Have I got some cool stuff for you this week!

 The last time I stopped to look around it was Sunday. Then, as if some mysterious alien who has mastered time dilation had zapped my mind I’m looking at the clock on my computer and it’s Thursday evening! Where does the time go? In any case, it’s time for another “Vaping with Julia” column and today I am writing you from lakeside, and it’s a chilly 46 degrees (F) at 5:30AM. It’s weather like this that makes me wish home sometimes. When it’s cool down here you take advantage of it and head outside. It’s completely black out here and the chance of an alligator or snake coming up and biting me while I lay here in the chaise lounge is slim only because its cold to these cold-blooded beasts. (I just scared myself)

Making a mountain out of a molehill…

Vaping

Discovering something new is always exciting. A week ago I was so excited about finding a company that makes the coolest, one-of-a-kind Drip Tips that I could hardly wait to tell you about it. Finally I can. Other things happened this week as well but first I want to talk about Molehill Mountain Art Drip Tips and the great people behind the company, Tammie and Doug.

A week ago yesterday (1/10/13) I was surfing the web specifically looking for a custom Drip Tip for John, my boss. It wasn’t his birthday or anything, I just wanted to show him that I appreciated everything he does for Spinfuel and for giving me so much leeway in the decisions I’ve made around here, both good and bad. He’s a very generous guy who is often overlooked and taken advantage of, so I like to do nice things for him every once and a while. I know he like drip tips (though he hates metal ones!) so I went looking for something made from wood.

There’s Good… and then there’s Awesome…

Little did I know that there is a level of Drip Tip that is way above the factory-made wooden drip tip I had in mind, which are pretty nice in their own right. But once I stumbled upon Molehill Mountain Art Drip Tips I was thrust into a world of drip tips that I never thought existed. (I’m serious) I spent more than an hour just browsing both the drip tips that were available for sale (no two are ever exactly alike, so its like adopting a drip tip) and those that have already been sold, before making up my mind to buy one for my boss. I didn’t go there to buy one for myself but I wound up with two of them anyway.

Once the purchase was made I sent a comment to the owners using the Contact Us page to let them know how impressed I was with their beautiful work. After sending off the comment I shut down my computer and turned my attention to the usual events of the evening. But I couldn’t get the drip tips out of my mind.

I found it a little strange to get this excited over a drip tip, and I found it even stranger than I spent $22 for a drip tip without batting an eye. (and never spent a single moment this week with buyers remorse!) Resisting the urge to grab the computer and take another look at the available drip tips right then and there, I waited for my significant other to fall asleep before heading back to Molehill Mountain.

When I returned to the mountain I read the “About” page and found out that both Tammie and Doug were artists (well, duh!) with Doug working as a “wood turner” (what I wouldn’t do to own one of his bowls!) and Tammie working in polymer clay. Sometimes they work together and sometimes alone but they’ve been living the lives of artists for decades. They have been bringing their art to the land of drip tips for only a few months now.

The background information was the catalysis for deciding to write about them in the next “Vaping with Julia” column. You see, I had to face the fact a long time ago that I was one of those unrequited artists, which means I have the desire and the passion to create but my mind/body connection won’t allow me to use my hands to recreate the visions in my mind’s eye. So when I see others that can create beautiful works of art I just want to reach out and hug them, and thank them for adding a little beauty to the world. Writing about them was the least I could do.

Over the course of the week I decided to conduct an interview and write a review about the two drip tips I bought, in addition to mentioning there here in the column.

Click HERE for the review and Here for the interview.

Not to give anything away, but if you’ve been looking for the perfect drip tip for yourself or for someone dear in your life, Molehill Mountain Art is the place you need to go. If you’d like I’ll hold your place here while you go read the review and the interview, and buy a drip tip as well. Go ahead, I’ll be here when you get back.

Welcome back!

So? What did you think? Which one did you buy? Come on! Share!

Okay now, let’s see, what else was there this week?

My drip tips arrived on Tuesday. (I think. Could have been Monday. It was FAST though.) And after presenting John with his wood and clay tip, the Chechen inlaid with Polymer Clay, I put my pinkish tip (made by Tammie and Doug “just” for me) on a shiny new red Vision STV Vivi Nova, which fit perfectly by the way, and it’s been there all week. Well, no that’s not quite right. Since getting several of the Vivi’s in different colors I’ve taken to setting up my favorite flavors (of the week or month, or whatever) and keeping the Vivi’s in an upright position in gorgeous wooden box I found in the attic back in New Hampshire last year. So whenever I changed flavors I changed Vivi’s so I’d pop the drip tip off one and put it on the other. In any case, all my vaping this week was vaped from my new Molehill Mountain Art drip tip.

This Week’s Most Vaped Flavors

As the Spinfuel eLiquid Review Team gears up for a lengthy run of several eLiquid reviews, both new and sequels, I had the freedom to vape whatever I wanted to. Because John is in the process of writing about his new “cinnamon” eLiquid passion I was able to get in on that a little and found the Mt Baker Vapor Cinnamon Roll to be quite the workhorse this week. I know a lot of people have problems with cinnamon flavors leaching into the plastics of some clearos or tanks so to prevent ruining one of my colored Vivi’s I used a clear Kanger T-3 for this juice (I’m expected several of the new Kanger MT-3’s tomorrow or Monday). I vaped the cinnamon with the Kanger off and on all week, but because the tip of the Kanger’s don’t come off I wasn’t able to use the drip tip when I vaped with it.

The Cinnamon Roll from Mt Baker Vapor is not anything like the high-octane cinnamon juice called “Fireball” from Ginger’s eJuice. Awesome in its own right, but NOT an everyday vape, Fireball is a eLiquid you vape when you the biggest throat hit you can get. When I vape Fireball my head actually kicks back when I take a hit from it, and Mt Bake Vapor’s Cinnamon Roll is very much like vaping a, ah, Cinnamon ROLL. Sweet, delicious, and satisfying.

Other flavors I enjoyed this week…

…I had the opportunity to vape a little FanceeJuice “MeeseTracks”, a mere 1ML was donated to me by John from a small stash he found. I remember loving this flavor when we did the review and it had only gotten better with a little aging. I’m going to add MeeseTracks to my standard rotation. Other flavors that I enjoyed immensely this week were “Candied Cavendish” from The Plume Room, “Vanilla Sunrise” from Ginger’s eJuice, “Blueberry Stresuel” from Ginger’s eJuice, and “White Leaf” from Mountain Oak Vapors.

I’m getting really low on my own personal eJuice. I think its time to invest some of my paycheck to build up my collection again. I don’t have a single drop of Alice in Vapeland, The Plume Room, FanceeJuice, Hurricane Vapor, The Vapor Girl, or Virgin Vapor, and these guys are my persona favs, along with Ginger’s of course. I need to rectify this in a hurry.

Note to self: Spend some money!

Journey Down The Rabbit Hole!

Oh, before I forget! On Tuesday night the whole staff got together over at John’s place to watch “Down the Rabbit Hole” a show hosted by Lori and Will on VapeOn.Tv. This was the first time the whole group watched together. Honestly, Tuesday night from 8-10PM is the worst possible night for the staff because, since we all live together, watching our Tuesday night sitcoms takes priority over everything else, usually. Tuesday night’s TV schedule looks like this in case you don’t already know:

•  8:00 – Raising Hope
• 8:30 – Ben & Kate
• 9:00 – Go On & Happy Endings & New Girl!!!!
• 9:30 – The New Normal & The Mindy Project
• 10:00 – 11:30 – Watch the shows we just DVR’d

So, you can see, how in the world can you give these shows up in favor of, well, anything? I love Lori and Will’s show, don’t get me wrong, but seriously, in this very UNFUNNY world we’re living in right now we could use all the funny we can get. Honest to God, we need more ‘happy’.  I hear they may start to archive the show so people can watch it on their own schedule, which will be huge if they do. I know I’d become a steady viewer.

Anyway, last Tuesday we decided to go ahead and DVR everything and watch the show. Steve K from stevevape.com was on, he was great (funny, self-deprecating, knowledgeable) and some guy from some “harm reduction” organization (isn’t it terrible I can’t remember?!), and the only thing that I took away from that interview happened very early on when he was speaking about (I hope I get this right) the organization CASAA was before it was CASAA, and the hard-to-deal-with politics of working there. I remember that part, at least somewhat, because there is no such thing as a perfect organization and if you think donating your very hard-earned money to ANY organization is going to be 100% worthwhile you’re wrong.

Greed, wasteful spending, backroom politics, and all the rest permeate every organization at some level. While he was talking all I could think about was how many Vapers with no source of income, unemployed or under-employed, or some terrible illness or disability give to these organizations till it hurts because they believe in “X” organization or cause, and “X” organization spends their money on Hawaiian vacations and conventions in Las Vegas. I’m talking about organizations in general, not any specific one. So please, no nasty emails 😉 And at this point I don’t even remember the exact details so maybe we can gloss over this entire part of the column. Okay?

Also part of the show was Spinfuel’s giveaway; a brand-spanking new Apollo Superior eGo Kit, our last one. I love giving away stuff to the vaping community and it’s why we started a DAILY eJuice giveaway in the Forum. Well, that and trying to grow the forum community, which is not necessarily mutually exclusive.

The Flu!

Poor Jon (Hi Jon!) over at MyVaporStore (the official supplier for Spinfuel) had the flu this week. Poor baby, if I were there I would have bought over some soup. If you buy from them, and even if you don’t, you might want to send him a Get Well Card from HERE. I’m sure he would appreciate it. I use this site a lot.

Sequels and Such…

Lots of sequel reviews coming your way soon. Some new eLiquid reviews too will be this coming soon. Monday (or Tuesday) will be a review for Vaporetti eLiquid. We have an interview with Lisa Ciarlone as well. This lady knows how to mix juice! You might remember the review we did on the Vaporetti hardware. Some of the sequel’s in the works are from Mt Baker Vapor, Ginger’s eJuice, The Vapor Girl, FanceeJuice, and more.

Touchy Subjects

I also want to touch on a couple of things that have been bothering me lately. Some are things I read in other forums or something sent to me in an email or just told to me in person. I know it shouldn’t bother me, but it does. Well, some of it bothers me and some of it just needs to be explained better.

We (Spinfuel) have asked you (our readers) to tell us about eJuice brands you enjoy that we haven’t yet reviewed. You guys have responded and now I need to let you in on something, and it’s this: More than a few of the companies you guys suggest have been contacted. Some love the idea and welcome the review, and others do not. I don’t know if they think we’re scamming for free eJuice (LOL, honestly!) or if they are just afraid to have their eLiquids go before a panel of non-affiliated, honest eJuice connoisseurs that tell the absolute truth about their impressions of the brands and the flavors they spend time with. But I do need to let you know that we are not ignoring your suggestions. We contact them, sometimes they don’t respond back.

Another thing about our eLiquid reviews; a friend sent me a link to a forum that was talking about our reviews. It was a very positive thread, most people loved them (which is awesome!) but one person commented that our reviews were less than honest because we write glowing reviews about every flavor we review. Seriously.

Now, of course if that person had ever really read one of our reviews he would know that is never true. No eLiquid brand has ever received a straight out “glowing” review about every flavor they offer. We may love the company, praise several flavors, but every company has hits and misses so to say that we gloss over every brand’s flavors just proves this person has never actually read one. That bothers me because others might believe him. Hopefully they will come to Spinfuel and read a review and see that we do the opposite of what this person says we do.

Thursday

And now this brings us to yesterday, Thursday, January 17^th. Yesterday was one of those days you only dream about in your nightmares. Okay, not really, but it was a tough day. It started in the morning with a decision to rework the Spinfuel Rate Card, which was supposed to be done late next month, February. After a potential advertiser made the comment that the Rate Card was a bit confusing I took a fresh look at it and I had to agree with him. It was overly complicated. So I asked for a meeting and convinced the “knights of the round table” that we needed to do the revised Rate Card now, not late February.

So, since we published quite a bit of new content this week, and had a bunch of stuff ready for Friday (today), we made the decision to use yesterday to remake the Rate Card, with a team of 4 people. What was supposed to take a few hours wound up taking ALL day and into the night. In fact, it’s still not fully polished. The good thing is our prices are the same as last year, despite our readership being more than 200% higher, and it is so much easier to understand and use. The bad thing is that 4 people lost an entire day doing it. Hopefully by Monday it will be 100% polished and ready to disperse.

And that was my week. Great discoveries were made (Molehill Mountain), great vaping occurred (MeeseTracks and Cinnamon Roll, among others), a great episode of “Down the Rabbit Hold” was watched, and a ton of hard work performed by all.

So, tell me about YOUR week. It’s only fair.

Till next time! Remember your vaping!

Julia