The Home Team Advantage

I am immensely enjoying my visit to my parents' house. It feels like home, especially since Mom made it out of the hospital and Papa learned to chill the fuck out. They are both adorable. Papa bought Mom a headscarf from Urban Outfitters (although how he found his way in there, I have no idea), and she looks like a little babushka. Unapologetically warm and so. very. cute. She keeps insisting that she's a Senior Citizen, and it confounds me. At the same time, however, we're having rather contemporary and adult conversations. Embarrassingly so, at times. But this is not the place to summarize that.

We went out for drinks and pizza at a local pub. I excused myself to use the restroom, and while in the stall (the same one I'd always used in prior visits) finally wondered at why the toilet paper dispenser was at head-height on the left. And the graffiti is a bit... off, for a women's room. As it's slowly dawning on me that I may be urinating in the men's room, I hear a guy walk in and make a phlegm-clearing sound. Shit! Busted! I finish up, sneak out of the stall and look around. I don't see the guy, so I go to wash my hands. But, sure enough, there's some old dude at the urinal which is tucked in behind the door, with his back to the sink. Expediently, I hauled ass out of there and tried to avoid the looks from the people sitting nearby, which were making it blazingly obvious that everyone other than me knew it was the dude's room.

I go back to our table, rather embarrassed and tell Mom what happened. "Oh god, I accidentally went into the men's room and didn't realize. Which was fine, but then some dude came in!" She's all, "Oh, honey. It happens. This one time..." We were swapping inappropriate use of restroom stories when my dad walks up. And then I recognize the sweater. "Holy fuck! You were the guy at the urinal!" and he's all, "What? Oh crap! You were the asshole who didn't wash his hands!"

Not all Gloom and Doom

When I read too much news, I get inexplicably angry. Well, rather, I get explicably angry. And this week has been a dour week of Feministing, CNN and the NYTimes. All the seriousness is becoming detrimental to my social life at work, seeing as how the only lighthearted topic I've been able to come up with was George's study of 'How Many Licks Does It Take?'

And you can only bring up politics so much.

Except for ironic politics; those are fine.




So here's a reading list that isn't Wikipedia. Courtesy of G.

http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/
http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/
http://cabinet-of-wonders.blogspot.com/
http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/
http://www.word-detective.com/
http://www.indiebride.com/indieetiquette/blog.html
http://www.languagehat.com/
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/

The Sound Medical Alternative

No one really believes me when I say I use super-glue to close the occasional hard-to-bandage cut. But it's true! It works! That's what drove the invention of super-glue. Cyanoacrylate; the polymer solution that goes crazy as its solvent evaporates and the forming polymers wrap themselves around one another and anything nearby.

I heard it independently from a materials engineer, and Lynn/Dr. Mom, and thus took it as one of those common sense truths. And everyone thought I was weird... particularly that time I put my hand through a window. But lo! I have been vindicated by the NYTimes.

However, the NYTimes article is somewhat specious? Pedantic? Ill-informed? Super Glue for Wound Closure, which is some random article written by a midwife, is much more informative about super-glue, and includes a time-line and citations to the underlying chemistry. For example; the primarly difference between off-the-shelf super-glue and medical-grade tissue adhesive is the alcohol used in the solution. Also, medical-grade glue is bacteriostatic: although I'm not sure what compound they add to make it so.

Also, I'm surprised that anyone would recommend use of dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) to remove the glue. It's an awesome solvent, but it also makes your skin highly permeable. As in, DMSO + lemon juice on hand = taste lemon levels of permeability. The more you know! Materials science and biochemistry are awesome.