No Need for Mittens in Mitten Town

For the past day or two, the temperature has been unusually high for this part of the country. The thermometer says 98 degrees, but adjusted for all of the other factors, your skin feels the air as 114 degrees. Everyone recommends drinking lots of water, especially if you go out to the art fair.

Drinking lots of water at an outdoor festival can lead to a problem of the "what goes in must come out" variety. Fortunately, the heat allows you to excrete the water in ways that allow you to avoid using these and their attendant penicillin concession:

(I jest about the penicillin concession -- you actually have to go to the doctor for that.)

Later, as I stood in the line at the public ladies' room in the Going Out of Business Extravaganza that is Borders, the thought occurred to me that, with so many women using the Borders Stalls, they might not be any more sanitary than the Port-o-lets. Of course, in Borders, you don't have to hover your butt over the gaping maw of the Fluke Man.

(I don't jest about the Fluke Man. He's for real. Seriously.)

Meanwhile, I saw this:

That's a double decker doggie stroller. I took a picture because you wouldn't believe me if I told you.

Back at Borders, I browse the shitty history section. No women's history to speak of, outside of two books on Salem witches. The biography section was part pop figures, part queens (at least the ladies get some sort of love), or a president, preferably a Founding Father. I did, however, find an interesting book on reburials, which will be very useful in this cool section of my current work. Not-Clio will eventually talk about it.

Further down from Borders, I found this, which was decidedly not going out of business:

A used bookstore! Named after a ship in a children's story! The history sections are colossally shitty, of course, but the fiction sections remind you that so many books have been written and still wait to be enjoyed, even if they are no longer on the bestseller list -- if they ever were -- or even in print. You can plop down on one of the stools and read backs of books until you forget what you came in to find. Plus, the books are inexpensive.

I walked so much that my poor, beat-up tenny-shoes finally wore through:

 See? (Those are my fingers, not my toes.):

It seems I have a hole in my sole. Fortunately, I take pills for that.