Updates/info for synecdochic's BPAL decanting

Thanks to the efforts of the labeling fairy, everything is packed up and ready to go out with today's pickup. (Sarah likes labeling and did it while I was asleep!) (Side note: you can always tell which one of us did the labeling based on which direction the crease in your labels goes. If the decant lies flat with the notes facing up, Sarah did it. If the decant lies flat with the art face up, I did it. She's a lefty, you see...)

I thought I might have to punt the internationals until Monday, but I managed to actually ship everything, except the one person (you know who you are) who I forgot to order an add-on bottle for, which will be shipped as soon as that bottle gets here, and the one person who's waiting for money to move into PayPal. This circle was kind of a comedy of errors:

1) I am a moron and managed to miss adding somebody to the lists completely, so the count was totally off and I had to re-decant a good 8 or 9 scents. I managed to fix it -- thanks to the grace of god, we had (sometimes JUST) enough of all but one scent, and I had an imp of that one from a decant circle I was part of myself -- but please, please, please, when I reply back to you confirming you're in the circle, please check the list to make sure dumbass me actually added you to the circle lists and for all the right things, as well as checking the invoice! It's my fault if I miss it, not yours, but more eyeballs = always helpful.

2) Because of that, I had to print some extra labels at home (I print # of labels I need + 2 for fuckups while labeling, and both Sarah and I are perfectionists when it comes to rejecting labeling fuckups.) Some of you therefore will get labels that were blurry inkjet instead of the nice laser printer. Sorry :(

3) I really ran out of steam partway through and stopped being able to match frimps to wishlists. Some of you will get wishlist frimps, some just whatever the Lab sent or whatever I grabbed when I reached in the frimp bag.

4) Continuing on the 'ran out of steam' theme, I am experimenting this circle with not bubblewrapping the individual empty bottles that I chuck in as freebies -- I'm testing to see if the bubblewrapped mailer alone is enough to keep those safe. (I did not have the oompf to do all the bubblewrapping.) Please open your packages carefully! If any of them break, let me know and I'll know not to do that in the future, but since they're empty, I figured it wouldn't be a huge loss if they do break. (Any half bottles or full bottles did get bubblewrapped.)

It's a good thing I'm taking a few weeks off. :)

ALSO: If you ordered Night's Bridge, be sure to shake and/or roll the vial before applying! It is a blue oil in very dramatic suspension in a yellow oil, and when you shake it properly it should (amusingly enough) turn green.

Accidentally posted this in my journal first, not this comm: the Gaimans and Sinus Amoris arrived today. I was thinking I might not be able to decant much, since I fucked my back (again) and have spent the past few days in horrible pain, but the miracle of Very Good Drugs kicked in and I got the actual decanting part done.

I didn't realize until today that I hadn't printed the labels yet (or even made them up), but I got that done just now and Sarah will be printing the labels at work tomorrow. (Her printer at work is better than ours at home. If you've ever thought "hey, it seems like sometimes these labels are laser printed and somtimes they're inkjet printed", you are correct: the laser printer is the one at Sarah's work, but sometimes scheduling and an inability to plan ahead means they get printed on the inkjet at home instead.)

So, she will print the labels at work tomorrow, we'll label them tomorrow night, and I'll try to get them out with Friday's pickup.

Once they all get shipped out, I'll do part 3 (the Lemon Scented Sticky Bat, Good Omens, and Stardust). I'm going to hold off on that for a few weeks, since we're taking a vacation at the end of May. After that, I think we'll do The Last Unicorn, and then if we still have some more time before the silly season hits, Labyrinth + Dark Crystal + Pretty Deadly + Dawn. (I worked out an optimal distribution of the "general catalog but unimpable" collections so each circle would have roughly the same number of scents, a while back; there are four circles' worth of between three and five collections each.)

I'm current on invoices and lists for the second Neil Gaiman circle as of now. Still accepting signups! I'm going to let signups run through Friday, since there's no real rush on these.

Canada folks, you may notice me charging less for shipping than I said I would -- it's because I forgot the breakpoints for shipping to Canada are different.