apropos of nothing in particular

I have a standing order with L'Occitane for a particular shea butter based hand cream, so they ship me a refill every... uh... you know, I don't remember the exact frequency. Let's just say "periodically".

This is fine! I set that up on purpose! I use that hand cream regularly!

The thing is, though, that L'Occitane includes a little freebie sampler with each package. If I order something specifically, I always specify the package that is mostly hand cream samples, but for whatever reason the refills come with a completely random assortment of freebie packets. I throw most of them out, because they are products I have no interest in. (Anti-aging oils and whatnot? Which, who even CARES, let alone has the time to figure out how to apply them.)

But anyway, the POINT is, that this time they shipped the freebie and the refill in two separate boxes. Which, you know, basically defeats the entire point of a freebie? Which is that it's a tiny item that adds no significant weight/cost to the main order?

So I got this whole box which contained nothing but packing filler and a card with three tiny packets of products I immediately threw in the trash.

Absolutely ridiculous.

some stuff

It occurs to me that it has been A While since I posted here. I think my writing attention has just been diverted to other sites, which is a shame since Dreamwidth is kind of my prosthetic memory, as it were.

In summary: I did Thanksgiving in Chicago (drove there and back, which was annoying) with my parents, my brother, and my aunt. I saw Neil Gaiman live at NJPAC in early December, and spent a night with Susan and her family rather than make it a very long day trip. I did Christmas in the Twin Cities (via airplane because at a certain point driving logistics become intolerably unwieldy) with my parents, my brother, and my brother's dog.

I wrote a thing for Yuletide and received a lovely gift!

My work at the rental company continues in its mix of small triumphs and assorted annoyances. My seasonal work at Not the IRS has begun and corporate has made Some Choices of which the most notable is getting rid of all our actual telephones and routing all calls through Microsoft Teams -- absolutely nobody on the ground thinks this was a good idea, but apparently this was somehow better than, you know, just paying for each office to have a functional local voicemail system. *headdesk*

I may or may not get around to making individual posts about some of that stuff.

I have attended some classical music concerts, and skipped some others despite having pre-purchased tickets, mostly because I was very tired on the evenings in question and judged staying home to be the better part of valor.

The Three Sentence Ficathon is currently running at threesentenceficathon. I have not had the concentration to participate much, alas, but you should totally go check it out!

Um. And, you know, life continues on its meandering way, as life is wont to do. :)