The Girlie Cone Of Silence

Recently I was turned on to a product called Diamond Candles, and I thought they were worth sharing about. The company produces scented candles made from soy wax, which burns cleaner and about twice as long as the paraffin wax of most other candles while effectively filling your room with fragrance. Because it’s soy-based the wax can even be used on your skin as a lotion once it liquefies—I double checked this with the company—and, even after four hours of burning, it never grew uncomfortably hot to the touch. Each candle weighs in at 21 ounces, making them comparable in size to the largest offering from Yankee Candle. So, what puts the “diamonds” into Diamond Candles?

Well, that would be the rings!

Inside every candle is a little plastic bag wrapped in gold foil, and inside of that bag is a ring worth anywhere from $10 to $5,000. There’s even a spot you can see from the outside of the jar the highlights about how far down within the candle the ring is. Each ring is random, and of course most of them will fall closer to the $10 end of the spectrum, but there are some truly beautiful pieces to be uncovered. Many members of the company’s thriving fan-base share pictures of their rings; pictures of rings found worth less than $100 can be seen on the official website as well as on the company’s Facebook page.

It’s not hard to see where the fans came from either. Aside from an interesting product, Diamond Candles has great customer service as well. They have a fairly extensive number of topics covered on their site’s FAQ—including instructions for how best to remove the label from and clean the reusable jar that the candle comes in—and send prompt and thorough responses to direct inquiries. The individual candle pages also feature a system that you can sign up for if it happens to be out of stock, so you can be notified when it comes back in. It works very well!

I didn’t find many flaws with the concept or the company, but there are a few worth mentioning. Because the rings are truly randomized there’s no way to guarantee a specific size will appear in a specific candle and, beyond that, most of the rings will be sized somewhere between 6-8 (these are apparently the most common sizes). There’s also no real way to tell how much your ring is worth unless you get it appraised, though they also give some tips on how you might be able to better ballpark your guess in their FAQ. People looking to buy immediately should also make sure they have the “in stock” category checked while they browse since scents can out of stock quickly at times. (If in that case, like I did, you choose to be notified when it comes back it’s also a good idea to buy it quickly—some scents only last a few days at a time even after restocking.)

I liked these candles so much that I decided to get one for the ladies of my family for Christmas this year. They loved the scents that I chose for them and can’t wait to find their rings. At $24.95 they’re a few dollars cheaper than a Yankee Candle, with the bonus of a surprise ring—definitely worth it for me!

I think the first Queen song that I ever heard was probably "We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions." (And I think that's probably true of a lot of people my age.) We'll call that the one thing I enjoyed about sports events growing up. XD But they're not my favorite.

As silly as it may sound, my favorite Queen song will probably always be "Princes of the Universe," introduced to me by Highlander: The Series. Aside from just liking it as a song, it is sort of inextricably linked in my mind to all Highlander properties. (And I sincerely feel that any attempt at making something in that universe without any Queen music, especially that song, is a fair early barometer for it ending up a lesser product. Here's looking at you, The Raven and The Source.) The series is one of my fondest tv memories from growing up; thinking about it makes me nostalgic in the way that some people feel about Thundercats or GI Joe. So hearing that song always makes me happy as, in addition to it just being a pretty rockin' tune, it also reminds me of one of my favorite things from when I was younger.

While I know I’ve been mostly failing at posting here the last few months, I knew I’d definitely be missing November again because I knew that I was definitely planning to participate in NaNoWriMo again. This year, I was happy to say again, I crossed the finish line on November 28/29th (technically the 29th because it was after midnight, but it still counted me as the 28th).



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Congratulations to my fellow NaNoers, whether participating or finishing. I think this year was the most enjoyable ride for me to date, and I hope everyone else loved going on the crazy adventure too!

So, yesterday (Thursday) I wrote about the problems I’ve been having with a tooth that turned out to have an abscess. Thankfully, I was actually able to get it completely treated today.

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So now I am, thankfully, all fixed up. Big thanks to everyone who expressed concern/sympathy/sent well-wishes; I have a big hole in jaw that’ll take some time to heal, but all in all it’s well worth it, and I’m so, so glad that I was able to get everything taken care of so quickly!

Interrupting my (late) post plans for a health update. Saturday I started having a mystery mouth pain that I initially chalked up to sinus problems—I have a long history with those. Over the next few days I found out that I was wrong.

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I have an antibiotic now, and Oxycodone, which…is not doing as much for me as I’d hoped. And tomorrow we’re going to start shaking down the phones of the appropriate medical people to get me treated; my mom is determined that something will be done for me tomorrow. Meanwhile, the shaking is less but still there, and the whole left side of my head/neck is tender at best, giving me pain jolts at a touch at worst. My cheek, just under my eye, is the worst, along with my left ear, which is aching like it’s the infected thing. I’m hoping that when it’s time for my next dose of meds I’ll be able to go right to sleep, because I’m not sure I’ll be able to go under otherwise. (Obviously I called out of work again.) And I’m really hoping that someone can actually fix me tomorrow. I know this isn’t the worst thing I could be going through, but I don’t think I’ve ever dealt with pain this bad before.

I’ve got a growing pile of things that I keep meaning to write about, but unfortunately they’re going to wait a bit longer as something much more important came up today. It had been a pretty good day—work wasn’t terrible, plus a package I’d been waiting on and my tax refund showed up in the mail—when I got home from work. My parents weren’t far behind me, I didn’t realize they’d been out with the dogs until then. My father picked a little fight with me about where I’d parked in the driveway then gave me a him-apology. Then he told me that Sasha, my younger girl-dog, had terminal cancer; the doctor today only gave her two to three months. It cut my knees out from under me.

We didn’t get her from a puppy, we found her by chance a few years later in a no-kill shelter, one of those fate things. Because we already owned her older brother, not even a year older, just from a different litter (their parents were the same, owned by a friend of my mothers). She’d gotten pregnant before she was a full year old, which screwed up her own growth development, and those people kept the puppies and shipped her off. I’m a little fuzzy on all the details after that, I think she had at least one other owner before the shelter but I’m not sure. She had, still has, abandonment issues. But she decided that I the human in the house that belonged to her, and she claimed me. Lexi too.

She hasn’t been feeling well the last week or so, since my parents returned from out of state (they take the dogs with them). She’d been throwing up a little and hadn’t eaten in five days—my parents were worried that she might have eaten grass with a chemical on them, or that a bone she’d eaten was hurting her insides, so they took her to our regular vet and then a super specialist. The super specialist found a sizable tumor/ulcer in her stomach, and that the cancer had spread throughout her organ systems, at least to her liver and her lymph nodes. None of this ever showed up on the outside of her body, she never had any lumps. And any sign that might have been feeling bad until now…probably looked like an arthritis attack (which she has) was making her lay down more. But even now she still wants to go for walks, and wags for you when you look at her or pet her, and still seems like a happy puppy. Just, if she lays down she doesn’t want to get up again for a while and she doesn’t want to eat.

When my dad told me what the vet said I wanted to cry right away, I could feel it, but I didn’t actually until I told Lexi a little while later. Two to three months if she starts eating again, as soon as starvation if she doesn’t was the full prognosis, with meds to hopefully help with the eating; she’s at least been keeping herself well-hydrated. I cried again when we finally did get her to eat something for the first time in five days—a few small spoons of vanilla ice cream. My parents are looking for a second opinion from another canine oncologist, half so they’ll know if it really is untreatable and half hoping that he’ll say he’d try treating it with puppy-chemo. (It saved my neighbor’s dog.) She’ll be ten in June, which would be the youngest we’ve ever lost a dog; the current youngest is thirteen.

I take pet related health problems so much worse than people and, yes, this is hitting me harder than my grandmother’s ailing health hit me senior year in university. I worry about how bad she might feel in the tiny amount of time currently predicted for her, and I worry about how her brother Dief will take it when he hasn’t even fully recovered from us putting down Laddie close to two years ago. And I worry about having to go to the vet with her if we need to put her down because I’ve never managed to do that before but I’ll need to this time, because she made me her person.

So right now I’m mostly trying to drown myself in things that can distract me; things that make me laugh, hobbies I enjoy, exercising, helping friends do research when they ask. It’s how I spent most of my night after work today already. I don’t know how long I’ll be coping like this, but I imagine it’s going to be a while, so I might be missing for a while again.

I had a pretty great day today (as opposed to the usual “okay” I usually fare with), but I think the crowning moment of awesome for me today came from tonight’s Burn Notice. All season the commercials have used the clip of Bruce Campbell saying “Looks like this season murder…is in style” and it’s never really stood out to me—other than sounding a little corny. But context makes everything.

I’ve never made bones about what a TV geek I am, and so the context for the line—Sam posing as a CSI—made the whole thing come together hilariously; “Looks like this season murder…*dramatic putting on of sunglasses* is in style.” I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a show dig so hard and obvious at another one as Sam’s David Caruso impression.* I’m a little sad it took me a minute to remember that Burn Notice takes place in Miami as well as that particular (and my least favorite) CSI. Though maybe it’s because it’s my least favorite of the CSIs that it amuses me so much. (Much like this family portrait, recently posted to FailBlog.) The only thing that made me happier than the original impression was that he did another dramatic-glasses-one-liner later in the episode too. Part of me wants very much to believe that Bruce Campbell had his hand in the writing of it.

*The only possible exception that I can think of is a recent fourth wall breakage on Psych—while defending the use of his “psychic hand-motion” Shawn tells Gus “I don’t know, I think it looks pretty cool when Simon Baker (actor portraying the male lead in The Mentalist) does it.” When Gus informs him that Simon Baker doesn’t, Shawn replies, “Well, at least we’ve still go that then.” So maybe this is a USA thing?

So—despite the fact that they’ve apparently only done it once previously in the last ten years—my company called not one but two Snow Days on Wednesday and Thursday last week! And it felt about as magical as it did back when I was in elementary school. So I spent my magical two days by…

-Finally taking a shower in our newly remodeled bathroom
-Getting a few extra hours sleep in the mornings
-Actually getting to catch Ninja Warrior on TV without taping it, it’s been yonks for me since G4 cut it down (with the added bonus of it being Levi’s first run)
-Using my WiiFit fully for the first time since my recent illness
-Enjoying the newest from the bright boys of Celtic Thunder
-Finishing the rough draft of a piece I wanted finished by Sunday at the latest
-And heading off to celebrate the birthday of a friend I haven’t seen in, like, three yonks

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All in all, it was a pretty great two days and only made me more excited for the yearly rock block of romance that Lexi and I share in the middle of February (write-up coming soon).

So, since Lexi’s been sick recently, I’ve been trying to get the jump on any germs that might be trying to get me. I started taking Vitamin C tablets and drinking a lot of rooibos tea to help bump up my immune system and for a while it was working really well. But, once my dad got sick, it was pretty much only a matter of time. Yesterday I felt a low-grade nausea all day at work and then just got worse (terrible headache, progressive body aches, and throat problems) as the day went on. I let my boss know I might have to call out today so that doing so wouldn’t count against me and then lay down once I was home and fed.

This morning I actually felt a lot better, thankfully, but I thought that the extra eight hours laying down and resting would help me to beat it completely. This, again thankfully, seems to have done the trick as I’m back up to nearly 100 percent again. I’m just hoping tomorrow doesn’t stick me back in the hole. (I don’t know why laying down helps the healing process so much as it does, but as long as it does I also don’t really need the reason.)

Dear newest piercing,

Last night, after nearly a year and a half, I slept without a post in you for the very first time. You still partially closed by the time I tried to put one in this morning. You were supposed to be completely healed after six weeks and I’ve given you probably the best care of any piercing I’ve ever had. What gives?

No love,
Me.

Also, I’ve realized that the best way for me to take in Joss Whedon anymore is when he’s specifically doing camp. (Sort of like how I can only take Johnny Young Bosch when he’s doing things like Lelouch anymore.)