world peace, toxic bathrooms, and things that'll kill you

It says here that major candy companies are going to reduce the amount of lead from unwashed Mexican chilis in spicy candies, which brings us to the quote of the day, even though it may only be my status as a former editor that allows me to find so much humor in the use of 'safe' instead of 'safer:'

"Untold hundreds of thousands of children will now be safe and have a better life," said Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, one of the plaintiffs in the suit. "Lead is poison."

Speaking of poison, the Belfast Telegraph published this article about toxic bathrooms in October of last year, and I missed it. The upshot is that cosmetics, shampoo, baby soap, shaving cream, toothpaste, and at least one product I'd never heard of contain toxic ingredients for which the (US) FDA is making noise about requiring warning labels.

The article mentions that chemicals get deposited in people's fat cells, livers, kidneys, and brains. People like to talk about the blood-brain barrier as though it would actually keep things separate, but it doesn't seem to work that well with chemicals. If you want another example, it says right here that THC, the 'most active ingredient' in marijuana, penetrates the blood-brain barrier, and that's why it causes all those funky central nervous system effects.

Oh yeah, and second-hand smoke will kill you.

long drives, grocery stores, and grills

Yesterday I learned that it takes us 14 hours to drive from Tucson to the San Francisco Bay Area. Also, in LA, the carpool lanes are 24 hours, and you can only get into and out of them every five miles or so, so you can blow past the turn that keeps you on the 210 without half trying and end up on 134, which worked out fine anyway. And yes, LA drivers are kind of nuts.

Today I learned that the tent holds out cut grass smell admirably, so the next big test will be Laundry Fest on Sunday afternoon. Oh, and the Whole Foods here doesn't carry scented candles, so I did way better in there than I do in the Tucson Wild Oats. I thought maybe I'd just overloaded myself so I wasn't smelling things in there, but when we got home, I opened a box I'd bought in Tucson, and it reeked, so my sniffer is fine.

In other news, if wasps build a nest in your gas grill, they don't all fly away if you turn on the grill. Most of them croak, and then you have to clean them out of the bottom of the grill, and then the local biology teacher takes the nest and puts it in the freezer with all the other bugs.

the tent and Tucson weirdness

Here's a tent-related fact-a-palooza:

• Washing 40 yards (40 m) of canvas over and over again for eleven days adds $25 to $30 to your water bill.
• It takes me five and a half days to finish sewing together all the parts for a big canvas tent. That includes an entire day spent recovering from the first day, when I used the floor as a cutting table and developed a serious case of carpet-chemical inhalation.
• If you put a tent up overnight without its floor in my living room, it traps all the carpet chemicals that usually escape somehow, rendering the living room pretty much uninhabitable.

Now, I could get kind of impressed with myself for being able to make a tent, particularly since I'm sick, and it's kind of funny to pitch a tent in the living room because it's raining outside. But to have to open the tent in the morning to let the carpet chemicals out? That's just weird.

Speaking of weird, this morning I read a news article in the local paper about a casket found by paintballers that had been stolen from the landfill. It ended up in the landfill because the body it had held was exhumed so it could be cremated. So never mind all the details; the article wasn't overly specific. What's really important here is that the newspaper lets people comment on the stories, and comment #6 from Patrick M. is the quote of the day:

Wake up! The Sheriff has been dumping bodies out at the landfill for years.

In other news, tomorrow we're going to go for a very long drive with the tent. I expect I'll learn something, but you probably won't hear about it until Thursday. Just so you know.

pesticide PSA and purses

Pesticide exposure increases your risk of developing Parkinson's Disease, which will kill you, by 70%. That includes pesticides used around the house and in gardening, so everybody remember: bug spray is evil.

In other news, it says right in this transcript thingy that "your purse won't kill you." Just so you know.

fast food, magic, and monsoons

Fast food'll kill you! Not that we didn't already know that, but fast food is the last holdout in the war on trans fats.

In other news, I'm not saying how this nifty magic trick works, where a magician cuts a woman in half without hiding her in a box first, and then her top half crawls off, freaking out spectators. I'm not saying it's new, either.

Onward to the monsoon. Around here, we get this weather pattern where a bunch of humid air blows up from Mexico, and we start getting afternoon thunderstorms. I'm pretty sure that when the average dewpoint is above 54 F for three days in a row, then we have the official start of what most people call monsoon season. That's probably an incorrect usage of the word 'monsoon,' but since I haven't seen any articles this year about the right way to use it, I don't care. Anyway, monsoon season tends to be between about the beginning of July and the middle of September, and according to the National Weather Service, it looks like it'll on time this year.

That also means that we have the capability to grow just enough mold to trigger a yearly exodus of mold-sensitive EIs. Heat is bad enough; add a little mold and we leave town like rats off a sinking ship.

subway flashers and little birds

Today I learned that picture phones act as subway flasher repellent, and that most flashers don't wear trench coats or look particularly creepy.

In other news, there were a couple of little birds exploring the back yard this morning, and apparently exploring is tiring, so we got this picture (click to enlarge) of the two of them taking a nap in a shady spot.


The bigger of the two birds has now taken off for parts unknown, but the littler one decided it was time to go home and is sitting quietly in the nest.

garbanzo beans and the end of the world

Today I learned that if you need to double this recipe and want to cook it all at once, the trick to making it not stick to your stainless steel frying pan is to not double the water. It turns out a little differently, but it's not like most people really know what it was supposed to be like in the first place.

Something else I learned today is that there are people in this country who are actively working to hasten the end of the world and that this is not a new pastime for Christians. They're trying to fullfill various parts of prophesies so we can all just get straight to Judgment Day and be done with it.

I know a thing or two about stories with plots involving attempted world-ending, and in every case I've ever come across, the bad guys were responsible for it. So I think it might be time to issue black and white hats so I can keep everybody straight.

tent update, migraines, and Margo

I finished decontaminating the tent canvas yesterday, so today I wrestled 360 square feet (40 m²) of canvas into tent parts for the roof and sides. Tomorrow I'll take care of the front and back and start sewing on the 50 yards (50 m) of Vel-- uh, hook and eye closure system that'll hold all the parts together. You might think that it'd be easier to just sew the tent together, but then it wouldn't fit in the washing machine.

I'm not kidding about fitting the tent in the washing machine. This tent is going to visit a suburban back yard, and if some neighbor blows something nasty into the air and it sticks to the tent, that sucker's going in the wash.

Anyway, I'm a little worn out from slinging canvas, so here's what I got out of this article about a treatment for migraine headaches:
The aura before a migraine is from hyper neurons. Then the neurons get all worn out, and that state spreads across the brain, and that's what causes the headache. Some researchers devised a thingy that delivers magnetic pulses to the brain that stops the spread of the tired neuron state, which stops the headache.

You know how I got rid of my migraines so that I never had another one? I moved away from Illinois and out of the mold. It worked great.

In other news, the Comics Curmudgeon has posted the entries to the Finger Quotin' Margo Contest, so today I learned that problems with stick-straight hair and an allergic-to-sunscreen mountain biker tan are best overcome with attitude instead of an editor-like attention to detail when it comes to elbow positioning.

zippers and birds

Today I learned that if you do a Google search for a 96" zipper, the fifth or sixth link on the list is titled "Zippers and Foreskins." It's about how doctors contend with a problem that typically affects little boys who may lack a certain degree of attention to detail. And may I remind you that I don't find these things on purpose.

Speaking of kids, the teenagers nesting in the vine have managed to raise two fine-looking little birds that have a tendency to practice flapping their wings in their parents' faces. If you click to enlarge the picture, you can see that the daddy bird (I'm pretty sure) is sitting awfully high on that nest, and there's a not-so-little bird along his right side.


I think I only sort of freaked them out when the flash went off.

all about South Carolina

Today I learned that South Carolina has an honest-to-gosh speed trap town in the Pee Dee part of the state, or whatever you call it. It's on the way to Myrtle Beach from Charlotte, NC, and apparently the cops searched a lot of cars for drugs, including one of a pregnant woman, an incident which, as mentioned in the article, seems to imply that pregnant ladies are by definition purer than the driven snow. But they also took vehicles in exchange for dropping charges, and they got themselves a $21,000 truck out of it. The money is, however, all accounted for, so it's not like they had Boss Hogg over there, but I just thought things like that only happened on tv, like people having affairs*.

On that same website I learned that according to researchers working with Education Week, South Carolina has an estimated 52.5% high school graduation rate, which is the lowest in the country. If you ask South Carolina, their Department of Education reports 78%, and they don't use the word 'estimated.' Several other states have similar discrepancies. They say it's because different states have different standards, and the researchers didn't take that into account in their projections, but this should not be that hard a calculation. Where did all these people take math, anyway? Sou... never mind.

In other South Carolina education news, I found this interesting article about time-release public school Bible study. Ok, it's really called 'Released Time,' but it allows students to get credit for off-campus religion courses offered by religious organizations.

One district will offer its own history electives that will use the Bible as a history text. I took courses like that in college, and it's fascinating. There are all kinds of interesting stops and starts, and I have to say the story about Tamar the rape victim being married off to her attacker as his punishment made a huge impression on me. They surely didn't talk about that in the church I went to. But we, as a culture, got here from there, and if you don't know where you, as a culture, came from, that would make you lost. Also, you need a good grasp of the New Testament so that any time anything weird happens, you can claim it's a sign of the Apocalypse, but I may be biased, given my propensity for announcing that items generally considered safe will kill you.


* I rode on a commuter van in and out of Boston every day for a year and a half, and one day, toward the end, six or eight of us were stooging around on the corner waiting for the van, and someone wondered aloud if these two fellow riders who weren't there yet were having an affair. Another rider said yes, reporting that she'd heard it straight from one of the participants. You never saw any more stunned group of people in your life. Bankers, stockbrokers, and a couple of nerds, all of us with our chins on the pavement.

trees and fluff

Today I read in a column discussing trees that people are more likely to exercise in places that are greener. When I went looking for confirmation of that tidbit, all I found was this incomplete study.

So, where are you more likely to exercise: Iowa, where that study is, or the desert? As long as I'm linking to other people's pictures, here's another one in the desert, and this one is great.

Moving on to the fluff. A Massachusetts lawmaker is all upset that his third-grader was fed a peanut butter and fluff sandwich at school. Never mind the fluff; from all the news reports, I thought there weren't any school districts in the country that could still serve peanuts without killing anybody.

I didn't do it! and some weaseling

Today I learned that there's a blog post out there titled "Miss Molly kills the children." It turns out there's a blogger who uses the name Molly Blythe who posted directions for one kind of abortion back in February, and this other blogger disapproved. I suppose he threw the 'Miss' in front of the young feminist Molly's name just to annoy her, should she ever come across that particular post, so dragging me into it was accidental. The important thing to learn here is that if you post something like abortion directions, you greatly increase your readership.

As long as we're already sort of on the kind of topic I wouldn't normally touch, I found a huge typo in this article about the declining number of rapes reported in this country. It said the spike in rapes in 1992 was 0.4 per 1000 (that's the current low) instead of 2.4 per 1000. I guess I can't disapprove too much if the confusion makes people actually look at a graph, but, based on normally-intelligent fellow students' reactions to graphs in my college economics class, it probably won't help them much.

See how I totally avoided thinking about abortion or rape (even if it's decreasing) by making snide little observations about side issues? I'm going to apply that same approach to this Reuters article about abortion and the Supreme Court.

I get that there are two cases to be decided, and one is from California where the law may have been "too vague and [may have] imposed a burden on women." You may ask about this burden, as I did, and here is the explanation:

The California case involved additional issues on whether the law imposed an undue burden on a woman's right to seek an abortion and whether it is unconstitutionally vague.

I thought I understood that sentence about the third time I read it, but now I'm pretty sure it doesn't actually say anything. In fact, I believe it places an undue burden on my sometimes-impaired logic skills, so since I'm disabled, that's discrimination. I should sue.

church and term papers

Today I learned that there's a church here in town where they sing U2 songs as hymns during their Saturday evening service. I really, really want to know what last week's 'church is girly' marketing guy would have to say about that.

In other news, teachers are assigning fewer term papers because they don't have time to check every paper to catch the plagiarizers. A paper you copy off a website typically costs $10 per page. I remember it took me about six hours to write a five page paper in college. I knew English and history majors who wrote twice as fast. Therefore, my work was worth slightly less that $10/hr, and theirs was worth close to $20/hr. I think what I'm learning here is that the slower you write, the more economical it is to buy papers on the internet.

fan fiction and tire irons

I knew fans wrote stories based on their favorite tv shows and movies, but today I learned that they make their own community-theater quality tv shows. My thoughts on this development can be summed up in two words: "Oh dear."

In other news, I'm really allergic to my little plastic tire irons. Serves me right for not putting them away when I was finished changing the tire I shredded on Thursday.

toilets and tent parts

Today I learned that you really can remove that hard water stain ring in the toilet with a pumice stone. That and a lot of elbow grease. It kind of chews up your pumice stone and you have to play in the toilet, but anything non-chemical that gets rid of that ring in the toilet is fine.

In other news, there's a piece of a prototype canvas tent in my (auxiliary) bedroom.


Seeing the fabric up there triggered a major redesign of the canopy, so mostly what I learned here is that I sew by trying stuff on whoever I'm sewing for, making this project essentially a dress for a tent frame.

traffic cameras and speed bumps

Today I learned that in Britain they're using networks of traffic cameras to get license numbers of cars in locations along certain routes, and if a car gets to a camera downstream too quickly, it gets a ticket. Using cameras avoids the ever-popular, apoplexy-inducing speed bumps, humps, or tables on which emergency vehicles may injure themselves. I recognize that as a proper American, I'm supposed to be horrified by the privacy issue, but that sounds so much better than driving over an intentionally bumpy road.

In other news, I learned that even if you really, really want to ride with other people, but you don't feel quite right when it's time to leave the house, you should just stay home. Wanna know how that point was driven home (rim shot)? This morning I forgot to put my front wheel in the trunk, where it always rides, and I didn't quite back over it, but I shredded the tire. So, should have just stayed in the house.

man-made evolution

Today I learned that something like 80% of head lice are pesticide-resistant. The headline called them 'indestructible.' I'm not that worried about pesticide-resistant lice because I took on some ants with borax and honey and blew them away*, so I'm walking bug death.

No, what I would worry about are the $7000 hypo-allergenic cats they're breeding in New York getting their paws on the pesticide-resistant lice gene. You know somebody from Connecticut is going to get ahold of one of those cats, and they'll have a kid with indestructible lice, and they have that radioactive zombie problem there, so this can only end with indestructible zombie cats roaming the streets.


* Ok, blew them away slowly over the course of about ten days. It's not at all clear that they died; I think they just finished the honey and stopped coming by.

salt and embarrassing lawsuits

Restaurants and canned soup will kill you! I never get tired of announcing things like that.

In other news, there is an eight-year-old boy whose foreskin is the subject of a lawsuit in Chicago. If this kid can't use that for essays to get into any college he wants, he's probably not going to college.

doves, bugs, and milk

We have yet another pair of doves visiting the wall of love. We have maybe that same pair eyeing under the gas meter for a nest. We have a chick from the last pair in the nest in the vine. Doves, doves, doves, doves, doves. My neighbor told me that around here, they can produce as many as three clutches a year. It's a wonder you can go outside without getting hit.

Oh, yeah - those bugs you hit riding your bike around here? Cicadas. I thought they only lived on the East Coast. When they hit your sunglasses, they leaves splat marks. They're still better than snakes.

In other news, I still don't have all the formaldehyde out of the canvas. If I have to soak all 40 yards in milk, that is going to be a proper mess. And yes, milk is the formaldehyde solvent of choice. It's a royal pain in the neck to get out of things afterward, but it's better than formaldehyde.

Twiki

I probably could have learned something a little more useful, but today I learned that the Twiki suit on Buck Rogers was manned by Felix Silla, who, besides playing all kinds of aliens and things on other shows, also did stunts. And my idol, Mel Blanc, did the stupid Twiki voice. I don't know who was responsible for thinking up that 'bee dee bee dee bee dee' thing.

effects of lawsuits

Today I learned that to avoid lawsuits, schools are removing all the fun playground equipment. In Broward County, FL, there's a ban on running. The Sun-Sentinel took down their article about the running ban, but there are some quotes from it on this reasonable-sounding but slightly off-putting site.

The quotes indicate that in the last seven years, Broward County has spent something like $500,000 on playground injuries. In the overall scheme of things, that doesn't sound like that big a number, but what the heck do I know about school finances or Broward County? Something I do know about, as a physicist, is taking things to extremes &ndash because that's how we test everything &ndash so we're going to talk about playground deaths. In the first article I linked to, it says there are 17 deaths per year in the US. I admit that instead of thinking 17 deaths out of 2.2 million school related injuries is 0.0008%, which is really, really small, when I read that, I thought, wow, that's 17 kids who died, and all they were doing was playing.

Which is why I felt compelled to do a little research and point out that car accidents kill about 500 kids per year, and gun accidents account for about another 56. Given the frequency with which you hear about guns and cars in the news, I was surprised that the numbers were that low, and it weakened what was to be my argument that we should ban cars.

Except I found this great article about banning cars, and never mind it's not based on safety, so let's go for it!

P.S. My car exhaust sensitivity has gotten enough better than I can ride on the road early on Sunday mornings, which means I have to hit the road by about 5:15 if I want to get any serious mileage in. It gets hot enough that you want to do that anyway, but if we work really hard, maybe we can ban cars by winter.

death, church, and mayhem

Drugs'll kill you! Sorry, I just haven't announced that lately. Also, this is definitely my favorite recent headline: Say you need a body part: Tissue you get could kill you.

In other news, in a case where marketing analysis actually proved interesting, church is girly, and roughly baby-boomer-age girly. It's all unconditional-love-of-a-guy, quilted hangings, and flowers, and it doesn't appeal to men or younger generations. I guess you have to throw in some martyrdom or something to keep things interesting.

Speaking of martyrdom, since Muslim martyrs are supposed to get 72 virgins, I got to wondering about the virgins. I mean, if women's sexuality is frowned upon, that would be hell for them, right? Or something. Anyway I found this article that explains that the virgins are either houris, which sound like some kind of spirit, or maybe just raisins, and no, I did not make that up. Besides that, the article contains a quote that describes a certain female body part as 'appetising,' so wow.

Margo and tents

Today I learned that posing and looking like Finger Quotin' Margo is kind of difficult if you have an allergic-to-sunscreen mountain biker tan and stick straight hair. I'll keep working on it because heaven knows I have nothing better to do with my time. Also, I could win a mug, and wouldn't that be great?

In other news, the last couple of posts have been affected, and not in a good way, by some overly-exciting store exposures. Wanna know what I got?

40 yards of canvas (and a mild case of aphasia).

We're building a tent: a no-chemical-treatments, couple-of-weeks-at-a-time kind of tent, which you know is going to be an interesting learning experience, and that's what this blog is all about. In honor of the first step, which I could probably make sound more interesting but is really just washing fifteen-foot lengths of canvas, here's a picture of my empty living room.


You know, everyone should have an empty living room for just this sort of project. I mean, what are people thinking cluttering up such valuable space with couches and coffee tables, anyway?

And for those of you who were paying attention in December, no, we still haven't put tile down. We're willing to build a tent, but installing tile sounds hard.

immune systems and 911

Today I read two articles that mention people's immune systems, so immune systems must be interesting. The first one was about the rise in pediatric food allergies, which you know I blame on chemicals (and clueless doctors), but the article suggests could be a function of improperly trained immune systems. The second one was about pneumonia bacteria causing asthma in people with pre-existing allergies. If a lot of people could just take antibiotics to cure their asthma, I suppose that might loosen up the inhaler shortage.

Ok, enough with the educational stuff. Today I learned that around here 911 is just the main line to the county sheriff, so you can use it for non-emergencies, like when taggers hit the wall around your yard. In case you were curious about what happens then, it sounds like the police advise you to paint your wall or move away if you get tired of painting.

shopping, EI style

You know how sometimes a girl just has to go shopping? I found out that for a mere $200, you can get a pair of these sandals. Also, since these sandals clearly have nothing to do with bikes, my husband wanted to know if they are for biker chicks who put out.

Ok, I'm done making fun of the shoes.

minor rant alert: pumping gas

I learned a bunch of things this morning, like that there's a program that's actually making headway on reducing homelessness. But what really makes an impression? TVs at gas pumps. Apparently people are bored by pumping gas, so they need TVs to keep them entertained, or at least they do in Dallas, where they are testing these things.

That should be one of those 'what will they think of next' stories that doesn't deserve a whole lot of attention, but it has my attention because I can't imagine being bored at a gas pump. If I pump gas, most obviously I have to avoid the fumes from my own pump, which involves staying upwind of it. Then most stations are near intersections, and staying upwind of a whole intersection is a little dicier, particularly if the wind is blowing the wrong way, or even if there's just one of those unpredictable intersection-induced breezes. Timing is important, too: you want to go when traffic is light and there aren't any other customers so that you don't get a lot of laundry or perfumy smells on top of the gas and exhaust fumes.

I have a mask that I tolerate, but it can't really compete with that kind of atmosphere, so for entertainment while pumping gas, I do a lot of fume dodging. If I do well, I feel all self-congratulatory, like I pulled off some major feat. If I don't, I sometimes have trouble figuring out how to get the credit card thingy to cough up a receipt. The only good thing is that I recover quickly when I get back in the car and get the air cleaner started, so at least I can leave in good order.

The upshot here is that I'm quite confident that I don't need a TV to keep me from getting bored at the pump. Probably adding a TV into the mixture will fix it so that I never get a receipt.

Now, to make this a proper rant I need to insult anybody who disagrees with me, so here's a quote from my wise old grandmother:

"An intelligent person should never be bored."

important dates in history

Do you think God meant for people to be so wound up about 6/6/06 that they move around their babies' delivery dates? What if the number is really 616? I mean, we have one of those twice a day.

So call Chicken Little. (Or, if you're my dad and can't keep the chickens straight, try the Little Red Hen.)

obesity and parenting

Today I learned that I can't write today, so you're just going to have to put brilliant insights in the comments for me, assuming you all feel well enough to attempt such a task. So, here's your topic:

Moms make you fat!

the zoo, the grocery store, and time wasters

Today we were bored, so we went to the zoo. Going to the zoo was a silly idea because although the heat kept the crowds down, I essentially saunaed too hard, so now I'm really, really stupid. I still learned some things, though, so here you are:

1. Some of the animals looked like they were having a fine time, but some of the primates in particular looked bored out of their minds. After we saw the bored primates, we saw a sign that talked about anthropomorphism and advised visitors to ask not 'what are the animals doing,' but 'how are they feeling.' So, mostly hot, bored, or sleepy. As a side note, having been confined to my house at various times by outdoor mold or pollen, I can say with all certainty that I would absolutely hate being a zoo animal.

2. There's no smoking on zoo grounds, but people light up as soon as they leave the gates. There was a nice man outside the gates asking for petition signatures for banning smoking in public spaces, including work. We signed the Smoke Free Arizona intiative, not the liquor-group-backed Arizona Non-Smoker Protection Committee proposal, not that I knew there were two of them when I signed. And yes, all I have to do is be registered to vote by July, so I better get a move-on. One more thing: cigarette smoke is worse than skunk.

3. Wild Oats is carrying Bounce again. Now we have to cook up another letter-writing, manager-pestering campaign.

4. I was wrong before; there is no guessing in Sudoku. But if you are suffering from chemical-induced logic failure, there might just as well be.

5. The fifth season of the A-Team was so bad it got canceled mid-season. The episode I saw today had a bunch of fakey-Polynesian types on an island with a diamond mine who had a tendency to chant things. The final chant was hoo-ro-this, which when repeated faster and faster, became 'who wrote this.'

journalism, bikes, and cryogenics

Today I learned that the Denver Post links to the Denver section of YourHub.com, where people can post their own news articles. There, The Iceman, caretaker of The Frozen Dead Guy, posted a story about guys doing a cross-country bike ride for safe access to medical marijuana coming up to help him unload dry ice for $25 bucks each plus lunch.

I think we all heard about The Frozen Dead Guy back in the early 90's when his grandson and daughter, who planned a cryogenic facility in Nederland, CO, had their plans torpedoed by local government and were deported back to Norway for expired visas. I admit to being a little surprised that Grandpa hasn't thawed yet from lack of funds.

So the cool thing (sorry) about being able to post stories that have you in them is that you know the quotes will always be exact.

"I wonder if there was actually any publicity value to unloading dry ice for those medical marijuana guys or if they really just did it for the money and lunch," said Miss Molly, who has experience feeding serious cyclists. "Lunch could be a pretty big draw."

birds, uranium, and a hot bridge

If you sleep in the hammock on the patio enough, the birds in the vine eventually learn that they should just sit on the nest with their heads pointing toward the hammock instead of craning their little birdy necks to see around their tails.

In other news, depleted uranium is bad for you. Honestly, have you ever heard of a heavy metal that was good for you?

And we have another entry in the controversial bridge competition. (You didn't think we needed that many bridges out in the desert, did you? You would be wrong.) This bridge is supposed to be in Phoenix, and people aren't worried about it being stupid looking; they're worried about the stainless steel parts getting hot enough to burn people.

washing soda and skunks

Today I learned that although I may not be sensitive to washing soda, I am sensitive to the Safeway smells that soaked into my box of washing soda. Those smells get all the way through the laundry, so now my stuff smells like Safeway. A week in the sun ought to get the Safeway out of the soda, but right now it's a big freaking pain in the neck.

In much, much better news, today I rode past some skunk spray, and I did fine. This is a huge improvement over the time in February I took a big hit riding past skunk spray that was practically undetectable even to my husband.

Those last two sentences do not do justice to how I feel about this development, so:

→ → Today I got confirmation that I'm getting better. ← ←