Stubbornness Averted

Well, I was trying to delay posting until I managed to find the aforementioned Capitol Collection in a store near me. Luckily for my readers, something happened in the meantime, and I received a new survival kit in the mail, which I'll tell you about in this post.

Many months ago, my parents went to test drive a car to get a gift card. They actually wanted to test drive the car, but the dealership was busy, so they got the gift card and were sent along their merry way. The gift card was for an outfitter that happens to sell a Deluxe Survival Kit unlike any I have ever seen before. Now it is in my collection of survival kits, and all it cost was like an hour of my parents' time, and $3.50 in RT fuel cost according to mapquest.com.

I will tell you what it includes. It includes a signaling mirror. A map compass (I have other compasses, but this one has a base that you can set down on your map for more accurate orienteering), and a magnesium firestarter because a girl can't have too many of those. But that's not all! It also includes 12 fire sticks. Well, I already have the best fire-starters ever, which I made myself with Miss Gokey, but I'm very glad I looked up the contents of the kit, because I very seriously believed the fire sticks were some kind of high-energy protein bar-type snack. I was mistaken. I'm glad I didn't bite into one.

Further, the kit includes one poncho, two towels that are shrunk to the size of quarters (once unleashed, those towels are NEVER going back into the bag), and one tiny roll of duct tape, presumably enough to tape you up if a branch rips a 1/2" gash all the way up your forearm.

The best parts of the kit are two things that I don't have in my previous kits: glow sticks (! YAY! I let glow bracelets from the dot spot suffice for my homemade kits) and...

drum roll please...

a bug net. Which my dad immediately put on his head. I didn't get a photo of him, but here's a photo of ME wearing it.

It's cammo! Perhaps you'll see me wearing it in the woods of Michigan some summer soon. Just for the bug net, the packet was totally worth the absolutely $0 and 0 effort that I personally put into it. Thanks, mom and dad! 

In other news, I have FINALLY finished reading 1491. You can find my rather abrupt review on goodreads here. I think. Now, since it's October (my favorite month), I'm reading Libba Bray's The Diviners. 

Rants and Reviews

I spent my morning joyriding around to every store in a ten-mile radius looking for some Cover Girl promotional nail polish for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. The movie will come out on November 22nd, and I'm very excited about it. After hitting 3 Walgreens stores in 2 different states and coming up empty-handed and bare fingernailed, I came home and googled the collection and saw this ad. Now I'm convinced that the collection has been released, that I saw it in the store and didn't know what I was looking for. It's called the Capitol Collection, and I don't care that Cover Girl is part of a big international corporate conglomerate. Now I know from the ad what to look for, so I'll hit the makeup trail again soon.

How do I know about Cover Girl's evil corporate status? My new previously-mentioned buycott app. I took advantage of my time in the stores to shop for some cruelty-free facial scrub for after my Neutrogena runs out. I absolutely love Neutrogena products, but according to buycott, Neutrogena contributes large amounts of money to Scott Walker. (Pay attention to the "transform education" priority.) I know this because I joined the "Boycott Scott Walker Contributors" campaign. I also joined one of the cruelty-free campaigns, one of the anti-GMO campaigns, and the "We Own You" campaign. In conclusion: I can't ever buy anything at any store ever again.

That's an impractical plan.

I will try to choose the lesser of the evils. I literally scanned EVERY brand of facial soap on the shelves. (Yes, I know Walgreens contributes to Scott Walker, too. Baby steps!)

Pictured below is the only cosmetic product that was cruelty-free and didn't give Scott Walker money.

Look at those prices! I have contacted my friend Chris to see if his wife Angie's company, YB Urban?, features facial cleanser. In the meantime, I found a web page that lists 6 recipes for how to wash your face with food. 

When you can't trust Walgreens, who can you trust? Pinterest. That's right. Inspired by Kristy Phipps's Pinterest Sunday photo, this was breakfast today:

Pumpkin french toast FTW! Frying apple slices covered in pancake batter wasn't half bad, either.
Ms. Whitaker will note that the taffy apples have appeared at the grocery store, as well.

Coming soon: the actual artastic challenge entry for September, and me expounding on my local hometown libraries.