Notes from the Plague Den - The Beginning of Exile.

A week of reviews: perfumes, bath salts, body oils, books, digital content, and more!

Hello dear reader:

Are you tired? I am. I am emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausted. Switching entire career fields is demanding! And bonus: I have managed to come down with the actual, honest-to-god, knock-you-on-your-derrière flu. I've been in bed for over two weeks, which has made it difficult to smell…well, anything really. And yet, I have smelled terrific the whole time, which has been a joyful note in the cacophony of task-shifting and illness-ridden noise in my life.

It's funny how much my mood can be affected by the presence or absence of scent. Six or seven years ago, I'd never have thought of it as important. Now, it can turn a whole day around. Scent is no longer incidental to my life. It is a kind of presence that weighs on me in its absence. I love; you don't know how much you are missing, then once you have it, missing it is so much more than never knowing.

Want to know what I've had to sustain me for lo these many sleep-filled days and nights? Well, first of all, my only real company has been this tiny Eeyore. If you are estimating his height at no more than three inches, you have the size correct. Thank goodness David insisted I pack it. I resisted, but being sick and three thousand miles away from my kittens? A little snugglie, it turns out, goes a long way.

As you might expect, I also have this bevy of cold and flu crap: orange juice, daytime and nighttime cold and flu tablets, Emergen-C, various soups from every local Chinese delivery place in the area, whathaveyou. Two things I want to point out, though, that have been extremely helpful. Neutrogena Norwegian formula hand cream, and Rosebud Perfume Co. distributed Smith's Minted Rose Lip Balm.

The Neutrogena Norwegian formula hand cream, which was provided by my hotel, has kept my hands, my cuticles, and my elbows moisturized despite my frequent crazy hot showers, my cranking the heat in my hotel room, and spending hours buried under blankets and pillows. I'm impressed that this relatively cheap moisturizer has done such a handy job. I'm sure there are better products out there, but for the price point? Terrific. I'll never leave home without some again.

Smith's Minted Rose Lip Balm I would have sworn by prior to this incident. However, having suffered through dry, high winds and incredibly low temperatures followed by a terrible flu, the fact that my lips are still intact -- no flaking, no drying, no cracks or bleeding -- has made an unwavering devotee of this $7 gloss available at Sephora or through Beautyhabit, which is where I first found it. It is a little flavorlessly waxy and a smidge on the sticky side, but I will trade those minor shortcomings for a gloss that gives healthy lips even in the harshest of conditions any day.

I rarely stray from perfume into recommendations on other beauty products because, honestly, I feel completely out of my depth endorsing one over another. I don't hoard, errr, I mean collect them the way I do perfume. But when I run across a low priced, knock out product that I feel truly good about? I see no reason to keep such info to myself. So expect me to continue to drop a little bit of cheapskate-oriented beauty product knowledge on you going forward. I splurge heavily on perfume, but I tend to be pretty chincy on everything else, so if you're cash strapped, I'm happy to provide you a few tried and true items that would make great stocking stuffers or 'bad day' retail therapy-related purchases.

As always, know that this is based solely on my own product experience, and comes with all your latin-based buyer beware caveats. Deal? Deal. Moving on.

Since my world has consisted of nothing but delivery food and bad cable TV for the last week, let me tell you what I've been watching online. The internet at the hotel was too slow for Hulu or Netflix, but it was good enough to run one of my new obsessions: The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. A friend pointed me toward this awesome online adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. The story, told as a series of online interactions between modern versions of the main characters through tweets, tumblrs, jams, and vlogs, it is a surprisingly compelling remaking of the classic tale. I like the real time aspect. I appreciate the emphasis on the ways the themes are just as engaging today was they were when the book was written. And most of all, I love the hilarious modern twists -- Darcy as a hipster? Hilarious!

The best way to catch up is to follow the story link, so you don't miss a single nudge,wink, or Q&A. It takes…okay it took me hours to catch up, but it was worth it, and it didn't cost me a penny! Now that's entertainment. I could wax poetic for hours about this, particularly given that we just celebrated the 200th anniversary of the publication of Pride and Prejudice.  Instead, I am going to point you toward my delightful friend Thu, who not only introduced me to The LBD, but did her master's thesis on Pride and Prejudice, and wrote this awesome piece in celebration of the pub-a-versary.

As for scents, I had the opportunity to try a few different items, including some bath salts, a terrific scented body oil, and a couple of perfumes. But….

…right now I need to sleep.

So come back tomorrow and I will talk to you about adventures in scent, as well as a couple of YA books that helped me get through the week of plague.