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!

Photo Friday: Awful.

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.

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

Photo Friday: Flight.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.]