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*People seemed generally pleased with the pumpkin muffins on Monday, though I’ve found that people will often be delighted to get pretty much anything as an unexpected freebie, so take that with a grain of salt. Or possibly a crumb of muffin. One person did send me an e-mail proclaiming that I was “a regular Martha Steward” [sic], which I think was meant as a compliment. Possibly. He might also have been implying that I have control issues and am likely to team up with a man with bad hair to do a reality show. o.O

*Friday is the annual arts fair at work. According to the reminder sent yesterday, among the offerings are festive Xmas-themed decorated bricks. (I am not making this up.) It may be worth actually taking a look in this year to see how one would actually make a brick into something other people would recognize as a holiday ornament. Not that I have anything against bricks, mind you, but they don’t exactly leap to mind when you think “winter holidays.” Maybe they’re bricks dressed as Santa? An all-brick creche set, with brick shepherds and a brick angel and a half brick in swaddling cloths in the manger? Perhaps a very short brick advent calendar for counting down the last couple of days before the holiday? It’s most perplexing, and Google could shed little enlightenment.

*It may take me a while, but I get there eventually: after wondering for weeks[1] whether the raspberry soy yogurt in the door of the work fridge was mine and I’d just forgotten about it, I finally decided all foods o’ mine will now be embossed with my brand. I was going to use my ankh stamp, but I’m not sure how well the ink would hold up when subjected to condensation and possibly ink-resistant plastic containers, so instead I’ll just use my silver Sharpie. It makes me smile to think of the work fridge filled with little tubs of hummus with silver anarchy symbols drawn on them. But, then, I am easily amused.

And speaking of soy yogurt, I noticed Tuesday evening at Whole Foods that every single one of the first five multi-berry-flavor soy yogurts five days past its sell-by date. I then discovered that the pint of frozen ice-cream-like substance I was considering buying was in fact opened, with the top only lightly resting on the container, with no protective film or anything. Eww. The amazing thing is that I went ahead and bought the rest of my groceries, after double-checking to make sure they were all still unexpired and unopened. Sheesh. Why do I keep going to WF? They leave expired or open stuff on the shelves, probably a quarter of the not-yet-expired soy yogurt I’ve bought from them is moldy when I open it (which never happens elsewhere), they ruin their tomatoes and avocados by chilling them too much and causing flavor loss and nasty gray streaks, and they’re hardly cheap. (On the other hand, the natural foods stores and co-ops around here don’t carry wines, even organic ones, and some of them don’t carry coffee, either. When I’m in search of organically grown, free-trade-certified poisons, WF is about my only option. I’ll have to find a liquor store that carries organic, vegan[2] wines, I suppose. I should do more shopping in specialty stores, anyway, rather than one-stop markets.)

In other but equally irrelevant news, my favorite brand-new Flickr group is Lush. Sadly, I cannot offer many photos, not having a store within a 10-hour radius and only having limited numbers of products in my possession, but at least I can get vicarious Lushiness by looking at the pretty pics. Their stores–at least the ones I’ve visited–are magnificent, and their products divine. I do note that their soaps seem to disappear more quickly than the other brands I’ve bought, but I can’t tell whether that’s something inherent in Lush soap or simply because I tend to go wild and use them too liberally in a cackling, frothy madness.

It may be time to place another Lush order, actually; the only things from my previous order I’ve used up are the bath melt and bubble bar, but their holiday items are now available (for, er, gifts — yeah, that’s it, gifts, and they’ve got a deal going now on free shipping if you order $99 or more, so in a way you’re actually saving money). And, of course a life without bath melts is just not worth contemplating. I have a recipe to make my own melts, but finding food-grade cocoa butter that isn’t already incorporated into lotion or similar has thus far been an insurmountable challenge.

As a belated product update, I find the Rock Star soap and Creamy Candy melt a little too cherry-scented for my taste; it’s not objectionable, just not what I was expecting. I liked the Ceridwen’s Cauldron melt much better.

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[1]The two fridges are supposed to be cleaned out thoroughly on alternating Friday evenings, I think, with all contents thrown out, but I swear the plucky soy yogurt lasted at least a month. Way past its expiration date, too. I was actually starting to root for its survival from one week to the next; who knew what culture and civilization might have been growing on it?

[2]Some, though not all, wines are clarified with nonvegan substances. (If you’re curious about what those might be, check here or here.) Strictly speaking, the clarifiers are no longer actually in the wine when it reaches the consumer, the same way that the isinglass is no longer physically present in beers produced using it, but it’s still rather icky.