Quote of the Day

I am a big fan of the Washington Post's Style Invitational contest. The results this week were more honorable mentions from last week and had to do with taking a passage of classic literature and rewriting it to be understandable to a resident of Los Angeles under the age of 40. I thought this take on a passage from Moby-Dick, about Ahab's hatred of the white whale was brilliant:

Stephen Dudzik, Olney: "One fish, screw fish, hate fish, rue fish. From prayer to glare, from tear to swear, evil whales are everywhere."

Tax Holiday

In theory, I don't believe in buying new clothes for vacations.

In practice, vacations are good excuses to buy things I've been meaning to buy anyway. So, after running some other essential errands (dropping off the vacation hold authorization at the post office, getting the car inspected, and buying a nail brush to replace the one I lost months ago), I ran over to REI.

And discovered that there is a tax holiday in Virginia. From 1-3 August you can buy clothes and shoes under $100 (and school supplies) without paying sales tax. So, not only did I finally get the Keen water shoes I've been eyeing for months, I also bought two pairs of convertible pants. The pants were on sale, too, so I saved even more money.

I did still have to pay sales tax on the insect repellant. I've been contemplating buying a steripen, but decided that a six buck bottle of iodine tablets was good enough for now. Maybe for the next trip ...

By the way, I didn't mention another vacation related purchase earlier in the week. I went over to Olsson's to buy a crossword puzzle book. Usually the choice is difficult, but they made it much easier by having exactly one in stock. I figure a NY Times collection (in this case, Expand Your Mind Crosswords, edited by Will Shortz) is always safe. If I ruled the world, all airport newsstands would be required to sell decent puzzle magazines (that is, not collections entirely of sudoku, word searches, and easy crosswords).