Arg, Monday.

[effex]

Sunday was fun - my family's not particularly patriotic so we use the 4th as an excuse to grill (we/they grill every weekend, it's not like they *need* a reason), rewatch Independence Day, and go outside to watch all the neighbors send up fireworks (rural Texas = firework shacks every two miles and fireworks going up *everywhere.* It's very different from Southern California, where You Do Not Do That Shit, and it still makes me uneasy). I ate a lot, it was fantastic.

Other awesome things:

* I was talking about this with zanzando on Twitter - Torchwood and Dresden Files fans, is Jack Harkness/Thomas Raith the best idea ever or the very best idea ever? The only thing wrong with it is, were I to plot it out, I would have to acknowledge COE's existence.

* New shoes! They are actual walking shoes and will hopefully not wear out as quickly as my last two pairs of Sketchers (six months for the last pair. That is not right).

* gallo_de_pelea's experiments in chemical free living - I've tried the grapeseed oil scrub recipe and it worked nicely, yay!

Also, you should check out her comic.

* In the same vein - I ran out of Cetaphil and have been looking for something to replace it with. Cruising the bath/body section at Central Market (a little like Whole Foods) netted me Burt's Bees Garden Tomato Complexion Soap, which has been amazing. I've had it just over week and my skin is much clearer, my skin tone's more even and everything's stopped being so oily. Online reviews say it doesn't work for everybody but it's sure as hell working for me.

* I'm going to pick up one of these mechanical washing machines after my next pay check - my complex's laundry room has become the bane of my existence and we don't have hookup in the apartment. Crossing my fingers that it'll be a workable between-Epic-Laundry-Days solution.

Webcomics (not on my sidebar. yet.) that I've been reading:

* Oglaf (SO NOT WORK SAFE)

* Love Me Nice

* Manly Guys Doing Manly Things

* The Meek

Comments

[quivo]

ZOMG please review that washing machine once you've bought and tried it out? If it actually works as advertised, it could be a nice, cheap solution to the rent-vs-buy W/D question we're having right now.

[effex]

I will! And yes, while it's not up to doing a full load, it'll hopefully keep me in jeans and clean underwear while I work up the gives-a-damn needed to haul stuff to the laundry room.

[elspethdixon]

I've had good luck (on the chemical free front) with using coconut oil and cocoa butter rather than commercial scented bath salts in the bath (my cats will drink from the bathtub and lick bath oil off me, and some essential oils, including Vitamin E oil, which is added to a lot of bath oils, can make cats sick). They make it harder to scrub the bathtub out, though, because they melt in hot water but congeal solid again when they cool.

[effex]

Ooh, that's good to know - my cat does the same thing (why?!). Thanks!

[elspethdixon]

I don't know, but the Stevelet will also lick peanut oil and olive oil off cookie sheets if you don't snatch him off the kitchen counter fast enough.

I was worried at first about the cocoa butter because chocolate is poisonous to cats and dogs, but it turns out that cocoa butter doesn't contain more than trace amounts of the chemicals in chocolate - it's just the fat from cocoa beans and pretty much nothing else.