[ Sorry to be late; I was at Cinematic Titanic in Manhattan. Great fun, report to follow. ]
I went to Target with one of those sad convergences of needing everything that confirms that even a normal, reasonably healthy person is perpetually falling apart: I needed new stocks of soap, toothpaste, mouthwash, deodorant, and multivitamins. Yes, I am fully aware the cashier could not possibly care less what anyone is purchasing and even if the cashier did care, this fact would be forgotten seconds after my purchase when the next customer came along. I still feel a little shy about having a basket full of ``stuff to make me smell a little less like a giant ambulatory pile of rotting meat''.
I also picked up a couple packs of sixlets. I'd probably have just got the one except that they were marked with a clearance price on top, and I've gotten to really like the cheap little chocolate candies. (I do like nitwitz more for a ``grab a small handful and nibble on a while'', though, even tough they're not chocolate. They take longer to eat.) Also an exercise shirt because I'm getting to really like having clothes that do something with my sweat besides keep it on me.
When I got home I realized I'd forgot the shirt. I irrationally blame the guy who got in line behind me; he was buying, apparently, two rolled-up tents in huge canvas sacks and couldn't set them on the conveyor belt without partly covering my stuff. I don't think he had anything to do with it, but it's convenient for saying why I had to call them up and plan on an extra trip. Truly this is the most humiliating experience ever, except for every other experience in life.
Trivia: Proctor & Gamble ordered research chemist David Byerly, hired in 1938, to stop his (somewhat obsessive) experiments with sodium tripolyphosphate as a cleaning agent, as they seemed to be getting nowhere. After the Second World War the work would be the basis for Tide. Source: The 13th Element: The Sordid Tale Of Murder, Fire, And Phosphorus, John Emsley.
Currently Reading: Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds!, Arthur C Clarke.
