another funny mood

[tamaranth]

Like several people on my F-list, I'm in a funny mood today.

Agency keeps ringing up with 'yes, but ...' and 'client says ...' and 'could you start ...' and so on. I can't settle to anything else 'til this is sorted (it's too frustrating to start writing -- I have a short story, first Proper SF in years, that is coagulating in my brain -- only to be interrupted by calls I can't ignore). But it does look as though I'll have a short-term job, working with geeky Soviet software. Yay for paid employment. Wherever, and whenever, it is. Yay.

Had a hilarious trip to IKEA (via Hadleigh Castle) with ladymoonray yesterday. Many amusing anecdotes if only I could be bothered (includes locked carparks, closed restaurants, 'it came off in my hand', and complete inability to navigate any road junction at all -- this last aided and abetted by the Highways Agency). Purchased fish-in-a-tube, three different sorts -- cod roe with dill, creamed salmon, and cheese-with-shrimp -- yay! (Though gastro-highlight was raw and wriggling herring in the restaurant.) Just like Scandinavia, but closer, and no asynje. Anyway, now I have a desk chair -- Sole Purpose of Visit -- in cheerful camo print, and it hasn't fallen apart yet even though I put it together myself.

Can anyone explain to me how self-heating facial products work? I am not a chemist, and I find it fascinating that I can plaster smelly gunk onto wet skin and then feel it getting warmer. Also works on non-skin, such as bathroom tiles (though my tiles don't have Problem Skin). The website spouts the usual obfuscations ("a special mineral clay", gosh, really?) but tells me little.

I'm going to Cyprus for a week, next week. Yay again. Are there any especially pertinent novels I might have to hand, ready to read on the beach?
The phone hasn't rung ...

Comments

[fraghag.livejournal.com]

ohhh, which Ikea did you go to? Me and _ibby_ tried out the sexy new one in Edmonton the other week!

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

Lakeside. Kind of like Hell but with more roundabouts.

[fraghag.livejournal.com]

Sounds like Hemel with it's "magic" roundabout!

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

I never saw the point of the self-heating mask. Just press a warm flannel to your face several times, or steam your pores, before applying mask. That works pretty well. Although the self heating ones are fab for doing ones nose.

[flickgc.livejournal.com]

There's probably some sort of chemical reaction when the clay is exposed to air, and that reaction will be exothermic.

Either that or it's actually toxic, and you just feel the disolution of your skin as a warm sensation....

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

yes, I know it heats up (it's definitely the gunk, and not the skin: tested on inanimate surfaces) but I want to know how...

[flickgc.livejournal.com]

Umm... it's an exothermic reaction... Or do you mean you want to see the formulae?

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

exothermic means producing heat, yes? so isn't saying 'an exothermic reaction' more or less the same as saying 'it heats itself up'? I'm not sure I would understand detailed formulae but I'm interested in what makes it heat up -- which chemicals are involved in their magical 'mineral-bearing clay' or whatever their label-ese is.

[flickgc.livejournal.com]

Yes, exothermic means it produced heat.

Things forming bonds (which clasy is doing when it sets) are generally exothermic, and the stuff probably includes calcium hydroxide (lime), which is exothermic when it gets carbonated on contact with carbon dioxide in the air.