My Candle Addiction

I've been meaning to mention this for a while, but I keep forgetting:

Ladies—have you ever been walking behind someone, maybe someone at work, and finally taken a good look at their ass? And then you say to yourself, 'My God... I hope my ass doesn't look like that!'

I made another pair of candles tonight (patchouli this time—not exactly Aaron's favorite), and used up the last of my first bag of soy wax. I have another bag arriving tomorrow, along with my new scents and wick clips. Anyway, this time, I preheated my containers and let my wax cool down more before pouring. I still get impatient, though. I know I shouldn't, but I do. I can't wait to see what the finished product will look like, and it's so hard to go slowly and do the process right instead of rushing through to get it done. Freakin' sit there for fifteen minutes stirring to cool the wax with one hand and holding a hot blow-dryer to my empty containers with the other. And I still jumped the gun and may have poured too soon. We'll see in a bit.

Both Kris and Mark, when they found out about my candlemaking, asked me first off, "So, when are you going to start selling them?" Should this be a clue, or is it just an assumption on their part? If I do decide to sell my candles, I'll probably sell them all online by word of mouth. That's assuming everybody likes the Christmas candles I make. Yeah, I'm going for a cheap and simple Christmas: wedding pics and candles.
:-)

I was standing by the printer at work and overheard one guy (the token "do-you-think-he's-gay" guy) talking about chocolates with raspberry creme filling, and chocolate-raspberry coffee. In one moment I wanted to turn to him and jokingly say, "I hate you," but as I was walking back to my desk, it occured to me that Chocolate Raspberry would be a great candle scent. I was also inspired by Kris' coffee this weekend—I believe it was Sugar Cookie Caramel Cappuccino or something equally sweet and scrumptious-smelling.

Aaron made a great analogy this weekend. He said that, with being on the Atkins diet, watching the Food Network is like being single and watching porn. Oooh-ing and aaah-ing over fudge truffles and the like, all very much out-of-reach, but appreciated for what they are nonetheless.

I think I've decided that making candles is kind of like that, too. If I can't stimulate my taste sense with yummy goodness (although there are plenty of good things I can still eat), I may as well stimulate my sense of smell. It's close enough. Plus, it's artsy-craftsy, and makes me feel productive and talented.

Oh, and speaking of talent, Kris brought his trumpet over for me to practice on. I have zero chops left, man. I got nothin'. Of course, iit never helps when you're trying to play softly because you live in a duplex. I may have to bite the bullet, overcome my embarrassment, and go practice in the practice wings of the music building on-campus. Those rooms aren't totally soundproof, and people can easily hear you in the hallway, which is one reason why I never used to like to practice for my requisite two hours per day.

Anyway, I'm going to start out doing sirens on the mouthpiece and thoroughly annoying my upstairs neighbor. Once I can successfully maintain sirens and long tones on the mouthpiece alone, I'll pull out the Bluecoats brass book and do some warmups from that. Once I can get back up to the advanced exercises that I could do in '97, then I'll feel confident again. The trouble, though, is that I was never good at doing solely exercises. But I can't start on the actual tune we'll be playing at the LakeShoremen, because I don't want to confuse my chops by playing it in entirely the wrong key. (Trumpet = Bb, Mellophone = F) Even if I learn the right fingerings, it'll feel different when I go to play it on a mello.

And incidentally, I've decided that once April rolls around and it's time to renew dianaschnuth.com, I'm switching over to HostRocket. I know enough people who've had their sites hosted through them that I'm pretty confident in their services. After putting up with eCom's bullshit for a couple of years, I've had enough. Even if their service would improve if I went to one of the higher-priced plans, I wouldn't stay with them because of their low-grade customer service. Plus with HostRocket, for $9.95 a month (two years prepaid), I get a full gig of storage space plus backend capabilities and unlimited email addies and unlimited subdomains (like details.dianaschnuth.com or candles.dianaschnuth.com).

So, I think I'm going to go check and see how my candles are setting up, and maybe try photographing some of my other candles for posterity. My fingers smell like patchouli. I smell like a hippie... minus the B.O.