FRIDAY RANT: WAITING FOR DELIVERIES

I’ve been waiting all day for a shipment that is “out for delivery” and requires a signature. I really want to go out and run errands, but I know that as soon as I do, the van will pull up and I won’t be there to sign for the item. If I miss the delivery, I will have to sit around all day tomorrow waiting. The same principles apply to workers who are supposed to show up on a given day and say that they are “on their way”, arriving hours after the original appointment.

Obviously I can do other things while I wait (I’m doing something else right now), but there are things I really need to go outside and do – “outside” meaning various places around town, not puttering in the rain in my garden. With all the technology we have,  you would think it should be possible to communicate with van drivers and get an approximate delivery time, or else sign virtually so that they can drop the item off without a signature. Most things do, in fact, just get dropped off, but others require a signature. Perfumer’s alcohol is one such item. I buy it in 5-gallon drums (easier to lift, store, and pour than the 55-gallon size!) but go through it pretty fast, so occasionally find myself waiting to sign the form saying that I am the licensed recipient, presumably keeping all of those notorious front-door package thieves from stealing and drinking it.

What is it with those people who randomly steal packages from front porches without knowing the contents? Do they re-sell the items on e-bay or a garage sale? Do they try to return them for a refund? Do they try to figure out what to do with a $1.50 replacement part for a 20-year old washing machine or a 6-pack of dog de-worming meds? Do they just throw away all those things that they don’t want? I’ve read that people have started baiting their porches with Amazon packages filled with animal feces and other unpleasant things, or booby-trapping the packages in some way. Good old vigilante justice – it probably works on a local level.

At least I’m glad to report that my delivery came while I was writing this and was duly signed for and put away, so now I still have time to drop off packages at UPS and buy dinner at Trader Joe’s. At this time in the history of the world I’m happy for small things that go right.

[Painting by Carl Muecke, 19th century; FedEx van photo from Wikimedia; other photos from a general Google search] 

PERFUME ODDITIES: STARTLING BY EISENBERG AND SONS

Given the amount of information that’s floating around the internet, you would think that every perfume that’s ever existed would be fully documented. However, every so often I encounter one that seems to have been lost without a trace. I recently came across one when the mother of an acquaintance was downsizing and I agreed to sell a few vintage perfumes that belonged to her. In fact, today I opened an Etsy shop for that purpose, rationalizing it as an opportunity to sell off some of my own hoarded stash of perfumes, too.

There were some common perfumes like Joy and Ecusson from the 1970s, but the real head-scratcher was something called “Startling” by Eisenberg. I Googled and Googled it to try to find information and comparables, but nothing turned up. The only lead was an entry on Profumo saying that it was first released in 1949, was made by Eisenberg and Sons, and that “production was apparently discontinued”. Yeah, it must have been given that no one else seems to know anything about it.

Doing research on the company itself, I found that it is completely unrelated to the Paris company Eisenberg Perfumes, which currently has a line of mass-market fragrances and cosmetics. Eisenberg and Sons was an American company, founded in 1914 as a clothing and perfume retailer and wholesaler in Chicago. Legend has it that they started putting sparkly jewelry on the clothing to make it sell better, but the pins kept getting stolen, so they went into rhinestone and crystal jewelry in a big way. Eventually costume jewelry became their main business, and their pieces are now sought-after collector’s items. The perfumes have sunk into total oblivion – except for the bottle that I now have in my hands.

It’s not a very attractive bottle, just plain and cylindrical like the one in the vintage ad, with the name in big gold letters and an enormous gold “E” on the back (or maybe it’s the front?). The perfume itself is not bad, a typical vintage chypre-type floral. Based on the little I have to go on, it probably dates to the 1960s, or possibly 1970s, if they were still making perfume then.

I’m trying to decide whether to try to sell it and, if so, for how much given that there’s nothing like it listed anywhere. The alternative would be to buy it myself and keep it as an oddity.

If anyone reading this knows anything about this perfume, please leave a comment and let me know. 

HAPPY WINTER SOLSTICE 2017 AND A GIVEAWAY

A phenomenon we're all happy about, especially here in the far-north parts of the world like Seattle, is the fact that the days will start getting longer now. At least a few things are still predictable and worthy of hope.

The weather report predicts snow (yeah, right - I'll believe it when I see it), but the sky does have that matte beige-grey look to it. More to the point, I'm on holiday from the university for another week, catching up on shipping packages from our winter sale, which runs through December 26, preparing for winter quarter teaching, updating my websites as best I can, and spending some time with family and friends.

The break also means that I've got time to sort through my possessions and get rid of things I don't use (yeah, right - I'll believe that when it happens). As a hopeful first step, I'm going to offer another 100 g package of miscellaneous perfume samples, to be awarded to the winner of a random drawing.

All you have to do is leave a comment letting me know that you're still alive and reading this blog. The drawing will take place on December 31. If no one claims the prize, it will go back into a jackpot that will increase every time there's an unclaimed prize.

[The photo is of a winter sunset, not a fire.]

CLEANING UP AND REGROUPING

I just finished cleaning up all of the recent spam comments that seem to collect on the blog like rotting hurricane debris when I don't post regularly. Over the past quarter I've been too overwhelmed to want to look at the blog, so have just let it slide into oblivion.

I won't make any promises, but hope I can start back to posting after we get back from our short winter vacation in Victoria, BC on the 22nd of December. No promises, no resolutions, we'll just see how it goes.

[Photo from the local ski area's website. I just got a season pass to go skiing with a friend who goes regularly.] 

RED SUN, RED MOON, ASHES, AND RAIN

Last Friday I finished teaching the 4-week intensive class that I do every year before autumn quarter starts. That afternoon I went running for the first time in over a month, thinking it would be the last chance to enjoy the dry weather given that rain was predicted for Saturday – the first rain since May.

However, weather predictions are fickle things. When I woke up Saturday morning the eastern sky was the odd lavender-yellow color that I've come to know, and when I went outside I smelled the all-too-familiar scent of wildfires, stronger than ever. Or maybe I’m just sensitized to it now. The fires have been ongoing since the end of July, with many days when the sun was so obscured by smoke that it looked like the moon and was bright red in color. In the mornings when I drove to the university, I would sometimes find a layer of fine ash covering my car like snow. It was so volatile that I could clear my windshield by simply blowing on it. All day Saturday, the sunlight was so dim that was like the eclipse all over again.

About that smell of wildfires. It’s not a nice, cozy, aromatic campfire smell, as one might think. In fact, it reminds me of the smell of the hospital crematorium at an academic institution where I worked many years ago. They fired it up one day a week, on Thursdays, and the smell wafted all over campus. I’ve been thinking about how to characterize the wildfire smell, and the best I can do is a mix of a smoldering or recently extinguished campfire, an electrical fire, burned hair, scorched soil and rocks, and that hospital crematorium. It’s a medley of burned material, animal, vegetable, and mineral.

The wildfires are a major disaster for those close to them, but for those of us a little farther removed there is a certain bizarre beauty to the yellow-gray clear but overcast skies, the unaccustomed colors of the sun, moon, sunrise, and sunset, the muted orange color of weak sunlight filtering in through a window, and the specks of ashes floating through the fuzzy air. It was a strange summer.

Sunday night the rain finally came. Not a lot, but enough to save trees and plants that were on the verge of dying. This time of transition is the signal that I need to get back to work on the blog.

[Top photo by Gail Gross; the others are mine. It's interesting that my camera sees the red sun as white surrounded by red while my eyes see the whole thing as red.]