Potpourri

Shayne and I left the house today to go meet Shayne's dad, and our leaving coincided with some sports game or another. Someone USU-related had blocked off the right side of the parking lot exit to set up a pay station where people could come in and park in our (residential) parking lot for $5. Which is usually fine, but on this occasion there was a line of cars down the street to park in our lot, and they were coming in and pausing to pay, and they were blocking our way out of the parking lot. Annoyance! One pickup truck stopped to chat with the fellow who was taking the money. The fellow kept pointing toward the stadium, so probably the old codger was asking for directions or instructions, but I wanted to believe they were merely shooting the breeze because that gave me the opportunity to hate them more. Shayne and I waited there for several minutes while the line of cars on the street grew longer and showed no sign of letting up. I told Shayne there was no use trying the other exit from our parking lot because it was probably the same thing, but he wanted to go anyway. Yeah, it was exactly the same. I played the role of Lady MacBeth, goading my gentle husband into using the aggressive driving tactics that I've found to be necessary in Utah. We basically muscled our way past the pay station in the gap between the truck they were using to block our way and the truck that was trying to come in and park. This is why you buy a small car, my friends. People must have seen the determination in my expression and the shape of my mouth as I was urging Shayne to "Go! Go!" and they got right out of the way.

So that was good.

*WARNING! RANT ALERT!*

In other news, I think I may be coming down with strep throat again, and I don't like it. If I went to jail, I would at least get medical care. Heck, prisoners of war get medical care. But gainfully employed Americans with college degrees just have to suck it up. If I were on Wall Street, I would be occupying too. Hey, instead of bailing out a corrupt bank that contributed to the housing crisis, why don't we fund health care? Donate it to free clinics so human beings can go to doctors. Oh yeah, I remember. America doesn't care about poor people. Poor people just didn't try hard enough. If they had worked harder, they wouldn't be poor at all.

*Rant concluded*

Some people at work gave Shayne a bunch of apples from their tree, and I made some stuff called Walnut Apple Dessert. We like it.

I also made soap today. It's very easy. Soapmaking manuals read like one of those survival shows, where the survival expert describes in detail everything that could go wrong during the process, then he does the horrifically dangerous thing, and...nothing. So a soap book will say something like, "Be extremely careful! Wear a hazmat suit! When adding lye to water, it can explode like a volcano!" They like to use the volcano imagery. When you're adding the lye solution to the oil, it can also explode like a volcano. Now I'm not denying that it could be dangerous if the lye solution splashed back into one's face, and that's why I carefully lean back when I'm adding lye to water or solution to oil. The first time I made soap I bought gloves and safety goggles and face masks, and I was actually kind of disappointed not to see an explosion. Now, I just casually lean back away from the mixture. In any case, enough soap to cleanse the Prussian army is now saponifying in my kitchen, and nothing interesting happened in the process. Lame.