Who decides the test of what is really best?

[austin_dern]

Misfit elf turns out to taste like vanilla frosting. Probably that needs some context. The context is: I use a reasonable amount of lip balm, and I like getting more interesting flavors if I can. So when I saw Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer promotional tie-in lip balm at Target I bought a tube. But since I don't use very much it wasn't until this week that I had run out of my previous flavor (Butterfinger) and needed it.

Now. There are times I outdo even myself, which is rarely the way something I'm proud of doing starts off. I broke open the seal, took a quick swipe across my lips, and then ... I had no idea what happened to it. I was in the rush of getting ready for work and that usually involves making sure important things like my book to read or my iPad are in my messenger bag, and my wallet is in my pocket, and I loop my belt into my pants before I shower and long before I put them on because that's just the kind of person I am and I know that doesn't make any sense but at least I stopped doing it the night before, OK?, and I just couldn't find it. It wasn't in my shirt pocket beside my pen where it belonged, it wasn't on the dresser where it should go at night. I looked around the floor; surely I could sterilize the tube and continue to use it. It wasn't there either. It'd vanished. I lose lip balm fairly often but I usually take more than twenty seconds at it.

At the end of the day, after I'd resigned myself to not getting a fresh taste of Misfit Elf until next Christmas, I found it had ``vanished'' into my pants pocket, hiding underneath my wallet, apparently all day. I'd never have imagined looking there, what with that clearly being a crazy place for lip balm to go.

Trivia: Prior to 1910 the record length for a single flight was eight hundred miles, set by John Wise's hot air balloon Atlantic in its July 1859 flight from Saint Louis, Missouri, to central New York State. Source: Wondrous Contrivances: Technology At The Threshold, Merritt Ierley.

Currently Reading: Engineering Infinity, Editor Jonathan Strahan.

Comments

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

.. see, my clothing isn't even out of the drawers before I shower, let alone belted; but I shower immediately upon rising. Unless the belt's still in yesterday's jeans over in front of the dresser on the floor because dammit jeans are two-day clothing.

Then again, I keep an emergency belt in the trunk of my care for the yearly occurrence of forgetting to wear one and realizing it quite far from home. *shrug*

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Right. I do most of my morning routine, including weighing in on the WiiFit, before showering; I very nearly go right from the shower to car, at least the days that I'm going in to work.

I have never had an emergency belt; in fact, I don't really have a second belt right now (and I could use one; mine is in sorry shape). I did used to keep an emergency pair of socks and a jacket in my old car, but they've yet to find their way into the new. (I was feeling pretty sharp that I got an emergency jacket with all the bright orange and reflective patches in case of car emergencies, which I've never had on the road.)

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

I don't have a 'before shower', is the best way I can put my mornings.

Socks I can't see ever leaving the house unintentionally without; but as a thing to keep to replace the pair being work if.. uhm.. ...and i see why they haven't made their way into the new car. Momgoose has urged me towards an emergency jacket or blanket to be kept in my car, but even before I had AAA and even with breakdowns upon occasion, I've not found it a need.

Right now I own two belts, plus the emergency one. That's enough for the time being, especially if weight loss manages to continue.

--Chi

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Oh, I understand. There are people who'd just naturally shower before the rest of their morning routines and some of them are not morally degenerate freaks.

My thinking for the extra pair of socks wasn't that I might leave without them, but that my designated pair of socks would be more likely than anything else I had on to get wet (from snow, rain, mud or the like) and deserve replacement rather than put up with them. My shoes I could take off (and often do) for the drive, but I've never been able to get into sockless shoe-wearing, and therefore that's the thing to prepare against. In practice, obviously, I'm doing fine without such a spare.

But I suspect it'd be a good thing as a general policy to have a change of clothes in the car, just in case of catastrophic event. And with my weight stabilized that even makes sense now; part of my thing was I bought the new car in the midst of my big year of weight loss, just at the point that the shrinking of my waistline was about to become noticeable and then fast.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

I can handle sockless shoe-wearing to get the mail or to get somethig gfrom the car, but that's about it. (well, except for sandals.) I can't drive well without shoes, it's just.. strange... so yeah.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I was surprised how easily I got into shoeless driving. My only worry is getting stopped by a police officer since, while there aren't actually rules that you have shoes on while driving, I don't know that officers know that (and they could probably use some catchall ``unsafe condition to operate the vehicle'' excuse if I fumble the interaction, and what are the odds of that with me?).

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

The couple of times I've driven barefoot I didn't like it at all. I found it much more difficult to find and stay steadily on the gas pedal.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Oddly, I feel like I have better feel for the pedals going barefoot, but that might just be me rationalizing something that I like doing as being somehow superior.

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

Is a central New York State excited, or will it decay momentarily?

Can we thereby deduce that lasers will not be invented in Minnesota?

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I'm actually surprised the book didn't specify where in New York the balloon landed. There's a lot of space up there, after all. It just mentions when it was spotted in the vicinity of Buffalo.