NEVER JET HOT

When did I get so lazy that I would allow Jiffy Lube to replace my brake light bulb? Just because it's hot out? I'm a native lesser seattleite, if the clouds part it's too warm for me, let alone pushing eighty degrees! I'm liable to change into shorts... and nobody wants to see that! Besides, I would stick to the car seat, ick. I appeal to the scientific community to find the formula for running cars on water. You know the formula is out there, but every time some shadetree mechanic discovers the secret, the oil people buy his silence with cash or a bullet. (Or so I've heard)

In the course of taking Petey D. Dog for a walk, we encounter many strange and wonderful things. Such as this old school bus that someone has converted into a rough trailer of sorts. It appears to be something that someone handy with a welder and and a wrench slapped together to accomplish some long-ago hauling job; I doubt that it sees much use. The top of the bus appears to have been hacked off using a Sawzall or other primitive means. Apparently someone has a rather dark sense of humor, because we saw this in the bed of the trailer. It's so very wrong.

I was looking at the little "Bicycle safety Quiz" on the back of some box of sugary crap cereal that one of the offspring left sitting out on the table (I know, we are crummy parents) You are supposed to check "DO" or "DONT" - One of the statements to evaluate was "Keep headphones at low volume" - What the hell? Put the iPod in that big wire basket mounted on your handlebars! Oh, ok, howzabout the springy trap above the back wheel, that's so strong it can remove fingers? No? Got a backpack? Pockets? Underpants? In defense of the cereal company, this might have been a trick question, and the answer says "This is a DON'T- put the headphones away while riding." I have no way of knowing the answers, they are printed INSIDE the box, presumably at the bottom, and I will not be fooled again into spilling cereal all over just to find out, seeing as I am a grownup with a car and we all know 2 tons of metal and plastic hurtling down your ...

We had to adjust the shipping rates a bit as the USPS made an astronomical jump in rates. I tried to configure it so we continue our policy of just about breaking even on the shipping department overall, although rates are now so complex that we would spend our whole day figuring if we always charged actual rate, so some will end up paying a little extra, some will be paying less than it costs us to ship their package. But the exact amount you would pay is always displayed on the shopping cart screen at every step. For some reason it likes to display "Overseas" at first, you can of course use that drop-down menu to get to your preferred method. If I can't figure out how to change the default back to "best rate USA" I will get with my shopping cart service to help resolve that puzzling issue. The post office raised their package rates so high, I fully expect my carrier to be driving a new Chrysler 300 with spinner hubcaps and rich Corinthian leather appointment...

We have been using the good old US post office for shipping, unfortunately soon the rates will go up, and worse yet, become much more complicated. How will this impact you? Our policy is to not make the shipping department a profit center. Our overall handling fee was less than 57 cents per shipment for the 30 days preceding this post. We are constantly adjusting our rates to meet your delivery needs without gouging you on shipping.

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I am slowly but surely losing it. The latest mental faculty that seems to be deteriorating is the ability to quickly assess the context of what I am reading. For instance, my local paper had this headline; Man wanted for peeping into dressing rooms ...and my first thought was, I wonder how much it pays?

Synthetic snot boosts robot nose A layer of artificial "snot" has been found to improve the ability of an "electronic nose" to precisely sniff out aromas in foods and perfumes. "Our artificial mucus not only offers improved odour discrimination for electronic noses it also offers much shorter analysis times than conventional techniques," said Professor Julian Gardner of the University of Warwick and one of the team behind the work. Hmmm, and I always thought snot interfered with the sniffing. Especially those big old "boxcar boogers". Shows how much I know.