I have a love hate thing with womens’ perfume. I love the really good fragrances, those that are not too sweet, not too overwhelming. Those really fine, gentle fragrances that slowly tip toe up to your nose and before you even smell them they are already tickling your soul.

Working at a college, I notice that students don’t wear perfume during the day when they are in class or running between offices and so forth. I hardly ever catch a whiff of perfume on coeds. Not that I am chasing them all over the place nose first mind you.

It is usually the employees at the university that wear perfume. Some of the younger faculty, some of the administrative assistants or the middle management types.

However, there is a danger out there. Middle age to older women who seem to think they need to soak every inch of their body in industrial strength powerful perfume. The sort of strong perfume that can be used to remove old paint from walls. Unfortunately, I encountered one of them today. A woman walked just three feet into my office, which meant she was still a good 15 feet from me and my desk. (I am blessed with a large office, praise Jesus). However, before I knew she was even in my office I came under chemical attack. A tsunami wave of sickening sweet fragrance hit me like a swinging frying pan to the back of the head. I turned and there was this over middle aged woman standing in my doorway babbling about something. Since I could not breathe I just waved at her, in hopes she would extract herself and her weapon of mass destruction from my office. I was reaching for my staple gun to shoot her in the knees when she finally decided to leave on her own accord.  It took me ten minutes to recover.

There is an opposite threat out there though, lurking in the carpeted canyons of the administrative office world. At least, for me. My kryptonite, if you will.  It seems that I am susceptible to certain expensive perfumes that have a beautiful light aroma almost reminiscent of fine vanilla. But not sweet or strong. Not really vanilla either. Just a trace like it. I’ve asked what the perfume is, and forget its name, but it is some expensive product. Well, when I am close to a woman with that fragrance, I am helpless. Asking for a day off? Take two. Need help with a major project? I’ll assign three more people. You are two days late with your assignment? Oh that’s fine, take another day. No my friends, when a woman enters into my presence wearing that fragrance – I am doomed.

Thankfully, it is not a common perfume, and I hardly ever encounter it.

While we are on the subject, let’s talk guy fragrances. The appropriate guy fragrance is at the very most, a hint, a very, very slight hint of aftershave. But normally, men should not smell like flowers or fruit. Even if they are fruits. It just isn’t right.

Another fragrance I am attracted to is Cinnamon, although not as a body fragrance.  It is getting to be the holidays, so soon Publix will be selling those four foot cinnamon brooms. You can stick one of those anywhere in the house and the whole house will smell like cinnamon.

Just don’t toss one in the back of your truck and leave it all day in the hot Florida sun. I did that once. Opened the truck and my eyebrows fell off onto the ground.

Ok, I thought I was finished, but I have to add one more fragrance note. I once bought a pound of Starbucks coffee, had it ground for the french press, and tossed it into the back of the truck, where it bounced about all day. Then I picked up a peperoni and mushroom pizza and put that in the truck. I stopped to gas up, and was outside the truck for a few minutes. When I reentered, the mixture of fresh ground coffee and pizza hit me and I thought I was in Heaven!

I hope they never make that into a perfume……..

Peace out people.

SCG

Posted some new photos on www.somecameraguy.com

SCG

I had a hankering to purchase some old cameras, and after breakfast with the wife at the new Denny’s on University Drive in Davie, we headed to downtown Davie to visit a few thrift/collectible/antique shops. There are a couple of relatively new shops on Davie road north of orange Drive that are excellent. Clean, neat, bright and cheerful, with wind chimes tinkling in the breeze and vanilla candles spreading that wonderful fragrance throughout. I love that fragrance.  God was with me, as at both shops I was able to pick up an old camera for a very reasonable price.

Mu favorite is the Kodak Vigilant Junior Six-20, a cool folding camera that after close inspection by my wife and I appears to be in excellent working condition. It is from the 1930′s or 40′s so that is amazing. I’m looking for some 620 roll film to try to test it out.

I paid $45 for it. I found film at B & H for about $14. Have to use a lab to develop the film.

The next find was a box camera probably from the late 1930′s, an Agfa Ansco Shur-Shot. This camera is so simple that there really isn’t much to go wrong with it. Again, my wife and I took it all apart, cleaned it and put it back together, and it also appears to be in excellent working condition.  I think it takes 120 film, but it is going to be a bit tricky I think.

I paid about $15 for this one.

These two cameras are an excellent addition to my collection. Actually, since I only had one other “old” camera, I think this starts my collection. My other old camera is a Konica C35 which I think is only from the late 1960′s.

This one I purchased for $4 at a garage sale about six months ago. it uses regular 35mm film and produces pretty good prints.

I have a modern Canon film camera, a rebel, as well as two digital cameras; a Panasonic Lumix which is my “carry all-the-time” camera because it is small and fully automatic and cheap, so I don’t worry if I lose it. And then my main camera, my Canon 30D, soon to be replaced by the 50D.

But you know, there is something still more excellent about film. For one thing, you can’t beat film for megapixels.  Most digital cameras still can’t match slide film. And slides will last virtually forever without losing quality, if you take good care of them.

The only challenge is trying to purchase film these days. Only a handful of years ago you could purchase film and slide film almost anywhere! Certainly Walgreen’s and other drug stores, K-mart, Wal-Mart, you name it. Even 7-11 used to sell real film. Now, you might be able to find some basic color film here or there, but your options are limited, and you can forget about slide film. And trying to get them developed is a challenge too.  I never use those one-hour developers – they never do a good job, and if they give you the pictures on a CD it is low resolution images. And they don’t develop slide film at all.

Amazingly, I was at Target recently and asked the 22 year old girl behind the photo counter for slide film. She had no clue what I was talking about. I tried to explain it to her, but her attention span was limited, obviously damaged from too many hours of role playing computer games.

Anyway, a great day with the wife. And some great finds.

Peace out people.

SCG

I was on my exercise bike early this morning, and needed something to watch on TV to keep my mind off the pain of actually exercising. Unfortunately, only crap was on. I found one television show interesting though. It was informing you how for $39.95 you could buy their program and easily make $700 billion a week by just working from home 5 minutes a day. This was advertised as totally foolproof and guaranteed double your money back. Then they showed a bank of telephone operators sitting by, waiting for your call. That got me thinking. Why are they sitting there working 8 hour days, 5 days a week, taking our calls? Didn’t they hear the guy? They could spend just $39.95 and in days be making billions of dollars working just 5 minutes a day!!! What the hell is the matter with these operators? Are they that stupid? I immediately decided NOT to place my order, for fear that anyone that stupid to work a 40 hour job when they could be earning billions of dollars working from home 5 minutes a day would be too stupid to get my order right.

SCG