because I am just a person who is subject to flights of whimsy, nostalgia, and misery.
» more: an overlong ode to disneyland
 I snagged this little meme from Rae who — as I mention frequently — is one of my very fave bloggers. Like her, I spent a lot of years on Livejournal and miss the dorky community aspects like twenty question memes and those super dumb-fun “What are you doing right this second?” ones! Who can resist rattling things off about themselves? » more: seventeen qs
On the eve of the momentous day that marks exactly one year since we arrived in North Dakota, let me explain you a thing, friends.
North Dakota is very small.
 
Physically, this isn’t true. It’s 19th in the country with almost 71,000 square miles. That’s, on a technical level, like, pretty big. I mean, it’s not Alaska or anything, but it’s big. But population wise? It’s a whole other story.
Even though there are 16,000 people here† there aren’t more people nearby. There are almost 50,000 people in my hometown, but the adjacent suburbs have even larger populations — like 50,000 and 100,000 and 149,000 — and then eventually just turn into Los Angeles. Here, we have to drive two hours to reach a city with a greater population than ours and that’s a whopping 40,000 residents.
Most of the space between what passes as a city here looks a lot like this:
 
Hell, even the area just beyond our neighborhood¤ starts to look like that.
Anyway, what this means is that North Dakota is devoid of things to do. I recognize, accept, and openly admit that I am spoiled to here and back for activities. I grew up in LA; I spent 2009-2012 going to Disneyland at least twice a month; I grew up a half a mile from the largest movie theater in Los Angeles County. I did not want for things to do. We drive two hours to go to the movies here‡ and if we’re not seeing something opening week, we’re seeing it in a dumpy closet theater from hell.
There’s nowhere to eat here. Nowhere particularly good at least and there is very, very little variety. There’re steak places and “bar and grill” places, a good fast-ish non-chain burger place, and one decent Chinese place (What up, Rice and Spice!) but even after a year of being here, most of the food options feel like a punishment. And it’s all crazy expensive. Everything is here. The cost of living is bananas and the grocery stores’ idea of fresh chicken is defrosted chicken. It blows. A lot.
But even without Disneyland and without Thai food (It’s been more than a year since I had Thai food. Or good Mexican. Or decent pizza.) and with little to do here but dick around on the internet and look at clouds. day to day life seems not so bad.
People make do with very little all over the world all the time. And I don’t say that in a “Oh perspective will fix things” kind of way but in a “Humans are amazing” way. And they do more than just make do, they live full, happy lives. And maybe I’m not happy here and can’t wait to get back to California, but I’m okay and for now, okay is, well, it’s okay.
*: The first two times I did it, I did not account for the translation to a square, so I at least feel okay about this even though I had to do it four more times after I did start accounting for the square. Sorry if it’s wrong. Sorry I’m not sorrier. Sorry I am terrible at math. Sorry it’s what kept me from going into astronomy. Sorry you have to tolerate my second choice.#
#: Writing.
†: This is in theory actually closer to 25,000 currently because of the oil boom, but there are no current, accurate figures on the internet as far as I can tell.
¤: When we tell people where we live — a new development on top of what is considered a “hill” here which is actually, like, a twenty foot rise in elevation just outside of the city limits — they often go, “Oh, you live in The Hills” as though it’s Hills, Beverly or some shit. 9021NODAK.
‡: We do, very technically, have a theater. Unfortunately it has not been updated in some time and thus has no moveable armrests. I am not going to jam my fat ass into a seat and be miserable for two hours of the only experience I treat as reverently as faithful people treat church. I’d rather drive two hours. Plus there’s a Target there.
So, remember how in the way old days, people used to bookmark blogs and then just kind of visit them one by one every day to see new updates? Remember how that was normal? And then RSS went real wide and easy and popular and RSS readers became ubiquitous and life was really grand and quite enjoyable. And then Google made a reader and we all pretty much universally adopted it because it was pretty great. Including me! Even though I am pretty technologically obstinate when it comes to internet stuff.*
Anyway, you probably know that Google is killing Reader and you also probably know that’s a massive suckfest because you’re already all settled in with it. You’ve got tags and feeds and all of it tidy and organized and set up the way you like it. But come July 1st, it’s all going to disappear because, and I believe this pretty genuinely, Google kind of hates us. And even though you’re probably not as bad a procrastinator as I am — oh god do I procrastinate — there’s a good chance you still don’t know what to use after Reader bites it. If you are even a little like me — and I’m so, so sorry if you are, but at least you’re not alone — you’ve probably signed up for like nine different replacement RSS readers and found yourself overwhelmed by it all and then given up and probably gone to bed with a book. No? Just me? Okay, well, I’m still going to tell you about Feedly.
When I started my quest for a new RSS reader, I started with BlogLovin because a lot of great blogs I follow and love use it. But, I hated it. I hated the layout, I hated the functionality — you’re not going to give me an oldest first option, seriously? — and I just think it’s clunky. Sorry, BlogLovin, you just aren’t for me.
Then I read about a million posts about it with people recommending nine million different readers and then I just gave up again. But then I read this post and I signed up for Feedly and The Old Reader. I tried them both out and liked them fairly evenly with TOR pulling ahead just because I found its interface a lot more appealing than Feedly’s (Plus that lovely icon/logo), but then I download the Feedly App for IOS and Feedly launched so far into the lead my head spun.
Being able to read my RSS feeds on my phone has totally changed how much I keep up with them. I used to let my GReader languish until I had more than a 1000 unread items bathed in the daunt and dread of catching up on so much. Reading blogs I love should never, ever feel like a chore and it doesn’t anymore! Because, like Twitter and Tumblr (though the app is genuinely terrible) and Facebook and Instagram, I can do it all wherever I am, whenever I have a free moment to bury my face in my phone. I can read my feeds while I poop! We are living in the future and I love it.
Switching readers also made me go hard on my feeds and get rid of the ones I wasn’t really engaging with anymore. I cleaned up dead feeds and sorted them into categories to help me keep track of what I follow and just generally made me sit down and focus and be really fussy for twenty minutes and now I am much happier and get to read things I really care about in a timely manner.
So, now you go do it too. Go sign up with Feedly and import your GReader subscriptions and settings with one click and clean house and have a happy RSS reading future. Because you’re a good person and you deserve it. Besides, look how cute the little goodbye they made for GReader is!
*: This is actually patently untrue. I am an early-adopter by nature. My Twitter is more than six years old, my Tumblr will be five in November, and I make sure to namesquat every single new social media that launches just in case. I was slow to GReader, but loyal.
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