ChiKat, I can't speak for Sophia, but my problem isn't a lack of wide widths. It's that my feet are mutant. Wide widths are too huge and gape in the wrong places. They fall off and give blisters. I've got really narrow heels and monster the top. Which is why I like MJs in normal widths. If it fits my toe area, the strap mitigates any heel gapeage.

During every idle moment today I have thought about parallels between the spice trade, the opium trade, and modern pharmaceutical fixes for a sense of well-being.

I blame DavidS. Get out of my head, DavidS!

Pfft. You should be thanking me for filling your head with useful notions.

::tightens coaxial cable in back of Gus' headjack::

No kidding. I am looking at a piece of paper that has "pepper->poppy->paxil" written on it.

On the quarter-hour, I think it is an alliterative conspiracy among 'p's. The rest of the time, I think it might mean something.

I was surprised to see that pepper had been such a big deal. I knew about nutmeg and cloves and mace. Wacky to realize that the Spice Islands really were all about spices. Tangy Tongue Rules World History.

I keep circling around to the experiments with the monkeys who hit the buttons hooked up to their pleasure centers instead of their feed buttons.

ita, NPR had a thing about the problem with knife and blade violence in Scotland that made me think of you. Since guns are Right Out, gang bangers in Scotland make do with lock knives and the occasional machete or samurai sword.

I have been looking at stuff like this all day:

_dt_ym1 proc far

push ax push bx push dx xor ax,ax mov dx,TIMER0_CNT in al,dx or al,al jnz FIXCOUNT1 xor ax,ax out dx,ax mov dx,TIMER1_CNT out dx,ax jmp SIGINC

All of that gibberish actually means something to me. You can not live in that head-space and make any sense out of shoes and cat farts.

I keep circling around to the experiments with the monkeys who hit the buttons hooked up to their pleasure centers instead of their feed buttons.

With you. The next time I am in a voting booth jabbing levers, I will suppress all memory of this conversation.

That's a lot of pushing, Gus. Are you sure you're not writing porn instead of code?

msbelle -- congratulations!

I hope you and your little boy have nothing but smooth sailing from here on out.

Is anyone good with plants? My jade plant is withering and I have no idea why.

Pushing, porn, plants, pepper, poppies, paxil ... it is a 'p' conspiracy!

Ailleann: It wants light and food. Real light. The thing that stores call "plant spikes" will do the food thing.

Oh, and move it away from the AC vent.