February 1, 1999

Well, nearly all the slots in the Milk Soaps Swap I'm hosting are filled!! I'm thrilled; I didn't know if many folks would sign up, since I've never done it before. I think it's going to be a fun bash! I can't wait. I've got my soaps done and curing. I haven't named them yet. It's probably going to end up with a boring name like "Toasted Coconut" or something. Oh well. :)

Just added a couple vendors to my offline vendors page. Scanned through some old emails for the information, then deleted them... whee!!! Cleared some space in the old soap-newbies folder! :) I seriously need to catch up on my list mail. It's just so time consuming that I feel guilty if I read it at work, because then I get involved and before you know it I've knocked out 500 emails but I have a stack of work that I didn't get to. Oh, why couldn't they just ghost payroll me.. I live in Chicago after all! :)

Speaking of Chicago, wintertime here is getting dangerous... Like a week and a half ago, a chunk of ice fell off our building (OK, you remember the big snowstorm in January, blizzard, lots of snow, had to dig out our car, very cold, all that jazz -- well, it all froze to the sides of the skyscrapers downtown, and when it started to get warm, you can guess what happened) and smashed a Lexus that was illegally parked on the street in front of the building. We work in the Civic Opera Building, and there are two camps in here... the "He was parked illegally and got what he deserved" camp, and the "Well, getting your car smashed sucks pretty bad" camp. Me, I was initially more sympathetic to the car owner -- until I was riding in an elevator with him and he was complaining to his buddy about someone from the building who was trying to seek damages -- now I can understand being irritated about being sued over an act of god (which I believe is the legal term for that sort of thing) but you shouldn't talk bad about someone who got a shard of ice in her eye because you couldn't pay the $7 to park in a lot. And he was parked from like 2 PM on -- and the ice smashed his car at about 4:30 -- in a 5 minute no-standing zone. This chunk of ice just came sliding off the front of the building and smashed the roof of his car on the driver's side. Thankfully nobody was inside the car. Oh, so back to what originally got me talking... we had another building fall on someone's head. Well, not the entire building, just part of the facade. Fell on someone's head as she was walking down Michigan Avenue. Now I tell you, that has got to be one of the strangest things to happen to you in downtown of a large city -- muggings, sure; pickpockets, all right; narrow escape from crazed taxi driver, yeah -- but having pieces of buildings fall and hit you on the head??? And this wasn't the first time this winter that this has happened. About two months ago, part of a building on East Wacker Dr. (upper) fell off. What, did the expiration on the city expire or something?? Did we buy these building materials past the "Sell Before" date like on a milk carton?? I'm so glad I work on the 19th floor of a 42 story building; that's only 2000 tons of cement to fall on my head if this place goes. Yikes.

So I went to Walgreen's and bought a $15 Eurosealer. (Did I ever tell you about my theory that here in the States, adding the prefix "Euro-" to any noun instantly adds (pseudo-)prestige (and/or cheese) and inflates the price %50?) Anyways, I can now seal up the shrink wrap bags I got from :::Rob::: and zap them with a hair dryer! It's a little thing but boy am I excited! I gave a friend at work a bar of Bay Rum soap shrink wrapped and then with a cigar band label around that and he said he thought it looked really professional. Not bad for someone with about 20 minutes of spare time a week! LOL Hey, as long as you're here in your web browser, take a minute and click on this URL:

http://www.iGive.com/html/ssi.cfm?cid=1676&mid=9116

That URL takes you to iGive.com, which is a company that shows you ads, and when you click on one of the ads, they give a portion of the ad revenues to a charity. My pet charity (pun intended) is Harmony House for Cats, which is a no-kill, cageless cat shelter on the North Side here in Chicago. If you're not familiar with the concept, it means that they let their cats roam free within their house -- it's a three-story building that's been converted into a large place for the cats to live. The cats are separated by ages and temperaments, so that the shy cats are together, the young cats are together, etc. There are lots of cat beds and cat trees and some furniture for the cats to lie and climb and scratch on, plus toys for them to play with and brushes for volunteers to brush them with. The goal is for the cats to all find loving homes of their own, but sometimes a cat doesn't get adopted (some cats have special needs like blindness, deafness, or injuries from being a stray on the streets of Chicago), and for those cats, Harmony House becomes their home. Harmony House always needs to pay for veterinary care and medications, food, and cat care equipment, in addition to office expenses and paying their full-time staff. If you live in Chicagoland and want to purchase a cat bed or tree or some treats, you might drop by there next time you're in the neighbordhood, because they sell those goodies and the proceeds benefit the cats. Or if you have time and you're in the area, you might consider volunteering -- they have Tuesday and Thursday nights reserved for volunteers to come in and help socialize the cats -- get them more used to people and happy, so that they're more adoptable. If you can't own a pet due to allergies in your house, or you live in a tiny apartment or something, volunteering is a great way to get your pet fix in! And if you don't live in Chicago, please find a shelter around you -- or another deserving charity -- and donate some time or effort. They really appreciate it. :)