A Zip (Buy Now, Pay Later) Review

        My computer is still being an asshole since Windows 11 has been installed and so is my internet connection for some reason (still) and I am hoping that sometime soon things will get straightened out but today is not that day. I am still kind of new to the whole buy now pay later scene. For the longest time, I was only able to get my foot in the door with Afterpay and I have been using that for about 3 or 4 years. Thus far, it seems like Afterpay is still the easiest to get your foot in the door with. I still can't get my foot in the door with Klarna, Paypal pay in 4 or Affirm and I am okay with that.

     In the past couple months, I somehow managed to get my foot in the door with Zip and Sezzle and I was never able to beforehand. I haven't used Sezzle yet but I have used Zip. There is a reason that I am reviewing Zip today. Some of the reason why I wanted to use Zip was for the times where I need to pay my cellphone bill and didn't quite have the means to pay it. Afterpay has never let me pay my Verizon bill through them. I can buy cellphones, gift cards and giftcards if I went to Verizon through the Afterpay app but was never "allowed" to pay my cellphone bill for some reason. With Zip, I have the ability to do that.

     While it is a great thing that I can pay my cellphone bill on Zip and I am sure that I probably could pay other bills through Zip, I have only a $150 limit. To get a higher limit, I would have to pay off 5 orders. I am working on my last 2 orders to pay off and even then I wouldn't know what kind of limit I would have afterwards and it would raise my limit to probably $200. It kind of helps but it doesn't, I would rather pay my entire cellphone bill if I need to on Zip but a $340 cellphone bill is quite a bit. I have the top of the line cellphone plan and 3 brand new cellphones that I am paying on. But I have been able to pay at least part of my cellphone bill with Zip and this is mainly what I am going to be using Zip for.

     There are some big differences between Zip and Afterpay in terms of getting things. More often than not, Afterpay doesn't have a minimum threshold when using Afterpay. If I spend $15 at Ulta and use Afterpay, I am only paying $3.50 every two weeks. With Zip, the minimum threshold is $35 but the biggest thing that I have noticed with Zip, there is a $4 surcharge with every purchase that I would make and have made. Let's just say that I am a little hesitant to use Zip because I am not exactly so willing to pay an extra $4 for every purchase that I am thinking of making. So if I am making a $35 Walmart purchase, I am actually paying $4 on top of that $35. Yes, for every order, Zip tacks on an extra $4 surcharge for every order that I make using Zip. I haven't used Sezzle yet and don't know if they do the same thing. But Zip is giving me more of a credit card kind of vibe without really being a credit card.

     I am intriged though on when I pay off my two other orders on what my limit would be afterwards. I am not expecting too much of an increase. With Afterpay, the limit increases start out pretty small. When my limit was $100 and after about 6 weeks my limit was raised to $200 and was increased by $100 until I hit $1,400 and then I was looking at $250 to $500 increases in one sitting and I am thinking that Zip might be more of the same way but I haven't been using Zip that long or that often. For me, Zip does have a purpose but it's probably not going to be my primary BNPL go to, that's why I use Afterpay because I am not a fan of surcharges or added fees tacked on to my purchases. While I might be okay with having what I have with the whole BNPL, which is the fact that I have options if I need them.

Vacation and Technology

       Right now, my internet connection is being a jerk along with this huge computer update. It was decided that we needed to switch to Windows 11 since apparently Windows 10 won't be supported too much longer. So it's been a rough few days trying to get things to work let alone properly. Having a hard time trying to upload pictures to stick on here but I am not going to worry about that right this second. Then I am trying to get used to the Samsung Galaxy update and I am not liking it too much. I just don't like slow internet along with system updates. I am just sick and tired of things getting "timed out".

     So far I am day 6 of my first vacation of the year. Yesterday was my mother's birthday and we went out to dinner. Wednesday was marked by one doctor's appointment and I had another one today. But I did manage to go to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. This was the first time that I have been in there since before the pandemic. It took them 4 years to remodel the whole thing. It looks nice enough but there seems to be less stuff on display. No Balto display, no shrunken head display and there seemed to be much less. But then again, I didn't spend a whole lot of time there. There were too many schools trying to get one last field trip in before summer vacation. It seemed that nobody was paying a whole lot of attention to these kids and I was constantly tripping over groups of 10 year olds with no situational awareness. I am hoping that I will be able to go back with far fewer people and more time on my hands. That pesky doctor's appointment said that I couldn't spend a whole lot of time there. In a way, I was a little more hoping that I would go to the art museum and I think that it might have been a little quieter with less kids running around. With every field trip that I ever took as a kid, nobody was turned loose, we all had to stay with our group. Maybe standards have been relaxed.

     Right now, I seem to be beefing with Ulta right now. A couple years ago, I had ordered a bigger bottle of Chanel no 5 edp or Eau Premiere and was sent some kind of celebrity scent. I was not thrilled with that one and it was a massive pain in the ass to fix. And I thought that that was going to be a simple mistake. A month ago I had placed an order and when it showed up, I was missing a couple lip liners and I just decided that I was just going to be refunded. I just didn't want the hassle. On Sunday, I had placed an order for smaller bottle of Coco Mademoiselle Intense and some Lush bath and body stuff and paid with a good chunk of points that I have accumulated. When I got my order, I was a little surprised to find that I was missing the Rose Jam body wash and somehow ended up with a purple eyeliner. I was a whole lot less amused this time around. I don't wear eyeliner and if I did, it wouldn't purple and it was a NYX eyeliner. Since when does a NYX eyeliner cost a shade over $12? And how can one confuse eyeliner and bodywash? For a while the Ulta reps couldn't find my order and when they did, I had said that I have been a loyal customer for 8 years and I have noticed a decline in getting what I have ordered and when I get it. I hate complaining about stuff like this but when these mistakes are becoming more frequent, I think that this is a training problem. And the training problem rests at the feet of corporate suits as I always think it does and some of the blame rests at the manager's feet. I had the choice of either getting my points back or they send me the bottle of Rose Jam and I chose the Rose Jam. After all is said and done, I still have $80 in rewards points but I will wait for when Ulta has a really good point multiplier going on before I go and make another order since I will probably need more lotion and face cream.

Bath Stuff and Bad News

 Well, there has been some pretty bad news on the mom front. The hospital finally got around to doing the tests that they needed to do. The tests have determined that my mother has dementia. I am thinking that it's probably in the moderate stage. Mom hasn't been released yet and at first they were talking on releasing her tomorrow but now they seem to be going for Wednesday. I am just waiting for them to push it back further, so I don't know when she is coming home. At this point, we don't know what kinds of services she needs or anything. I know that my dad wants to keep her home as long as he can. So I think that my father is starting to get a lot of things in order and see what exactly needs to be done. I am not fully sure that we would be able to keep my mother at home for very long. In some ways, I do hope that my sister comes out, even if it is a week, to help us get a few things set up. Mom's dementia could progress slowly or quickly and my mother is about to turn 70 next week, so she is kind of on the young side of all of this. It's just a lot to take in at this point. So I have been trying to clean up the house a little more and use up some candles to try and save my sanity. In the past 2 weeks, I have used up 3 candles.

I know this is a rip off from March's post over at Perfume Posse butI don't often talk about bath stuff but something kind of funny did happen. Some time last year, I had bought the Drunk Elephant Sweet Pitti deoderant and I started to use it about 2 weeks ago when I ran out of my other deoderant. For the first couple days, everything seemed to be fine until about 3 or 4 days ago. I noticed a smell while I was at work. Since I work at a grocery store, sometimes you can get just random bad smells and I didn't think anything of it. Then when I was at work the next day, it was the same thing. Then after I took a shower the next day and put on my deoderant, I realized that smell was me. Well it was the deoderant and I had to take a look at it. The Sweet Pitti doesn't have baking soda or aluminum in it. When one works in the bakery, it can get really hot and humid and that means that I sweat. I don't want to be wafting onions in the bakery. The smell of rising bread and cookies is what most people should be smelling when they enter the bakery. But that doesn't stop me from wearing perfume while I am at work.

Apres L'Ondee and Other Things

Life is really kicking my butt right now. I have a family member that's been in the hospital for a week with a mental health issues and last Monday, I had teeth pulled. The teeth in question were all on one side and what was left of four back teeth. Early June is when I get the rest of my back teeth taken out and then I will have just my front teeth up to my eye teeth. Then I can have partial dentures. I have had bad teeth for years and it will be a relief to have the better ability to eat and not have to deal with the threat of infection. Well, I will still have my front teeth but the threat will be lowered in terms of develpoing an infection.

Since I have had a little more free time than usual, I almost finished the Lieberman Papers but haven't really watched a whole lot of Vienna Blood. I thought that yesterday I would finish the last book and maybe watch some of the Star Wars movies but I got sidetracked with getting dog food and some grocery shopping. It was a weekend of trying to catch up on housework.

About a week and a half ago, I had a hankering for Apres L'Ondee and after going through tons of decants to find the decant I had of Apres L'Ondee, I realized that it had evaporated. So I made the trip to STC to get a small decant and I have no idea why I added a small decant of Muscs Koubli Khan but I did. I suppose I wanted to make the shipping cost a little more worth it. I haven't gotten around to spraying my decant of Apres L'Ondee but from what I remember, it smelled like a stripped down version of L'Heure Bleue. Jicky has the same association with me in regards to Jicky being a stripped down version of Shalimar. I think the reason that I have been wearing Jicky a little more and have more of a hankering for Apres L'Ondee is that since I have been reading the Lieberman Papers and watching Vienna Blood, both perfumes would have been around during the time frame that both have been written about. So much of my collection dates from much later in terms of when they were released. I was also thinking that if I do fall head over heels for Apres L'Ondee, I might get a bottle. But I am on a no buy right now and I am slowly trying to use up more decants and I am hoping to finish a bottle or two of perfume this year and I already added enough to my collection. What I think that I will end up doing is that when I am on vacation is that I will really get going on finishing decants. It's only 11 more days before I get my first vacation.

 

Eau Premiere Thoughts

For a good, long while, I couldn't get enough of no 5 Eau Premiere or any version of no 5. The only version of no 5 that I can't get into is L'Eau, to my nose, it bears no resemblance of no 5. But for some reason, any no 5 variation had dropped off my radar. I think that I was sidetracked by other things, especially MAC lipsticks and my recent tuberose love.

But when I couldn't get enough of no 5, I was more obsessed with the EDT and extrait version and it was to the point of ignoring my first no 5 love, Eau Premiere.

When Eau Premiere first came out, I was a little hesitant to try it. My dislike of no 5 came from when I was at a perfume counter. My hands were horribly dry and didn't have any hand lotion on me. So I figured that I would give the no 5 hand cream a try. It was either the hand lotion was old and gone off or the lights from the counter itself made the lotion go bad and then I had a dislike for no 5.

Fast forward a few years when Eau Premiere came out, I had ordered an eye shadow from Chanel and for some odd reason, I picked out a sample of Eau Premiere to try. But when I did, my opinion of no 5 had started to change to maybe no 5 isn't so bad. What really changed my opinion of no 5 is the Sensual Elixer. When I was at the mall, I bought the Sensual Elixer instead of Eau Premire. The Sensual Elixer is long gone and if you can find it, it's stupid expensive and stupid expensive isn't my thing right now. When I realized my mistake, I went over to the Chanel website and ordered myself a bottle. At the time, Eau Premiere wasn't sold in the traditional Chanel bottles and there were many sizes. Today, I think that I probably should have gotten the 5 ounce bottle of Eau Premiere when it was being offered but that was then, tI don't know when Chanel did away with some of their larger sized bottles of Eau Premiere and the old bottle that it used to come in but it did happen. There is very little in the Chanel line up that is over 100ml. Most people are not seeking out the Les Exclusifs line.Outside of the Les Exclusifs line, the 200ml bottles are either no 5 edp or Coco Madamoiselle. But I was pleased to see that Eau Premiere has a travel spray and when that happened, I snapped that up. Currently, my travel spray set is MIA but I have a general idea of where it might be but I am not quite ready to tear apart a room or two to try and find it.his is now. I am trying to save some money and not spend it.

 

Sephora Spring Sale and Chanel No 5

So it's the Sephora annual spring sale and it runs until the 14th. I had initally planned to give this one a miss. For me, April can be a lean month or a flush month. This April is a lean month for me in terms of money. Can't always control how things go in terms of money and I did forget that Sephora has a spring and fall sale.

What I do like about Sephora's spring and fall sale is that you are not limited on which brands are whatever percentage off. If Ulta is having a percentage off sale or a really good coupon, some brands are off limits. I have never been able to use a coupon on MAC or Chanel. Urban Decay and Too Faced can be hit or miss. But I have taken advantage of the Sephora sales to get some Chanel perfumes for less. You have no idea on how happy I was to nab a bottle of no 5 extrait and the 200ml bottle of Coco Mademoiselle Intense.

So replentishing my supply of no 5 extrait isn't in the cards right now. And you know what, I am okay with that. The only things that I am getting from the Sephora sale are two inexpensive hand lotions, well, inexpensive for Sephora. I am trying to keep the grand total to be under $20. I work in retail and I go through hand lotion like no tomorrow and I would like to think that I would spoil myself a little bit. One of those hand lotions is going to my mother for Mother's day and the other is going into my work coat. I am not wasting my Amouage or Chanel lotions on my place of employment.

I am hoping that the next Sephora sale I will be able to get that bottle of no 5 extrait. My no 5 collection might be fairly large but I don't want to start to really tear into my vintage no 5 extrait collection just yet. My vintage no 5 collection is nowhere near as extensive as my vintage Mitsouko collection so I don't exactly want to wear it quite as freely as Mitsouko. But now is not the time I want to go spending money like a drunken sailor, I spent enough on my cellphone bills and dog food for the past two or three months.
 

Rogue Perfumery Tuberose and Moss (short review) and Other Things

Things are not going so well here. Somehow, my mother ended up breaking her brand new cellphone. You have no idea on how happy I was to have insurance on our cellphones. When we headed up to the Verizon store, I figured that it would be just filling out a claim and she would walk out with a new phone. Well I was qrong about walking out with the new cellphone thing. I did have to fill out a claim but the issue that I did have was that a new cellphone would be shipped to our house. We did expect it to arrive by Friday but somehow, there was "severe weather" and there is a scheduled delivery for that phone to arrive tomorrow and this was the notification that I got on Friday. The stupid package is only a half an hour away from where I live. A coworker of mine who lives near that area had said that things were fine over there. So I am none to thrilled with UPS. I am wondering what the real issue with the late delivery is since I don't have issues with UPS deliveries. So when my package comes, the guys at the Verizon store will see what they can do with data from the old phone to her new phone and make this phone function better for my mother.

Same family member somehow scheduled something the same day and time as my dentist appointment for getting the rest of my back teeth pulled. So that meant that I had to reschedule my dentist appointment for later this month. I was not happy and it was a whole week of April Fools. I just wanted to get all of this done and over with and move on. I want my busted teeth out because I am tired of not being able to eat well, I am tired of the threat of an infection or I have some kind of tooth infection. I am tired of being in some sort of pain due to my teeth. Health conditions like this drain energy like it's nothing.

I am still testing out more of Rogue Perfumery's line up and this time around, it's Tuberose and Moss. I wasn't expecting too much. There is a whopping tuberose opening with vintage Mitsouko oakmoss. The oakmoss did die off a little bit but remained pretty steady as the tuberose. I did detect a little bit of a whipped cream smell but the whole thing reminded me of Amouage Jubilation 25, maybe a little less rich and a little less dense. I do like Tuberose and Moss but what keeps me from really loving it is that it is so similar to Jubilation 25. So if Jubilation 25 is out of your price range or just a little too much for you, Tuberose and Moss would be an excellent substitute for Jubilation 25. But I do think that eventually I will end up with a bottle of this, even though I have a bottle of Jubilation 25.

I do have to admit that with the three Rogue Perfumery offerings that I have tried thus far, I find the execution of the perfumes are very good. I think that whomever owns Rogue Perfumery has a vison of to make perfumes like they used to and give mainstream perfume houses the middle finger. I think that I made a wise move to buy the discovery set because I like the concepts of this perfume house I do love the Art Deco vibe of the packaging.