cat beds, sugar, and cocaine

1. The Southern Arizona Humane Society collects fuzzy toilet lid covers to use as cat beds. I can't say I would ever have thought of that.

2. In an effort to widen our diet, we went in search of more sugars. We turned up beet sugar, palm sugar, and sorbitol. We were already familiar with beet sugar, which is an easy substitute for cane sugar. Palm sugar comes in a roughly four inch disk, and my husband reports that it tastes sort of like maple candy. I have no idea what to expect from the sorbitol.

3. In other news, we wondered what the heck freebasing cocaine was, since it's mentioned in Richard Pryor's obituary. What we learned is that cocaine is really cocaine HCl, and to make it properly smokable you need to remove the HCl, thereby 'freeing' the 'base.' It involves some chemistry and explosive substances, and I cannot believe that kind of information is just floating around on the web. I mean, I can, but I'd rather learn about cats and toilet lid covers, thank you.