Asymptomatic

We're trying to get things ready at the house for the BBQ next Saturday (if you haven't RSVP'ed yet, you're almost too late. If you know me and you didn't get an invitation, I must not have your email or it got caught as spam, because I invited everyone, so RSVP anyway.), and although Berta is doing a great job of spiffing things up, we still have the perennial issue with the garage entry area. Between the powder room with the diapers and the litter box for the cats, that area is expectedly a little bit more smelly than I'd like.

Combined with an interest to obtain the usual supplies to take care of that, I also noticed that I was running low on deodorant. Nothing like making the house smell nice and then not smelling very fresh myself. So I decided it was prudent to make a quick grocery run at lunch time to pick up some of these items.

While standing in the deodorant aisle looking for my usual brand, I saw the Axe brand body sprays. I had bought one of these once just to see what they were all about, and it turns out that they're just really, really strong deodorant-smelling perfume sprays. Not really a surprise, given the commercials. But a lack of another product on the shelf led me to recall the following character-building story from my jaded youth....

I don't know if I had mentioned this before. I say it frequently enough, so you might have heard me talking about it. The bottom line is this: I'm evil.

I used to think I was marginally "good", but you know what? It's hard work and doesn't really pay off. So I've just given up on the idea altogether. What does this mean for you?

Well, evil isn't always as rotten as it might seem. I mean, evil inspires self-interest. So for example, if I was walking behind you and you passed out - for lack of any good premise - I might still provide assistance, but not for your sake. Instead, any aid would be motivated by wanting to remain innocent of charges that I caused the incident.

I bring all of this up because I was being evil to the kids tonight at dinner. more

Abby is in first grade and she has daily homework. Much of it involves writing. One thing that she is not good at so far in school is using that ridiculous three-line ruled paper, probably because she's been using the plain lined paper for so long already, even in kindergarten.

The problem with this paper is that there simply doesn't seem to be anywhere to obtain it easily.

While I would love to run out and pick up a ream of the stuff to use as scrap paper after Abby switches to college-ruled for second grade, it seems like a waste. Plus, even if I order the special paper, when I run out of it, there's no trekking to the grocery store to get a new pack. But I have a solution....

I had the opportunity to visit the DMV this week to take my motorcycle driver's test and obtain my permit. What an altogether interesting experience.

I originally had gone to the DMV License Center to take the test last Thursday when they had extended hours. I wasn't trying to make use of the extended hours, I just got there late. Nonetheless, they stop administering tests at 4pm, which they didn't mention on their web site anywhere. What a waste of a drive.

Anyway, I got to the DMV around 10:30 on Wednesday. The web site says that they are least busy between 9 and 11, so it seemed like a fortuitous arrival time. I guess it seemed this way to the dozens of other people who showed up at this time, too....

I like hot food. In high school, we liked to play D&D on the weekends, and during those games is when I built up my tolerance for hot things.

We would routinely have salsa and chips with our games. We started out with some mild salsa, found a liking for it, and eventually got hotter and hotter brands. At the time the best brand available was Chi-Chi's Hot salsa. We ate it continuously.

Derek, one of the guys I played with, found some crazy brand of cheese-salsa that we moved on to. It was at least as hot as the Chi-Chi's salsa, but cheese. We enjoyed that....