Addendum: Pyramid of Khafre

So I wrote the Pyramid of Khafre review around 1:30 or so this morning. At about 4am, just about the time we were getting ready for bed, I sniffed my wrist and it smelled fantastic. It was spicy lavender with an almost effervescent undernote, perfumey in very good way. Which, on the one hand, is great. It's another thing that smells good on me and it's a real departure from the sort of thing I normally wear. On the other hand...I really don't want to have to wait that long to like what I'm wearing. Yes this has some amazing staying power--twelve hours after applying it lightly, it's still present on my wrist--and a halfway decent throw, but who wants to wait two to three hours for their perfume to actually smell good?

I have recently learned that the technical term for "throw", or "how far away from you, the wearer, can your perfume be smelled" is "sillage". It's French and it also means the wake of a ship, which makes sense. But, while I'm all about using the proper terminology, I don't know that I like the way the word sounds. Which, yeah, is totally not the reason not to use it. The reason I might stick with "throw" or use both, is that most of the forums I've been on use it and bringing in a new term might confuse readers.

Speaking of terminology, shoot me if I ever call any of this "juice." Just...no.

Nocturne Alchemy: Pyramid of Khafre

Nocturne Alchemy is in interesting concept e-tailer; all of their blends are tied, some more loosly than others, to Egypt. This isn't the blend I'd have chosen for my first review--I've just gotten involved in a decant circle for some of their newest LEs--but it happened to be tossed in as a freebie along with some other stuff I picked up from somone on LJ.

Pyramid of Khafre -- Lavender, limestone, chai spices and amber. (This was dug out of the perfume copy, which is a couple of paragraphs, including one on just who Khafre was--builder of the second of the Great Pyramids of Giza.)

This starts out as lavender and a soapy lavender at that, although there is in fact, a weird dusty undernote that I assume is the limestone. As it progresses, the spices come out and that soapy note goes away, although the lavender is still a little sharp. It's a strange scent, which is kind of what I'd expect given the notes involved. Eventually it settles into a faintly powdery but spicy lavender that still has that faint note of limestone.

It's not an easy scent and while it doesn't morph once it settles down, I can't quite decide if I like it or not. I'll sniff it and think "nah, not really working" and then a few minutes later, I'll sniff again and think "actually, I kind of like this." What I don't get is any sense of Egypt at all; the spices just aren't enough to take me there. In the end, it's that limestone note that defeats this; combined with the lavender, and even in spite of a very powdery amber, it's just a little too sharp.

PS Dear Nocturne Alchemy, 1998 called and they want their web design back. Love, Me.

* * *

Also, Loreto of Funkier Than Thou, has renamed her shop. It's now Loreto Aromatica. I'm in the process of dropping her a line to see if she can do something for Darkrose and I for our upcoming wedding.

The Madness to My Method -- Part Three

3. What you won't see here and what you will.

I simply cannot wear any blend that includes a cream accord. Everything I've ever tried with one has simply gone awful on me, either plasticy and fake, or rancid and sour. Likewise, you'll rarely, if ever, see anything reviewed here that includes rose among the notes. Maybe 1 in 99 blends with rose work on me, the rest end up smelling like soap. It kind of breaks my heart because not only do a lot of lovely sounding blends include rose, but I also like the smell of roses.

Because of the rose thing, I tend to have to stay away from most florals. Jasmine's another tricky note, I can usually handle it if it's not the dominant note in the blend.

Mostly, my tastes are pretty broad. My favorite perfume family is the Oriental; I like things from pretty much every sub-category in the family. I also like some of the Woody family and some of the Fresh family, particularly the citrus group. I tend to stay away from things described as "clean/linen" because they usually smell like overly scented dryer sheets to me.

The Gormound category is tricky for me. I stay away from the excessively foody scents; I'd rather not smell like cake, cookies or frosting, plus all too often, there's that cream accord in there. I usually do like what I call the "drinky" scents (BPAL's Swank, which smells like a pomegranate martini, is a good example here). I don't want to smell like a liquor cabinet, but a touch of rum or a hint of the juniper in gin really works for me. I also like some fruity scents, although usually I like them to feel kind of grown up and not smell like strawberry lip gloss or Spiritual Sky Raspberry Oil.

I also like several of the traditionally masculine scents, particularly cyphres and fougéres.

Due to the fact that most of the indie e-tailers throw in freebies, I'll occasionally review things that fall outside my already broad tastes.

BPAL -- Snake Oil and Three from the Snake Pit

All BPAL today.

Snake Oil -- "By far, our most popular scent! Magnetic, mysterious, and exceedingly sexual in nature. A blend of exotic Indonesian oils sugared with vanilla."

Reviewing BPAL's Snake Oil is kind of like reviewing Chanel No. 5; everyone's had a go at it and most people who will be reading the review have probably already got a bottle in their possession. Which kind of makes me wonder whatever happened to my duty-free bottle of No. 5, but it would be just about 30 years old now and anyway, I digress. I ordered this because I loved one of the the Snake Pit scents (which are Snake Oil with extras) and wanted to see if it was the Snake Oil part I loved or that plus the extras.

At first sniff in the bottle, Snake Oil is pure headshop, right down to what I'd swear is a faint bit of patchouli, although most reviews don't mention it. The minute I get it on my skin, even before the dry down, the vanilla shows up. It is not a foody vanilla at all, but a sweet incensey scent, with a nice spicey background.

About 10 minutes in, I get powder, which makes me suspect that one of the Indonesian oils is amber. Strangely enough that faint hint of patchouli is gone gone gone, leaving me to wonder if it was ever there in the first place. What I've got now is an ambery, powdery vanilla, which I like but which isn't wowing me.

In the end, after about a half hour, the powder has faded down to acceptable levels and this is a nice, slightly spicey, slightly ambery, slightly dark vanilla, with pretty good staying power and a decent throw. I like it and I'm happy enough to have a big bottle, but honestly, I don't really think it's all that and a bag of chips. This seems to be common with me and BPAL; I'm usually only mildly enthused over the blends that most people love like crazy. I actually think I like the Temple Viper better.

It's always interesting when someone calls a perfume "sexual" because you have to wonder who its aimed at. The "normal" assumption is that it's sexy on women in a way men will like--yay heteronormative society! In fact, the reason you see so many vanilla scents these days is that recent surveys have shown that men find vanilla to be a very sexy smell. I wonder if any surveys have been done on what women like to smell on other women. What I'm trying to get at is: this smells good, but I don't know that if I smelled it on some random woman on the street I'd want to jump her. Darkrose will be home in a couple of hours; I'll have to see if she likes it.

Three short reviews of the Snake Pit, Act III of Carnaval Diabolique, which will be available until September '08. These were originally done for a forum and on the run; this is what a quick review looks like.

Australian Copperhead -- Snake Oil with acai berry, amber, cardamom, neroli, and smoked vanilla.

In imp and wet on me -- bright, sweet/tart berry!

Five minutes in -- Oddly enough it's got a faint "green" note to it although it's still mostly the berry.

Twenty minutes it -- now I get the amber and a little hint of the vanilla underneath the green/berry scent. This is nice and bright, "fun" scent. It's not very me though; I was hoping for more amber/cardomom/smoked vanilla than acai berry.

Green Tree Viper -- Snake Oil with four mints, bergamot and green tea.

In imp and wet on me -- Mmmmm...sweet mint green tea.

Dry down and five minutes in -- For once, this doesn't morph much; it smells just like it does in the imp. And, even though I put on lotion just before testing, I can tell that this is already fading.

Twenty minutes in -- It's mostly the mint now and even that is faint. :(

Overall Impression -- I really like it, but like most tea and/or mint scents, it's gone way too fast.

Temple Viper -- Snake Oil with sugar cane, frankincense, champaca, opoponax, labdanum, and hyssop.

In imp and wet -- Dry and resiny with a sweet undernote.

Dry down and five minutes in -- Oh my, this is nice. It's got the dry/incense notes of some of her scents like Cathedral along with the added sweet of the sugar cane and the vanilla.

Twenty minutes in -- It's smoothed out now and I really really love it. All sugary and incensey. Not sure I like it $20 worth but man, am I tempted.

The Madness to My Method -- Part Two

2. My qualifications and experience.

I'd like to say something here like "I went to Grasse when I was 17 and a whole new world opened up to me" but the fact is, I went to Grasse when I was 17 and ended up with a horrible migraine that day.

So no, I don't have any formal qualifications. Since my initial foray into BPAL back in '05 and my more recent return to the fandom (and yes I really do think there's a fannish element to the indie perfume scene), I've slowly trained my nose to recognize certain notes and I'm also reading about perfume to train my brain.

What I do bring to the table is enthusiasm and a love of scents, all scents. I love that moment when the onions and garlic hit the hot olive oil and the moment when you know that you were right to quadruple the amount of vanilla the Tollhouse chocolate chip cookie recipe calls for. I love the way the air smells near the ocean and I love the way my old neighborhood smelled when Coffee Works was roasting a batch of beans.

I would like to learn more about the perfumer's art; because I find it a fascinating combination of chemistry, art, and luck. To me it's the modern alchemy, and whether the work is done in someone's kitchen or in a lab in Paris, it's its own form of magic. Hopefully, somewhere along the line, I can find a local course of some kind. I don't know that I want to make my own perfume, but I'd like to train my nose a little better.

But in the end, I don't really think I need to know all the nitty gritty details of the process. Sure, as a reviewer, I come with my own likes and dislikes, but so has every reviewer in the history of reviewing. So in the end, I may not know much about perfume (although I'm learning) but I know what I like. Hopefully I can write about it in a way that you'll like and find useful or entertaining.

The Madness to My Method -- Part One

So since I've gotten a little more serious about reviewing perfume, I thought I'd talk a little about my process and what you will and won't see here. Since this turned into a seriously long document, I'm going to do it a piece at a time.

1. How I test/review a perfume.

I always start with clean dry skin that I've moisturized with unscented lotion. After giving the bottle a sniff, I put a small amount on, either on my wrist or on the inside of my elbow. I'll sniff it right away and then let it dry down. After that, I'll give it a sniff at five minutes, ten minutes and twenty minutes in. If it's still morphing after twenty minutes, I'll come back to it at thirty minutes. I'll keep notes during the process and then after about twenty minutes to a half hour, I'll note the staying power (unless it started fading early) and the throw, with the caveat that the throw won't be as big as it would if I were wearing it to go out.

The review write up changes a lot depending on a couple of factors. If I'm reviewing something for both this blog and a community or forum, I'll try to use the community/forum review guidelines. Given my druthers, I'd rather not use a guideline/standard form type thing because perfumes can vary so wildly. If I'm reviewing a single/layering note then I'm concerned with the way it smells both by itself and layered. And with a simple two or three note perfume (Possets' awesome Girls Love Vanilla is a perfect example) there's often no real difference between how it smells at five minutes and how it smells at twenty. On the other hand, the more complex blends do morph quite a bit during that initial half hour and so I tend to get a little more into the timeline involved.

Finally, I'll occasionally wander off into the land of memory because, scent is such a powerful trigger. I like to think that stories and such like provide a personal note and are entertaining.

Oh this is cool!

So Mythos Mixtures is running a contest wherein one lucky forum user will get to have a blend they helped design made up, either as a Limited Edition or a catalog blend. They asked for suggestions that fit in with their overall mythological theme.

And so I came up with the following:

Peris -- (in Persian--Pari) are descended from fallen angels who have been denied paradise until they have done penance. In earlier sources they are described as agents of evil; later, they are benevolent. They are exquisite, winged, fairy-like creature ranking between angels and evil spirits. They sometimes visit the realm of mortals. (source: Wikipedia)

A mix of Persian fruits (pomegranate and apricot), honey and spices (cardamom, saffron, cinnamon, ginger) with either a resinous (amber and/or frankincense and/or myrrh) or woody (sandalwood) base.

Note: Persian spice mixes almost always include ground dried rose petals or buds. But since this is my mixture suggestion and my body won't let me wear rose, I'd prefer it if it got left out.

Aster, another member of the forums, came up with this:

Sekhmet-Hathor, She With Two Faces http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hathor

In Egyptian myth, the leonine goddess Sekhmet was created by Ra as a divine avenger. He ordered her to punish the humans who had defied him, and Sekhmet fell upon Ra's enemies, slaughtering mankind and drinking their blood. When Ra took pity upon humanity, he found that even he was not strong enough to stay Sekhmet's hand. He instead tricked her into drinking great quantities of beer by mixing it with (in some stories) pomegranate juice to make it blood-colored. Intoxicated, the bloodthirsty war goddess Sekhmet became the kind cow-goddess Hathor, protector of women and goddess of love, joy, and music.

Dragon's blood for Sekhmet the Terrible, honeyed wine for Hathor the Lady of Joy, a warm and furry base of musk for the goddess' aspects of lion and cow, and the barest touch of pomegranate.

The forum voted and, since we were not allowed to vote for our own blend, Aster and I voted for each other's blends. They tied.

In the tie-breaker post...they're still tied. I would probably order Sekhmet-Hathor if it got made, but I would really really like it if Peris got made. So I'll be over here, crossing my fingers.

Three from Arcana

Arcana makes both perfume oils and soap which they sell in a few shops and through several e-tailers. These are three random oils I picked up through a decant circle. I'd never tried Arcana before and was particularly impressed by the throw and staying power; both of which were excellent for perfume oils.

Caffeinated Death -- "Caffeinated Death Perfume (Limited Edition): A fatally wired combination of cocoa absolute, coffee, chai spices, Bourbon vanilla and white cognac. You can sleep when you're dead." Available at The Soap Box Company.

Okay this? This is what I was hoping for when I bought Miskatonic U back in the very first Picnic in Arkham line. Misk U had a cream note, but this one doesn't. It's all coffee and spice and cocoa and it's smooth but sharp at the same time. I was worried that it would be too foody, and at first it's a bit much. But about ten minutes after the dry down, it mellowed out and became this dark, vibrant scent with a decent throw and some serious staying power. It's hard to describe what it smells like; the coffee is the dominant note on me but this isn't like how my clothes smell after a few hours spent in a coffee house. I used the word smooth above and that's what this is; I suspect it's the vanilla and the spices that make it a lot more than just some fake latté scent. If you normally don't like chocolate scents, don't be put off by that cocoa absolute; this is 100% bitter cocoa, not a Hershey's bar.

I think my only caveat is that while it's a great nighttime scent, all dark and mysterious, it's a little too strong to wear while going out to dinner. For an evening spend wandering through late night gallery shows or a coffee house poetry slam followed by a quick jaunt to Rick's Dessert Diner, on the other hand, it's perfect.

Black Amber -- This is a layering oil designed to be worn either by itself or with something else to bring the particular note into prominence. Although Arcana (or maybe it's just the retailers) seems to refer to the whole line as single notes; some of them aren't. I've heard that Arcana is discontinuing their layering note line and, in fact, there's only one--pomegranate--still for sale at The Soap Box Company. However, Magical Omaha still has many of the various notes, including Black Amber.

This is, as the name suggests, a very dark amber. It's got a faintly sweet note, but it's not as sweet or as simple as the cheap Temple Essence Amber Butter I picked up somewhere along the line. There's an almost smoky/woody undernote to the Black Amber, as if there's just a faint hint of sandalwood in there too. I love it; amber is one of my favorite base notes and one of the few, along with sandalwood, that I'm perfectly happy to wear on its own. While some ambers can go powdery, this stays resiny and true. Also, it has staying power like crazy and a pretty good throw for a perfume oil.

Finally, I layered it with my custom perfume from Funkier Than Thou--reviewed here--and it brought out the amber like crazy and toned down the fruit a bit. I like the difference, it makes the oil more dark and nighttimey (what, "nighttimey" is a perfectly cromulent word!).

Black Tea -- another layering note, also available at Magical Omaha.

Remember how I said some of these were blends and not single notes? This is a blend and one that doesn't actually smell like black tea at all. It smells like...well, perfume. A very nice, green perfume, but nothing at all like the strong black tea I was hoping for. Tea scents tend to fade really quickly and I was really hoping for something to amp up the tea notes in a couple of tea based blends, but this isn't it.

I'm not much for the green family, although back in the late '80s I wore Perscriptives' Calyx a lot. Greens are nice in the spring and summer and they can be uplifting and casual. If you're looking for something like that, as weird as it sounds, Black Tea would be worth looking into. It has one hell of a throw and stays on for a good long time.

My only caveat is that this might not be Black Tea. I got it as part of an Arcana decant circle and there's a slight possibility that a mistake was made and I got something else.

PS. I think I just found a reasonably priced perfume from a perfume house that I want to try. *cries* There goes my indie cred.

BPAL LE reviews and yes, another auction

So, I promised some reviews today and I fully intend to do them now that it's a little cooler--our a/c is on the fritz and it's been pretty warm in the house today.

I actually put up two more things in the Live Long N Marry auction, things that are actually relevant to this blog: two BPAL LEs. It seems a little counter-intuitive to review things I didn't like but am trying to get someone to buy, but hey, what doesn't work for me will work for someone else.

Love's Philosophy (Lupercalia 2008; vanilla, saffron and cream). Forum post with descriptions and reviews and my auction post -- Saffron and vanilla...oh this should have been right up my alley. My first sniff gave me the impression of a very buttery, and kind of warm, vanilla, like maybe a vanilla glaze type frosting made with butter. Then, sadly, the cream note hits. This was the last time I bought anything with a cream note because it was pretty much confirmation that I simply can't wear cream accords; they just smell weird and artificial on me. For the most part, this isn't a problem; I don't normally like the extremely foody scents. Drinky scents, yes, but I don't really want to smell like a cupcake unless I'm eating one.

Numb (July of 2005, no notes given, pale, cool, powdery floral). Forum post with descriptions and reviews and my auction post. -- Beth at BPAL had originally planned to release this as part of the '05 Yultide Edition but then there was a horrible heat wave in LA and she released it in July.

Trying to review a perfume when none of the notes are listed is a tricky business and it's always interesting to go to the forum and read the things people come up with. I ordered this hoping for something cold and minty--Sacramento was in the middle of the same heat wave LA was--but what I got instead was a very powdery floral. It is actually a cool "feeling" scent, but I'm a child of the '70s and powder always makes me think either of my grandmother or of Love's Baby Soft*, and I'd really rather not smell like either.


**Good Lord, they still sell Love's Baby Soft although I bet they don't use the creepy ad they did back then.

We interupt this blog for a fannish moment

Normally I keep my fannish life out of this blog, but this is actually something that's important to me, so it's going here as well. I promise a batch of perfume reviews tomorrow. Really. :)



I put an offer of a 2500+ SGA, SGA RPS fanfic up with a lot of verbiage, but basically it boils down to: you promise to make a donation to help defeat the CA ballot initiative to amend the state constitution to define marriage as between one man and one woman and if you're the high bidder (or the first person to "buy it now"), I write fic for you.

This is our fight, this is our chance to say "no" to the people who think that gay people, people like myself and Darkrose, shouldn't have the same right to marry that straight couples have. If you can, look around the auctions offered (everything from web site design, to wooden dildos, to fan art, to tattoo designs, to fic, to knitting, and more, and see if there's anything you want to bid on. Or maybe there's something you can offer up for auction.

And if you don't want to mess around with the auction but still want to make a donation, and I have registered with EQ-CA. You can make as big or small a donation as you like. The registry is in our real names, so if you don't actually know them, drop me a line and ask: telesilla [at] gmail [dot] com

"I'm the guy who thinks up the goofy shit."

Yes, you really were, George, and you will be sorely missed.

There's an interesting article in the Chicago Tribune -- Carlin Leaves Behind Society Still Struggling With Words. I'm not sure I agree with the idea that we're that much more tolerant of language, but still, it's interesting to see things have and haven't changed.

Finally, I'll leave you with one of my favorite Carlin riffs. Surprisingly, it isn't profanity laced at all. It's about baseball and football and the difference between the two.

And so can you!

I am aware of all internet traditions.

BPAL's Lunar Update and some thoughts on the BPAL business model

So for some reason or other, there are two Lunar blends available from BPAL this month. Normally the Lunacy LEs don't interest me much, in most cases if I want anything from those updates, it's the shirts. But this month....

Hay Moon (which I totally want to spell Hai Moon) -- Hay absolute, tall grasses, dry honey, mallow, cardamom, amber, and wheat.

Mead Moon -- Golden mead, fermented with gruit, nutmeg, clove, cinnamon, ginger root, sweet-briar, rosemary, and lemon.

Hay Moon sounds good (cardamom is one of those notes that I adore) and Mead Moon sounds fantastic. Sadly, I've pretty much blown the sweetly-scented portion of budget for the month. Of course, there are the decant circles where I could pick up an imp, but then you run the risk of falling in love with an LE that's no longer available.

Which brings me to my thoughts on LEs (let me show you them).

I really have problems with the whole Limited Edition thing. I understand it from a retail point of view, but that doesn't mean that I like it from a consumer stand point. There's this Pokemom mentality that's all too easy to get caught up in.

I don't think there's anything wrong with spending money to collect perfume, it's just that the whole "gotta get 'em all" mentality confuses me at times. I can't wear anything with rose or cream accord, which means a lot of Beth's (or anyone else's) blends are right out for me and I can't imagine why I'd buy everything in an update if I couldn't wear half of the blends.

I've never asked anyone who does this because it seems like a judgmental question, but it's not really. I just wonder....

Serpentine Hair for grate yay! and Lush...not so much.

My big discovery lately, body product wise, has been Serpentine Hair. I've been intrigued by the idea of sulfate free shampoos for a while. The sulfates (both sodium lauryl sulfate, or SLS, and ammonium lauryl sulfate) are put in shampoos to create lather because somewhere along the line, people became convinced that shampoo had to lather up big to get your hair clean. The problem is that in addition to getting rid of dirt, shampoo with sulfates strips your hair of all of its oil, which you then have to turn around and replace in the form of a conditioner.

Thanks to the evil_enabler community on LJ, I read about Serpentine and checked them out. Their shampoo bars are free of all sulfates and are similar to plain cold processed soap (made with lye and oils). They're pretty, they come in cool scents and they're reasonably priced, so I bought an Original Sin (bergamot, neroli, vanilla and a little musk) bar to try.

When I first used it, I wasn't sure it was really getting my hair clean. I thought it might be some residue, something they warn can happen, and used a vinegar/water solution to deal with it. My hair felt clean but it was also a little streaky, like it had too much oil in it. And then I got my hair cut and since my hair was so short, I switched over from using the bath puff method and just rubbed the bar right on my hair a couple times before working the resulting lather into my hair. And it works fabulously! I do it once per shower, not twice like you're supposed to with conventional shampoo, and I don't use conditioner at all. The bar is nice and hard, and because I use a wire soap dish and set it right next to the window in the sun, I'm losing very little of the bar to melting.

The whole experiment makes me happy for several reasons. One, fewer chemicals. Two, much less packaging--the bar comes wrapped in a single layer of shrink wrap as opposed to two plastic bottles. Three, I won't really know until I use the whole bar, but I suspect it's cheaper than the relatively inexpensive Clairol I was using. Four, it smells utterly fabulous--not enough to clash with my perfume, but just a little hint of yummy smell. Five, I'm patronizing a small, woman-owned business. Six, shorter showers mean using less water.

Seven, my hair feels and looks fantastic--soft and silky and shiney and much less frizzy than it was.

So yeah, this stuff is pure win all the way. The only people who might have problems with it are people with really oily hair, although I suspect that the vinegar/water rinse (a couple of tablespoons of vinegar for each cup of water; use lemon juice if you're a blonde of any sort) would help there.

Moving onto a company I'm less impressed with...Lush.

I know that a lot of people think of Lush as the second coming, and I'll admit that I like their style. They appeal to the hippie chick in me. The problem is...I'm not wild about the way their stuff smells.

My second Lush order arrived yesterday. It was just the large size tub of Ocean Salt this time, but with it I got two tiny samples of their "buttercream," a somewhat oiler than normal soap, that's supposed to be great on your skin. Both scents--one almond/citrus and one violets/clove-- should have been right up my alley, but they smell oddly chemically and to be honest, kinda gross.

I actually don't like the smell of the Ocean Salt much, although Nancy does. However, I'm willing to forgive a lot because it really is fabulous on my skin; my face has felt so much better lately. I use it about every other day; it's a little too rough to use daily.

I kind of liked the Sexy Peel soap I ordered from Lush last month, but it wasn't the best thing ever and at $5.40 for a 3.5 oz chunk, it just didn't cut it. If I want to spend that kind of money on soap, I'll patronize Villainess or Magic Hands or Arcana or one of the other small businesses whose products can be found at The Soap Box company. Or I'll just stick to my very nice oatmeal and almond bar that I pick up from the Natural Foods Co-Op for $2.50 a bar.

Yes, I'm not ashamed to say that I'm sniffling here.

Ms. Lyon and Ms. Martin were the first gay couple to get married in San Francisco today. They have been together for 55 years. They really are an example to couples, gay and straight, everywhere and if that example, the fact that they've been together through thick and thin and some really tough times for gay people, can impact marriage as we currently define it, then that can only be a good thing.

May the Goddess bless all your days, ladies, and all the days of everyone who got married today.

In related news....

Nancy and I will be getting married on September 5. We will be doing a very small civil ceremony at the county clerks office in the presence of a couple of good friends. Because we're trying to save money for a move come spring, there will be no reception or party or anything.

We do intend to do something along the lines of a reception/party at some point when we can afford it and when we can give friends and family enough warning so that people who wish to can join us. But, call us cynical, we wanted to do the legal thing, get that paperwork, before Election Day, just in case the ballot initiative to change the state constitution passes.

We're not registering for stuff or really expecting gifts this time, but if you want to do something, we've registered here (give it a couple of days before you try) with Equality California’s Marriage PAC, which is working to defeat the ballot initiative.