Dry scent – 9/10 I love the smell of sandalwood. It’s probably my favorite scent. This has a powerful dry smell, which made me pick it up.
Application scent – 10/10 In the shower, the scent is enhanced. Even before you pick it up, the steam from the shower releases the scent.
Cleanliness – 10/10 I feel freshly showered for a few hours after I use it, and still feel pretty good for a few hours after that.
Moisturizing – 9/10 Usually the cleaner a soap makes you feel, the dryer it makes you feel. This is actually very moisturizing.
Lasting scent – 10/10 You will smell like a forest for most of the day. If you don’t do anything too strenuous, you can still smell it 24 hours later.
Overall – 10/10 This is my favorite soap I’ve tried. For the past few months when I get low on soap, I have gone and picked up another bar of this, then a new brand, instead of just two new ones. It’s got everything you need in a soap. I haven’t tried any of the other scents, but I’m sure they are just as good. I might pick up a few in the next couple months and test them.

Zum Bar goats milk soap lavender-mint

Dry scent – 8/10 I love the way it smelled in the store.
Application scent – 9/10 One of the best I’ve found so far as far as a wet smell.
Cleanliness – 7/10 I kind of feel like it leaves a sort of film. It’s not too bad, but it’s not the best clean.
Moisturizing – 8/10 Pretty decent moisturizing. Not as great as the River Soap Co. stuff, but still really good.
Lasting scent – 3/10 It stops smelling almost instantly. I’ve even tried lathering for a couple minutes, and letting the soap soak it, but it still won’t stay. It makes me sad because I love the way it smells.
Overall – 7/10 It’s decent, but I don’t think I’ll use it again. All the scents they have smell really great, but the biggest problem is that it won’t last.

River Soap Co. – Woodland (with hemp seed oil)
Dry scent – 8/10 The initial scent is sort of subtle. It smells really good, but it’s not extremely strong. The main thing you smell is hemp. I love the smell of hemp, so it was a win for me. Also slightly musky, woody (as the name suggests).
Application scent – 9/10 The scent wakes up a bit once you start to apply it.
Cleanliness – 9/10 There are tiny beads (or hemp seeds?) in it that really do a great job of exfoliating. Really good clean feeling.
Moisturizing – 10/10 It is hard to find a bar-soap that really moisturizes. Most of them leave me feeling really dry and sad. But this stuff is the most moisturizing bar-soap I have ever used. It’s like using body wash.
Lasting scent – 9/10 It can last a very long time, even after some minor sweating. It’s a subtle smell, but nice.
Overall – 9/10 The first few times I used it, I wasn’t too impressed. The scent didn’t last long. I guess it just had to be broken in, because it took off after a few uses. So far, it’s been my favorite soap.

Here is a key for what each category means:
Dry scent – this is what the soap smells like when it’s dry (how clever of me!), what it smells like in the store. This is a key point in buying soap, because this is where you determine if you will spend the money on it or not.
Application scent – what the soap smells like when you get it wet and lather it up. This is usually what your bathroom will smell like for a bit after you shower, so it better be a good smell.
Cleanliness – how clean you feel after using the soap. Some soaps make you feel like you’ve just climbed out of a hole, and some make you feel like you’ve been running through a damn rainbow.
Moisturizing – how well it moisturizes. A lot of bar-soaps leave you feeling pretty dry, so this will test that.
Lasting scent – how well the smell holds. I’ve found that most basic soaps (Ivory, Dove, etc.) have almost no lasting smell. You forget what the soap smells like as soon as you step out of the shower.
Overall – obviously, the overall grade. This will determine if you should buy it or not.

Chandrika Ayurvedic
Dry scent – 10/10 I fell in love with this scent instantly. It’s very powerful, very flowery. The ingredients list says the main ingredient is coconut oil. It also has some lime in it. I can smell a hint of citrus, but not much. I can’t really smell the coconut at all. It just smells like somewhere they burn a lot of incense.
Application scent – 10/10 When you apply the soap, it smells up the whole bathroom for a couple hours. It really wakes you up.
Cleanliness – 8/10 There are no beads in this stuff, and beads always make me feel cleaner. I have no idea why. It’s still a very nice, clean feeling.
Moisturizing – 7/10 Decent for bar-soap, but not fantastic.
Lasting scent – 9/10 This stuff will last all day, as long as you’re not doing much sweating. I’ve used it before work and the scent will stay for most of my shift. I’m not talking about just not smelling bad, I’m talking about having the same strong scent as when you first stepped out of the shower. I’ve also used it when I have done nothing at all for the day, and it lasted about 12 hours.
Overall – 9/10 I definitely recommend this soap, especially for the money. The bar isn’t massive, but it’s a decent size, and it’s only about $1.30 at Whole Foods and Akins. I will most likely buy this soap again. It is a strong scent, though. So if you don’t want to smell like flowers and incense all day, don’t buy it. I don’t think they have any other scents; just the one.

Why do people stop building forts? I am moving in with Zack and Faith in a couple months, and I swear I am going to build so many damn forts. They will probably come home all the time to a fort built in the living room with all the kitchen chairs and couch cushions. (side note: I just had to look up cushion on dictionary.com because I had NO IDEA HOW TO SPELL IT. I honestly don’t think I have ever had to write that word before, and now I feel like an idiot for not knowing how to spell it.) I will sit in my fort and play video games and read and be AWESOME. Really, the only thing you can do in a fort is be awesome.

You know what else I miss doing? Just jumping off the couch onto a giant pile of cushions. I used to do that all the time (sometimes with a cape… usually the cape was just a blanket tied around my neck) and it was so fun. I should buy a couch with massive cushions so I can do that.

I think the girl in the Clearsil commercial just now was trying to seduce me. It was really creepy and I feel violated.

Anyway. I don’t think this post had a real point. So now I’m just going to talk about random stuff.

I finally got all caught up on Hyperbole and a Half the other day. Allie is so insanely funny. I hate how now that I’m reading it, she isn’t updating as often as before. She used to post things sometimes three or four times a day. Now she’s posting like once a week. It’s pretty lame. They are amazing, but I still wish there were more. I want to move to Montana to hang out with her and Boyfriend.

Yesterday, Meg was asking me about Drive-By Truckers’ albums, and it made me decide to do another full listen-through. I’ve done it a few times before; I start at track one of Gangstabilly and listen to every track in order on every album. It’s lots of fun, except when I get to the crap songs, like some stuff on Southern Rock Opera. I was on SRO today and I had to listen to Cassie’s Brother while I was on lunch at work. That is one of only a few songs that have zero plays on my iTunes. I listened to it a couple times on CD when I first got it, and that was enough. It’s just a terrible song, and I hate it. I wish Rob Malone never wrote or sang any songs. And whoever that other chick is, she is just as bad as Rob. What really sucked was that it was the last song to play before my lunch was ending. So I stayed about a minute later, just so I could listen to the first little bit of Life in the Factory. Anyway, I just started Dirty South (like, two minutes ago) so I’m halfway through. I just love to listen to the changes in their sound from album to album, and the songs they put on each album. They put songs like the President’s Penis Is Missing on Pizza Deliverance, then you get to albums like Brighter Than Creation’s Dark which have songs that sound funny at first (Daddy Needs a Drink, You and Your Crystal Meth) but are actually pretty serious songs. I love these dudes, and I cannot wait to see them for the third time in June!

I hung out with Kaylee on Thursday. We went to Starbucks to work on some LARP stuff. We got a bit done, but then got distracted with other stuff. We went to Kirkland’s, Pier 1, and Target, to look at apartment stuff. We found this awesome table we’ll probably get. It’s $250 for the table and four chairs. Pretty sweet. I’m really glad Kaylee is so excited for the apartment too, since Matt doesn’t care about design or anything. She is taking his place, and she and I get to look for stuff!

Friday morning, Jodi and I went to Gardners for some book shopping. I love that place. I got Carrie and the Silmarillion. I think Jodi and I are going to try to make it a weekly thing to go there. Also, if you go between 7 and 10 and eat breakfast at the cafe, you get 30% all books. So we’ll be shooting for that. I think I just came back home and did nothing after that.

Saturday was kind of crazy. Matt and I opened alone. Joylina didn’t really do anything the night before, so we barely even touched the truck; almost everything we put out was from backstock, which is not supposed to happen on truck days. We were relatively up and ready by 8, took a break, then started on the truck. All we did the rest of the day was work on putting the truck up. Whoever ordered ordered a 9 pallet truck. Which is WAY too much. We ended up with three pallets still in the cooler because there was nowhere to put them on the shelves. Apparently yesterday Darren talked to Matt about how much we suck. I guess it’s fine for Darren and Casi to be in the cooler the entire day and have it look like shit when someone else gets there. But if Matt and I do it, we are terrible. He pisses me off so much. It would be great to have a team lead who actually works and leads.

After work, Matt, Josh, and I went to pick up Kaylee. We came back to my house and I played Silent Hill a little. But no one was actually interested. Kaylee was kind of, but not enough. So instead we just checked for emails for Cam from Craig’s List. We had a potential, but she didn’t have a car. She sent a picture and she looked exactly like that chick in Family Guy who tells Brian he has a son. Funnily enough, that episode was on when we were doing all that. We went to Burger King so they could eat, then to Ihop. We told Cam about his personal ad and he thought it was incredible. I took Kaylee home, then Matt, then when I came home my mom had to have a talk with me. Apparently she was snooping through my things and found my Scotch. So we had this talk about how I drink. I tried to explain to her how I barely drink, and I usually only have like one or two drinks and I never ever get drunk. But she didn’t understand. She is so convinced I am going to get addicted to everything. She doesn’t understand that I have willpower. I smoked for about six months, and at the end I was smoking quite a bit. Then I quit and it was extremely easy. I’ve been drinking since I was like 17 and I have only been drunk a couple times, and I don’t even like it. But whatever. She wishes I had friends who go to church. Because you can only Christians are good people.

Yesterday was a whole ton of fun. I picked Kaylee up and we went shopping. We were planning to go to five different consignment furniture stores. We couldn’t find two of them, and two of them were closed. We did go to one, and found a couch that was pretty awesome. The color was a bit off, but it was okay. It was extremely comfortable, though. And it was only like $400. We went to some other places like JCPenny Home Store, and we looked at a few places in the mall. We needed to get some LARP stuff done, so we sat down on a couch by the Trampoline Thing (actual name, no joke) to start some work. Turns out watching people jump on a trampoline is extremely distracting. And there was this guy upstairs who was staring at all the kids with this creepy smile. He was there for like an hour or more. It was creepy. We got a little bit done, but I think when we actually get together, we get distracted. So I think we need to do it all over the internet or phone.

After the mall, we went to Walmart to see our homeless friends. When we were driving by, there were these two homeless guys walking up there and Kaylee was like “oh no!! Those guys are going to steal their business!!” and I was like “umm, that IS them.” They had a sign that said “Devil stole fiddles, went to Georgia. Need money to give chase. Thank you!” The other side said “God bless.” The God bless side got them a lot more money. They ended up making over $35 in less than an hour, which is completely insane. We also saw some insane lady at Walmart, but Kaylee tells that story best, so hopefully she will post it and you can read it there. After Walmart, we went to Barnes and Noble to get some LARP stuff done. But as soon as we got there, Cam and Matt showed up, so we never got to work. So then I had to take Kaylee home because her mom is crazy. I love hanging out with Kaylee. She is so much fun. I’m glad she gets so excited about the same stuff, like furniture shopping and LARP. She’s my best friend.

Today I am going to really try to get some LARP stuff done. Kaylee will be hanging out with Matt, so I’m guessing she will not get anything done. I’d like to get a decent amount done on actual gameplay, and hopefully get a few ideas down for story. I also have the first four seasons of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, so I’m not sure how much actual work will get done. But we’ll see.

My grandaddy told me, when he was just seven or so
His daddy lost work, and they didn’t have a row to hoe
Not too much to eat, for seven boys and three girls
All lived in a tent, bunch of sharecroppers versus the world
So his momma sat down, wrote a letter to FDR
Then a couple days later, a couple county men came in a car
Rolled out in the field, told his daddy to put down the plow
He helped build the dam that gave power to most of the south

So I thank God for the TVA, thank God for the TVA
Where Roosevelt let us all work for an honest day’s pay
Thank God for the TVA

I think I’m going to start making wine in the very near future. Namely, cara cara orange wine and tangelo wine. Probably make blueberry wine also. Matt and I were talking about making alcohol yesterday. He and Cam want to make liquor, which has to be distilled, which is illegal. So you can’t really go out and buy a distiller for it, but I think you can use a distiller thing for water. I just don’t know how to do it. I’m sure the internet knows. I finally found out why beer and wine have lower alcohol content than liquors: because yeast can’t survive above about 16% alcohol. Yeast eating sugar is what makes the alcohol, so if your yeast dies at 16%, it won’t get any higher than that. But 16% wine is pretty strong. I’ll probably be shooting for about 13%. Good amount of alcohol without overpowering the orange flavor. I’ve never had wine made from anything except grapes, so I’m pretty excited.

I bought a ton of stuff yesterday. I didn’t spend a ton of money and most of it was stuff I needed. I got some lemon shampoo (SLS-free, of course), some rosemary conditioner, grapefruit body wash. I got two new soaps which are pretty awesome. The first is some cedar-scented stuff Michael and I were looking at last time we were at Whole Foods. I love the smell of cedar. The second is pine tar soap. This stuff rules. It’s the first soap I’ve had that holds its scent for a long time. And it’s a good scent. It’s very woody/smokey. It also seems to clean really well. I also got some things like a beard/mustache comb with scissors and tweezers and so on.

I got some books at Borders with the gift card Zack and Faith gave me for my birthday. One of the books was Buffy season 8, book one. I also got the Silent Hill DVD for like $7. Score.

I finished the Buffy TV series last night. Very emotional. *SPOILER ALERT* Scroll down past the next paragraph if you don’t want Buffy spoilers.

I hated season six so much. It was my least favorite season of anything I’ve ever seen. The main reason I hated it so much was because Tara dies. Tara was my favorite character. I actually named this cat Sarah made me for my birthday after her. Her death just seemed so pointless. It caused Willow to go into a frenzy and end up killing a man. As much as I hated Warren and everything, I did not want Willow to kill him. Tara’s death ended up basically leading to Willow almost destroying the world. Luckily, Xander saved the day by telling her he loves her over and over. So emotional. There were really only a couple of happy endings in season six, and I love happy endings. I liked season seven so much more. Things were a bit more lighthearted, even when they don’t think they will win. Even when Xander loses an eye. Something happened to me at the end of the series that happened to me in Harry Potter. In Harry Potter, when people like Sirius and Dumbledore died, I cried a lot. But for some unknown reason, the death that hurt me the most was Dobby in book seven. I cried more at his death than almost any part of the entire series. I have no idea why. I didn’t even like him at all. In one of the last few scenes of the last episode of Buffy, Anya dies. She gets sliced almost completely in half. I liked Anya a lot, but she wasn’t one of my favorites. Maybe top five. Tara, Willow, Dawn, Xander, Anya. That’s probably it. Anyway, her death hurt me so much. I don’t know why. At the end, when Xander asks Andrew if he saw what happened, Andrew says “she died saving my life.” Xander says “that’s just like her.” I LOST IT at that part. I was also pretty emotional because it was the very end of the TV show, so that might have contributed. I already miss the show and want to start over again. I’m trying to get Kaylee to start it and let me watch it with her, so I have an excuse to start again. I did borrow season one of Angel from Rachel, which I will probably start pretty soon. After I get sort of caught up on things like two weeks worth of Conan.

I got some pretty great things for my birthday. Sarah made me a knit cat, which I named Tara after my favorite Buffy character. She is so adorable. Zack and Faith got me a Borders gift card and some Vitamingum. Sam and Rachel got me a bunch of camo stuff for airsoft. Pants, shirt, belt, jacket, and bandanna. I am so excited to use it. Meg got me something, but apparently her sister took it to Norman with her. Which is what she did with my birthday present last year. I never got that present. Hopefully I will actually get this one, but I’m not really counting on it. I had a pretty awesome birthday. I went to Sam and Rachel’s and we went to Kilkenny’s and stuff. Some of my friends came, and it was good times.

Matt and I have been talking about getting an apartment together in a couple months, which I’m really excited about. I think he would be a good roommate, plus I’ve been talking to his girlfriend Kaylee a lot lately and I would really like to hang out with her a lot more. She’s really cool. He’s moving out of the apartment he’s at now (though he doesn’t actually stay there and hasn’t in a long time) because they’re pretty much always partying. So I’m thinking that means he won’t be doing a lot of partying when we get a place, so that’s a plus.

Kaylee has been added to the list of girls who are supposed to be finding me a girlfriend. You’d think with her, Faith, Sarah, and Rachel, someone would find me someone. No luck so far. Probably because every girl in the world is taken. Or a crazy, ugly whore.

Buy more dressy clothes. I need a couple more pairs of nice trousers, a few more shirts, and a suit. By the end of the year, I want a nice black suit.

Go see a movie at least twice a month. I would like to try to go once a week, but we’ll see. Also, the fact that there’s not always something I want to see makes it less likely I will go every week.

Buy four CDs and two DVDs a month. I have been doing this with CDs since I started working at Target, but I want to start getting DVDs also. I think instead of doing that this month, I am just going to buy the Gilmore Girls box set. If I have the money. I am going to try to get a new TV this month too, so I might not have the money for Gilmore Girls.

Make monthly/weekly plans with friends. I talked to Michael and Sarah a few weeks ago about going to Casa Laredo once a month. I would like to try to set up time with all my friends like that. Not that I only want to see anyone at those times; I will still hang out with them at other times.

Get going on school stuff. I need to really figure out what I can actually do, and start working towards that. I will probably end up doing GIS, since I can’t really be a regular cartographer.

Start work on custom figurines. I am going to start trying out different molding clays pretty soon, and get a plastic molding kit.

Complete my DnD world. I need to start making some cities and towns, and work on weather patterns. I’d like to have a campaign guide ready by the end of the year.

Figure out how to read knitting patterns and start making stuff to sell on Etsy. I already have a few scarves lined up for some friends. Then I am going to start making some to sell on Etsy. I need to learn how to read patterns so I can make things like socks and sweaters and all that stuff. Probably blankets too.

Have Michael teach me guitar stuff. I am pretty good at rhythm stuff, but I can’t play lead. Michael is awesome at lead stuff, so I want him to teach me.

I think that’s everything. If I think of something else, I will add it.