And I don’t stink.  I mean, I didn’t hike twenty miles or go to an outdoor festival or anything today.  But I did ride (as in on a bike, not in a car) out to Towson with my friend to run an errand.  Lots of hills.  Got very sweaty.  Smelled fresh when I returned to have cream soda and fancy cookies.

See, Mrs. P. tried baking soda under her arms last week.  She didn’t tell me until two days later, when she developed chaffing.  Turns out that she didn’t use water and instead let something akin to fine sand rub under her arms.

Mixing with water produced better results.

And I don’t stink.  The expensive so-so stuff I was using be gone.  Turns out that company is gettin sued for basically lying anyway.  (More on that later.)  That salt stuff always worked great for me.  But it took forever to put enough on, and I always broke the damned things.  Or, at least, sharpened them with my hairy pits.

Today, I made a paste of water and baking soda, rubbed that smell-less stuff under the old arms.  Didn’t stink when I sweat.  Didn’t stain my shirt.  Didn’t smell like anything at all.

And I don’t stink!


[Larger.]
Not my bike.  (My rims are black.)  This is what happens when you don’t notice there’s no air in your tire and then try to ride off.  Busted valve stem; Slime didn’t help.  I sanded this rim for this person.  Because I like playing with sandpaper.  And because I like this person.  A lot.

Photo Friday: Awful.


My grandmother got her hip replaced early yesterday morning. Going to bed after 1am and then getting up at 3:30am, spending a day at the hospital and then going to a public safety meeting make for a weird day.  She is still at the hospital. They put her in intensive care because her heart rate dropped and because her kidneys are not doing well. She’ll pull through, though. Tough old Polack.  (That’s a lot of OUGHs.)

I’m doing tasks for my up-coming job and going to meetings.  This is good for my sanity, for easing into my job next month, and I don’t mind working for free at all.  It’s all beneficial work to my favorite city, in the long run.

I am making a terrific stir-fry today, too.  Which is only related in that the veggies are smelling up my apartment right now.  Which is not so related.

I am tired.


In celebration of Paps’s birthday today, NBBB is having a casual ride to Fell’s Point.  Here is the poem I will toast with:

I’m off’n wild wimmens
An cognac
An sinnin’
For I’m in loOOOOOOOve!
~ E.H.  Paris, ca. 1922.


[Click this for larger.]

Photo Friday: Flight.

Retired spy plane at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, National Air and Space Museum. Smithsonian Institute. Chantilly, Virginia.


This is a neat article on the environmental benefits of being lazy. Funny, I didn’t know that I have been saving the planet my whole life!

Yeah, but, uh, just so you know, person in article: not buying stuff does not make you a “transcendentalist.”

From the same source, a piece on kids never going outside. This is strange to me. When I was a kid, not going outside to play was a punishment or my parents being strict because of rain. We rode bikes, created our own baseball league with stats kept in copybooks, played guns, got into minor trouble, socialized sans playdates, etc. But the kids I work with on cycling, most of them, don’t do anything like that. If they go over one another’s houses, its by car and their parents’ permission. Two made it to thirteen without learning to ride a bike at all. But with cycling, you have to go out, learn, risk, engage. It’s very different from the online video games these kids use as social interaction.

I think that’s why they’re taking to cycling like they are. One young man has taken his bike as transportation a few times that I know of, trips of a few miles for which his parents would usually drive him. I think that’s awesome. A few of them seem to enjoy learning how their bikes work, and most of them are amazed when I tell them something like, “That wasn’t hard, was it? We just rode thirteen miles.”

There’s hope! And, ahem, it seems like bikes certainly help.


Next month, Waverly Main Street and Greater Homewood Community Corporation are hosting the National Night Out Kick-Off parade, which includes a Bike Pageant.

Download the flier here, which I host with permission from GHCC’s PR person.

People can ride in the parade by signing up.  I might do it in a dress or some other feat of daring.  Daring because I don’t have a step-through frame, not because wearing a dress is necessarily brave.  I played a little gig in a nightgown once, in college.

Even more info can be found at Waverly Mainstreet’s blog.


Dang it, I don’t start my new job and move into my sweet new office until next month. Here’s a workspace from my dissertation, in the fall of 2006, which feels like last month.

My stomach is killing me, which is why I’m still up.  I could go for some of that chai tea right now.

Photo Friday: The Office.


I am honestly trying to not so negative about McCain.  Really.  There is so much that Obama has going for him that it’s not as “necessary” as when we had Lurch running against Stupid Monkey Face last time.  At least, that’s how I feel now.  (Remind I said that in the fall.)

But McCain does a lot of crazy stuff that people ignore because he’s a war hero, because he has “experience,” because he’s a Republican, because he’s old/from another era. While I don’t think too much bashing will accomplish anything, it’s important to realize what the hell this guy really stands for and to understand some of the other-worldly things he’s said and done. Mobtown Shank does a cool comic series on some of these wacky McCain-isms which you should check out.

Grist reported [via General Carlessness] how Johnny M.C. wants to kill the train in America.  Never mind that flying is becoming and bigger and bigger pain in the ass.  Nevermind how expensive taking your own car is.  Never mind how big our frikkin country is.  (And we should definitely not consider the environment!)  Let’s cripple the train, rather than developing it.  Good idea.

Another reason to vote for Obama.


I’m not used to getting up in the morning without having to spend hours job-hunting. I still wake up with that sour taste in my mouth, soon so be replaced with the taste of a purpose and a nice bike ride every morning to get there.  And lots of coffee.

So, my job.  I can’t say too much because I’m excessively paranoid and would prefer that anyone I know at “work” not find this here blog.  Let’s just say that I am going to be spending a year in the “domestic Peace Corps” that is VISTA.  I am assigned to a local university/college, where it’s like I’m an employee while I’m really a government employee.  Makes a lot of sense, huh?

I am going to be working with community groups and local schools to pool resources and foster a sort of service relationship between the two.  You know, schools often float in their surroundings.  I know this from the famous “Goucher Bubble” we used to live in, prior to it’s…bursting.  There’s a lot of work there to be done.  While my relationship with academic philosophy is likely over for good, my relationship with higher education might not be.  I don’t think it’s useless, not at all.  [Not that I think academic philosophy is useless.  I think I got a hell of a lot out of it.]

So I get a nice 4.something ride every morning, and another on the way home, which can be dallied on by taking a few laps around Druid Hill.  The pay is terrible, but Mrs. P. says we can afford it, and she knows.  I don’t.  I don’t know anything about money.  I just try not to waste it.

It’s a good deal.

I am going to Philly next month for  week of training, which is weird.  I don’t like time away from my other half, and I’m very shy about meeting new people.  But I think it will be productive, maybe even fun.  And I get to spend a week in downtown Philly.  Poor me.

The week before that, we are going to do a little travelling.  Hit New York, likely Washington.  Going to a sweet 90s concert in Baltimore.  Gonna be a nice summer.

I suppose I should edit that dissertation draft I wrote nearly a year ago and send that puppy in.  You know, finish my doctorate and all that.

And dude, I get business cards!


Means that I am now free from the soul-crushing activity of job hunting.  No more waking up, whoring myself out and wondering if maybe it’s time to start looking at teaching jobs or outside of the non-profit sector.  Maybe it’s time to use my talents to make someone rich, etc.  No more.

Yes, I got hired. More on that later.  Today, I am happy as a French press full of coffee.  Cook-out, games, family, beer.  Gonna be a nice day.

[What?  You wanted something more...pretentious from a philosophy major?  Read this then.]