Monday, March 12, 2007

Erica Le Pu

As if the cartoon didn't give it away, let's just say that Erica now has a new found respect for one of nature's most potent defense mechanisms: getting sprayed by a skunk.

Erica was driving to see me the other night, and lo and behold, a skunk ran out in the middle of the road and sprayed her car. Since it was cold that night, Erica had the heat blaring, thus forcing all of the rotten egg smell into the car's interior, and consequently, all of her and her belongings. She came to my house, and I made her stand out on the porch until we could determine a course of action. We decided to leave everything out on the porch for the night and research what to do on the Internet.


*** (This is a picture of Erica trying to figure out if her purse smells like skunk)

Legend says that tomato juice rids articles of skunk smell. Not so. It turns out that a mixture of dish soap, vinegar, and baking soda is the only thing that works. So, the next day, we went to the laundromat and washed all of her clothes, bags, and anything else that was machine washable in the mixture. It turned out great, and a wash, spin, and a rinse cycle later, she was in the clear. Her car took a few more days to get the smell out, but nevertheless, one week later, Erica is skunk-free.

Rock Lobster

Although it's a little past Valentine's Day, I thought it might be worthwhile to show you all what Erica gave me.




He's an electric blue lobster. He's quite entertaining as he enjoys eating food off the bottom of the tank, trying to capture fish in his claws (he's got two so far... they were picking on him, so don't feel too bad for them!), and swimming -- which he does backwards. He also likes to rearrange the rocks in the tank. He will move upwards of 100 little rocks per day if he's feeling up to it.

He doesn't currently have a name, but we like to refer to him as Rock Lobster, after the B-52's song (they're the group that sang "Love Shack" for the musically deficient).

So, welcome the Rock Lobster. If you leave a comment, I'll be sure to deliver it to him later!

Monday, March 05, 2007

Beautiful Juxtaposition

I was surfing through CNN.com this afternoon as I do every day after lunch, and saw the following two headlines side by side on the business section:

"America's Most Admired Companies"
and
"Wal-Mart Fires Employee for Snooping"

How wonderful. Follow one link to learn more about those companies that are socially-conscious, fair to their employees, competitive without being dishonest, and engaging to work for.... follow the other to learn more about why saving $0.14 on a mega-jar of pickles comes at the expense of employees' welfare and quality of life.

Only in America.

It'd been a while before I got a good rip in on Wal-Mart. There you have it.