Burt's Bees Lip Balm

           

            It’s getting to that time of year where just about everyone and their mother is carrying around some sort of moisturizing cream or balm for their dry, chapped lips. I’m from New York and I thought one of the perks to going to school in South Carolina would be the feeling of moisturized lips throughout the winter. For at least my time here, I thought that a tube of chapstick wouldn’t even cross my mind. Of course, with my luck I wasn’t able to shake this problem.

            Having to use chapstick is inevitable for me, it’s just a matter of when. We all know we are done for on the first cold day of fall when we throw on that chapstick. Just once will get your lips hooked all the way till the warm days in April. So with this in mind, this year what I decided to do was fight the urge for as long as possible. I didn’t last very long, considering my lips are already at about four doses a day. Four doesn’t seem like a lot but I’ll remind you that it’s still only the first week of November.

            With all of the experience I’ve had, I can confidently say that there’s only been one type of lip balm that gets the job done. For me, the chapstick of choice is Burt’s Bees Lip Balm. My lips are the type that can’t function without their treatment dosage. Even though it may only work for a few hours, I haven’t found one other brand that can match the job done by Burt’s Bees. Bees Lip Balm includes vitamin E to provide increased moisture to your lips and peppermint oil to produce a tingling sensation that may help decrease the irritation commonly associated with chapped lips. They provide an insane amount of flavors in which I always have trouble choosing from. They carry all different kinds such as menthol, pink grapefruit, blueberry and dark chocolate, coconut and pear, vanilla bean, wild cherry, honey, mango butter (etc.). Some of those do sound a bit strange but still, more flavors is never a bad thing.
            As you probably know, tubes of chapstick are prone to get lost. They’re so tiny and you carry them everywhere. In out and of the pocket, it’s only a matter of time till you forget where you leave it. So, because we, or I at least, run through lip balms like it’s water, the price tends to add up. I can’t say I’ve ever fully completed a tube and that certainly is not something to be proud of. Burt’s Bees Lip Balm is a little pricey, however, you do get what you pay for. I would recommend this product to anyone who is very careful with his or her belongings. After all, who wants to be spending tons of money on chapstick when the season of giving is right around the corner???

Transparent Duct Tape

            Transparent duct tape is a problem. When there is no handle with a blade to keep track of the end, then good luck wasting your time. People purchase duct tape on a regular basis because it’s a very versatile product. The problem is, the producers still sell the rolls of tape that look like the one in the above picture.

            A single roll of duct tape is a pain in the butt to work with. First of all, keeping track of the end is annoying in itself. I don’t know about the producers of this product by I’m human and I only have two hands. When I’m working with duct tape I feel like I need at least three. I need a hand for the scissors, a hand to hold the roll of tape, and also a hand to hold the end of the tape so I don’t have to go searching for it.

            The other day I shipped a box to my family back in New York. I packed everything I needed into the box and I began to look for a roll of tape in my apartment. I found a big roll of transparent duct tape (similar to the one in the above picture) and I thought to myself, “here we go.” I knew exactly what I was getting myself into so I was strategically going to plan this out. However, before I even was going to prevent the problem, it was already there. It took me a solid five minutes to first find the end of the tape. On top of that, when I went to peel it, I got caught in the exact situation I was trying to avoid; you know, the never-ending cycle of peeling the tape back but only getting half of it? Well, I was in a 15-minute battle with this roll of tape going back and forth peeling sides trying to even them out. Yes you read that right, those fifteen minutes isn’t even including the extra five minutes I originally spent just looking for the end.

            I was hoping to find a picture of what I’m trying to explain but nothing seemed to come up. I don’t think it’s too big of a deal though because I’m sure you understand exactly what I’m talking about. So, to conclude my story I decided to toss the roll of tape and just take the opened box to the UPS store. The people there were nice enough to do the taping for me. And yes, if you were wondering, they did have the roll of tape with the handle (similar to the one in the picture below). They’ve been around the block and they’re obviously not making that mistake twice.