extra moisture

It's a good thing I started the oil cleanse method (for face washing) a couple of years ago (and stopped last summer when we got stuck here bc everything was too hectic and there wasn't space) because now I have a bunch of jojoba oil and castor oil, and my hands started to crack from the washing last week until I started being more careful about rubbing gently. My regular moisturizers go on first, and then I dab the oil mixture on the irritated bits and torn places, around the cuticles, and into the fingertips, which are starting to roughen and hopefully will not callus, and massage it in. The higher the oil content of moisturizer, the more work it takes to wash off, but it also doesn't evaporate or wear off as quickly and is hence more protective. (Any sort of oil will work for this, but I'd rather save the olive oil for cooking and coconut oil is solid at room temperature right now, which makes it inconvenient.)

Speaking of moisturizers, we got a ton of them from MIL, and I saved most of them, but she had a fondness for the perfumed stuff from The Body Shop. Even their scents that I like I can pretty much only have on my legs and feet, let alone the hands - they're a guaranteed sneezing fit. Wax doesn't have this reaction, but she prefers the grapefruit scent so strongly that I predict it will be hard to get her to use up the others (I've found like four). I opened a tube labeled "hemp hand protector" the other day and it was so nauseatingly strong smelling that I had to use oil and soap to wash it off and then I had to change shirts. The stink was still noticeable in the air like 6 hours later. On the other hand, the almond-scented hand night cream or whatever it's called is comparatively bearable. Still strong enough to make me sneeze if I wore it on my hands in the daytime, though.

Signal Boost: info re coronavirus measures in essential/non-white-collar fields

princessofgeeks posted: Specific question regarding coronavirus

Because of the overwhelming white collar focus of 90 percent of the media, I have some questions about the coronavirus and its impact on people who cannot work from home, period. If you have suggestions about where I can look for more information, I'd love to have them. I'm putting the specifics below the cut.

Nero Wolfe: Trio for Blunt Instruments, The Doorbell Rang, And Four to Go

"Manifestly you’re either a jackass or a murderer, and conceivably both."

Outside, some snowflakes were doing stunts.

"Since the complexities of nature permit a myriad of coincidences we cannot reject one offhand, but we can discriminate."

( selected lines )

:O not hidden treasure from SECOND-HAND dödsbo

We were clearing some MIL junk out of the bedroom so Wax can work there starting Tuesday and a pen rolled out from under a random Christmas ornament, and I picked it up, and it turned out to be a Pelikan fountain pen! It looks like a piece under the hooded nib is missing.

It's definitely the 1960 Pelikano (a student pen) in black; in 1965 the cap design was changed. If it were in good condition it would look like this (just imagine a bunch of scratches and dings and you get the idea for the one I found):



There is a modern version of the Pelikano, but I've never considered buying it because the modern idea of a student pen looks like... this:



(Not that I don't like childish things... I definitely want to buy a Pelikan Twist at some point.) The cap is just too clunky and ugly. It's more original, which is probably why they at Pelikan decided originally to upgrade from a straight-up cartridge-carrying clone of the All-Time Iconic Parker 51, and it's probably more ergonomic and anti-slip, but that's no excuse for the cap to look like THAT.

Also vintage is just cooler obviously. But I'll have to soak it because it had dried up with an ink cartridge that must have been last changed no later than 1985, when Wax's paternal grandfather died, and her mom had just carried it around in a box of his coins and keepsakes since then.