One Half Buddhist, One Half Christian, One Half Pagan

Body: My gut is still a little achey, but better than yesterday.

Reading: I finished my last book and went to sleep without starting a new one last night.

Book Review: I finally finished the Night's Dawn trilogy! As usual for Peter F Hamilton, the first 95% of the story is wonderful space opera, with scares and adventure and tons of excitement. Then, he loses it in the last 5%. In this case it was literally a case of Deus Ex Machina.

Hearing: The Starship Sofa, an audio science fiction magazine

Wearing: Today's perfume is Coyote, from BPAL's Excolo line. The Excolo scents are inspired by various gods and demi-gods from the world's mythologies.

Tonight's Project: Some artsy/crafty stuff, I'm not sure what yet.

Project Follow-up: I got the swap box over to arathreel's house last night. The final box ended up weighing twice as much as my test box, so I upped the take/leave amount to $10.00. If you're playing, details are in the letter in the box.

Randomness: One of the few things I like about my workplace is that when I look out my window I have a view of a small wooded lot (if I look past the building's back-up generator). Today there are a bunch of blue jays hanging out where I can watch them.

Body: I think I overdid it this weekend. I ache from about an inch above my bellybutton to about 3 inches below it, and about 6 inches to either side. My feet are also killing me.

Reading: Same as before, but I'm almost done (97%).

Hearing: The Slate Magazine's Podcasts

Etsy find: A very pretty tote bag.

Tonight's Project: Start the Circular Swap box moving by taking it over to arathreel's new place.

Randomness: If you want to join the Circular Swap, you've got until 5:30 tonight to let me know and get me your mailing address.

Again, I mostly just copied and pasted this post from the last one, but have made a bunch of changes.

I've decided to include the list of names in the box, but not the addresses. When you're ready to send the box on you can contact me and I'll give you the address you're sending it to.

We're going to use a 8"x8"x8" box from the post office. I'm going to put an envelope in the box for money. If your shipping is much less than $5.00 please put the difference in the envelope. If it's much more than $5.00, please feel free to take the difference out of the envelope. If there is still money in the envelope when it gets back to me I'll donate it to a charity.

Rules:
1) Spend as little money as possible. Some ideas are: craft supplies from your own stash, handmade things, homemade food, recipes, used books or CDs, mixed CDs. If you do need to buy things, hit dollar and thrift stores and clearance sales. The idea here is to share things that are fun, not to spend tons of money.

2) Food should be labeled. I don't want to poison anybody because they didn't know that a food had something they were allergic to in it. If it's store bought, make sure it's in the original packaging. If it's homemade include the recipe.

3) Package things securely. If it's fragile, don't forget the bubble wrap. If it's liquid or might melt, put it in multiple Ziploc bags. If it's strongly scented, multiple Ziploc bags might also be a good idea.

4) Try to keep the fullness of the box even. Going by both weight and number of things, try to add about the same amount as you keep. That will help to keep both shipping and selection fair for everybody who comes after you.

Any other ideas for rules?

As of today, the box is full and ready to go. The order of play is:
Me
arathreel
dulcinbradbury
Bobby
Sara
zarhooie
glinda_w
tx_cronopio
magpie49
dancing_crow
and
back to me.

Anyone else who wants to play, you've got until I seal the box before handing it over to arathreel to sign up.

arathreel, when and where do you want to meet to make the handover?

(If you want to play, sign up here.)

I mostly just copied and pasted this post from the last one, but have made a couple of changes.

So far the list (in no particular order) is:
Me - Albany, NY area
dulcinbradbury - local to me
magpie49 - Pennsylvania
glinda_w - Northwest part of the USA
arathreel - local to me
tx_cronopio - Texas
My LJ-less sister-in-law Sara - Illinois
My LJ-less brother Bobby - Michigan
zarhooie - South Dakota

I need everyone who isn't local to me to send me their street address (even if you think I already have it) so that I can figure out the best (cheapest for each person) route to send the box on. You can email me, or PM me here or on Facebook. We also need to decide how we're going to get the addresses to the other people in the swap. The three I came up with are: 1) have each person email/pm the person they are sending to directly, 2) have each person contact me and get the next person's address, or 3) include all the addresses in the box to start with. Which does everyone prefer?

Instead of the box I posted about last time, I decided that it would be easier to use a 8"x8"x8" box from the post office. I'm going to put an envelope in the box for money. If your shipping is much less than $5.00 please put the difference in the envelope. If it's much more than $5.00, please feel free to take the difference out of the envelope. If there is still money in the envelope when it gets back to me I'll donate it to a charity.

Rules:
1) Spend as little money as possible. Some ideas are: craft supplies from your own stash, handmade things, homemade food, recipes, used books, CD mixes. If you do need to buy things, hit dollar and thrift stores and clearance sales. The idea here is to share things that are fun, not to spend tons of money.

2) Food should be labeled. I don't want to poison anybody because they didn't know that a food had something they were allergic to in it. If it's store bought, make sure it's in the original packaging. If it's homemade include the recipe.

3) Package things securely. If it's fragile, don't forget the bubble wrap. If it's liquid or might melt, put it in multiple Ziploc bags. If it's strongly scented, multiple Ziploc bags might also be a good idea.

4) Try to keep the fullness of the box even. Going by both weight and number of things, try to add about the same amount as you keep. That will help to keep both shipping and selection fair for everybody who comes after you.

Any other ideas for rules?

If everything works out the way I hope, I'll start the box moving next weekend (the 21st or 22nd).

(If you want to play, sign up here.)

So far the list (in no particular order) is:
Me - Albany, NY area
dulcinbradbury - local to me
magpie49 - Pennsylvania
glinda_w - Northwest part of the USA
arathreel - local to me
tx_cronopio - Texas
My LJ-less sister-in-law Sara - Illinois
My LJ-less brother Bobby - Michigan
zarhooie - South Dakota
dancing_crow - Massachusetts

I need everyone who isn't local to me to send me their street address (even if you think I already have it) so that I can figure out the best (cheapest for each person) route to send the box on. You can email me, or PM me here or on Facebook.

The box I'm probably going to use is almost identical to these. I did a test run by filling it full of random stuff from my desk, weighing it on my kitchen scale, and visiting the post office's website. They seem to think I could send a three pound box from Albany to Seattle via parcel post for $4.90. I'm going to put an envelope in the box for money. If your shipping is much less than $5.00 please put the difference in the envelope. If it's much more than $5.00, please feel free to take the difference out of the envelope. If there is still money in there when it gets back to me I'll donate it to a charity.

Rules:
1) Spend as little money as possible. Some ideas are: craft supplies from your own stash, handmade things, homemade food, recipes, used books, CD mixes. If you do need to buy things, hit dollar and thrift stores and clearance sales. The idea here is to share things that are fun, not to spend tons of money.

2) Food should be labeled. I don't want to poison anybody because they didn't know that a food had something they were allergic to in it. If it's store bought, make sure it's in the original packaging. If it's homemade include the recipe.

3) Package things securely. If it's fragile, don't forget the bubble wrap. If it's liquid or might melt, put it in multiple Ziploc bags. If it's strongly scented, multiple Ziploc bags might also be a good idea.

4) Try to keep the fullness of the box even. Going by both weight and number of things, try to add about the same amount as you keep. That will help to keep both shipping and selection fair for everybody who comes after you.

Any other ideas for rules?

If everything works out the way I hope, I'll start the box moving next weekend.

I'm still looking for a few more people to join the swap I'm setting up.

Comment on the original post if you want to play.

(I swiped this idea from the BPAL forums.)

Is anyone out there interested in doing a circular swap with me?

Basically, the idea is that whoever starts it (probably me) fills a box with randomly cool stuff, and then sends it to the first person on the list.

When they get it, they go through the stuff, pick a few things to keep, add a few new randomly cool things, and send it on the the next person in line. Repeat until the box has made it to everybody. The last person sends it back to the first person, who keeps whatever is still in it.

If you're interested comment here with where you live (at least what state or country). Once at least 6 people have signed up I'll figure out what order the list will go in and post that and a few basic rules.

Added: So far, we have three yeses and a maybe. I need at least 3 more people to play!

Added, part 2: The rules I've come up with so far are:
1) Spend as little as possible. Make stuff, and raid your own stashes for craft supplies and randomly cool things to add to the box.
2) Things that edible should be clearly labeled with the ingredients.