Drill bits and body wash

Decided to go to the mall yesterday. While waiting for the bus downtown I got an earful from the relatively new sidewalk preacher. He hangs around on the main street that divides campus from town, standing at the ornamental gate on campus and shouting that we're all going to Hell.

You can't help but hear him. He holds his Bible up to one side of his mouth, making a sort of megaphone out of it. First time I saw him do that the phrase "Amplified Bible" popped into my head. I've never seen him open the book and read from it. The reason he does his hollering from campus and not from town is that in the borough it's considered disturbing the peace. Or maybe it's street-performance, and you need a permit. Whatever the reason, people who try street-corner preaching in town get shooed away by the police. The university doesn't do anything. Free speech and all that.

The thing I went to the mall for was a set of drill bits. I have a cordless drill, but when I bought it I got a set of screwdriver bits to go with it. 'Cause I didn't need to make holes, see, I was trying to put together furniture. Now I need to put up curtain rods and add little thingies to the bottoms of chair legs (to keep the color from rubbing off onto the laminate flooring), things like that. So I got drill bits yesterday.

Tool-selling sure is a racket, isn't it? Why doesn't a drill come with bits? Without them it's just a big, funny-looking paperweight.

Only had that one purchase to make and an hour until the next bus, so I wandered around some.

I'm amazed by the number of things I find out there that I don't want in my house. Lately I've been having a lot of "Ew, yuck." moments. Furniture that looks like it was designed by people who never sit down for very long. Muddy colors. Appliances that look like alien space ships. Maybe it's just that I'm paying more attention than I used to because now I'm actively looking for things to put in my house.

Even the stuff at Bath and Body Works makes me stop and scratch my head. I'm always on guard for the young ladies with the baskets who want me to try their newest "flavors." I haven't been accosted by one lately. Maybe they discontinued that because they got one too many pedants pointing out (like I did) that unless I'm supposed to ingest the product, it's not a flavor. Scent, yes. Fragrance, yes. Variety, sure. Flavor, uh-uh. I'm not gonna gnaw on a candle or use shower gel as toothpaste. Stop injuring my language, please.

There was a huge display towards the front for some new fragrance called "Sea Island Cotton." Having no idea what they meant by that, and wondering if cotton flowers and has a nice smell, I tried the tester. Know what it smelled like? If you read my Twitter updates at the top of the page you do. Smelled like something pulled right out of the dryer. Why would I want to smell like the laundry room?

I have a hard time finding scents I like in there, and yet I still go back. I keep looking (in vain) for something rose-scented. They did have one thing with roses in it--Moonlit Path (or something like that)--but they went and threw lavender in as well. Like the color, hate the smell.

A lot of their things are food-scented (perhaps that's why they call 'em flavors, eh?): blackberry, apple, mandarin orange, spiced fig, vanilla, caramel, melon...I don't want to smell like dessert, people, where are the flowers? Gimme some lilac, some roses, some orange blossoms, carnations, chrysanthemums! Eventually I settled on something called "Rainkissed Leaves." Smells like a garden after the rain. It's a nice clean smell, and I decided to buy some of it. I just now looked at the label and...oh, for pity's sake! They got me. There's food in it. Watercress.