Don't lick the shiny salt

Cute tale from one of my new clients, a salt mine in New York. Apparently a miner was sitting on a bench having lunch while a tour of the mine went through a quarter-mile below the surface. A little old lady was enraptured by a shiny hunk of salt emanating from the wall of dirt, so she went over to lick it. She claimed, yup, tastes like salt. Apparently the salt rock was shiny because it had been recently peed on -- the stream must have eroded some of the peripheral dirt....

So we have a new phrase to accompany "don't eat the yellow snow"....

Counterintuitivity

Two things run counter to intuition....Here goes:

1. There are 3 places in the town where my softball league plays. A big park with lights on the field, a smaller area in the middle of nowhere, and two fields at the high school. So what's the only place where they don't monitor to prevent us from being able to drink beer after a game? The high school, of course!

2. A lot of times when people have allergies, conditioned air is the best way to reduce the threat of the allergens. (Like, don't open a window to invite hay fever, as an example, I suppose.) We had a guest cat over this weekend in our basement, and I think the air conditioning system in the house actually circulated more allergens to me. I sneezed horribly for a couple of days, and my vocal chords are actually a bit shot and need rest. Point is, had we just opened windows in the house instead, I'd probably have been fine.

Irish twins

Today my brother turns 36. Same age as I am (for a few more weeks).
Nice goin', mom. Giving birth twice while you're 25.