Pre-orders, Samples and Traveling

I did mention a while ago about the new Halo being released this summer. I kept my eyes and ears peeled for some released pictures and what day it would be released.

I found out some time in the past couple weeks that Halo Campaign Evolved was coming out July 27th or the 28th. I am not looking it up for the exact day but was looking at some of the screenshots. When I found out the release date, I had pre-ordered the game. For new video game releases, $50 is not a bad price since most game releases are around $70. I don't often order video games and when I do, they are usually not the latest release. So this was on the more unusual side for me. I know that my dad and I will be playing this quite a bit.

So I have done more perfume shopping in the passed couple weeks. I have given up on finding my travel spray of Hedonist and said screw it and ordered one from the Victoria Minya website. The travel spray arrived yesterday and I was a little less than enthused. I expected it to be shipped in a box and not an envelope. The travel spray was in a silky bag. I just expected a little more protection but the good thing was that my travel spray was undamaged and I love the aesthetic of the Victoria Minya bottles and travel sprays.

What is worrying my is in about two and a half weeks, I will be traveling to California to see my sister. I have the clothes I want to take picked out, my toiletries are already taken care of and I have my medication. The only things I have to do is pack, and pick out which perfume(s) I want to take. I will be flying out early Monday morning and coming home on Saturday. I let my sister know that I have $1,000 in my bank account and a $300 limit credit card, so I can't go hog wild. Even though she said that it was plenty, I am still worried about the financial part of it. I know things are not going to be cheap and if the subject of Disney comes up, I will probably have to give Disney a pass. I am not and never was one of those adult Disney fans.

This is the first time that I have traveled and didn't have a fist full of credit cards and working 40 plus hours a week. Even though I have 2 low credit limit credit cards, 1 of those will be left at home. Having a fist full of credit cards has led me to a whole lot of financial help that I have been trying to dig myself out of.

The perfume choices that I have made thus far for my trip to California is my almost finished bottle of vintage-ish Chanel no 19 edp and a travel spray of BDK Gris Charnel. The no 19 is the only definite one since the bottle is almost empty and I have figured that I might as well do is finish it. But the Gris Charnel could change though and I do want to stick to a travel spray. Since it will be horribly hot in California, I don't want to take the heavy hitters with me.

 

Spray Bottle Evaporation

Things are just goofy right now. I have been working on straightening up some finances. When I took a look at things, I realized that there were a few subscriptions that I really needed to be cancelled. The Harry and David Passport thing, the Sephora 2 day shipping and a few other things had to get cancelled. A couple of those things were charged monthly and a couple things were charged yearly. The things that I had to get rid of, I wasn't using them enough to warrant the money spent on them. The only subscriptions that I did keep was Amazon Prime and my BarkBox. My rough estimate is that I have save about $175 per year but I have to begin the second phase of reworking finances. Work has been really slow and slow means less money coming in and there are things that have to go.

In my streamlining flurry, my attention did turn to my perfume. Buying full bottles have pretty much came to a stop and decants have come to an almost complete standstill. Which is a good thing for me, it is allowing me to take a look at what I have and see what I can start using up before I can even begin to add anything more. This led to rearranging some of my bottles.

After doing a little bit of rearranging of perfume bottles, I got a bit of a surprise. A bottle of Amouage Epic for women and L'Air du Desert Marocain are both showing signs of evaporation. Yes, two of my spray bottles are showing signs of evaporation. The LADDM bottle always seemed a little bit sketchy but Epic was a bigger shock. Just under Epic's cap, there is some perfume and a couple signs that this might have been going on for maybe a month of two. I am thinking that maybe one of my dogs was doing a counter surfing thing and knocked the bottles of LADDM and Epic of the dresser and the spray mechanism got goofed up somehow and now there is evaporation. I've never had an issue with evaporation issues with my spray bottles and I do have issues with spray decant and dabber bottles evaporating. I guess I need to wear the snot out of LADDM and Epic and be grateful that I do have backup bottles.

Credit Cards

I was checking out at the grocery store the other day and I paid for 3 things with my Amex card. My total was only $15 and I didn't have the cash in my wallet because I hadn't gone to the bank yet. The guy behind me said a few snarky comments to which I replied, "When I get the bill in the mail, my Amex card will be paid in full." The idiot makes another smart comment of that his ex left him with about 8 grand of credit card debt that took him 2 years to pay off. I said that the credit cards are not the problem, it is about being honest with yourself and your partner about money and have a reasonable plan about credit. If you can't afford to pay the credit card statement before the due date, then you can't afford it. I believe it was that guys lack of knowlage about credit cards and finances and too lazy to educate himself about credit and money. Credit is fine in it's place as long as it is not YOU who is out of control.