Just looked up the etymology for the word ”sans.” Turns out the foreign languages it derived from are Old French and Middle English (Middle English being, I believe, the language the Hobbits spoke). Since Hobbits don’t really exist and the French probably shouldn’t, I believe the word “sans” does not really exist, either. I will now speak sans “sans.” Unless I’m referring to a bushman of southwestern Africa. Those “Sans” are real.

Bonus: turns out the word “foreign” is also of the mythical Old French/Middle English descent. I might have known…

And, apparently, writing without quotation marks is an impossibility for me.

It is muggy and hot tonight and I do not smell good. Thanks, swamp cooler and gray shirt.

I live in the desert. A place where it seems perfectly plausible to be cooled by a system consisting of pads being watered down in front of a motorized turbine blowing into directional duct. And, for the most part, it is. The problem lay in the months of June thru August. The hottest months of the year. The most humid months of the year. Where I live, anyway. Yeah, I’m talking about monsoons. And while, for my money (which is less after a recent trip to Vegas; also a desert, also hot), there’s rarely anything more beautiful than a summer electrical storm in the badlands of New Mexico, the trade-off when you do not have refrigerated air is palpable. And funky. For me, never moreso than when I am wearing a gray shirt.

Gray — the color of stink. And I rarely have a problem with stink. Not just because I’m lazy, I’m also just lucky that way. But what is it about the gray shirt? So versatile, yet, so susceptible to unwanted body odor of the highest, foulest degree. Mathematically speaking, I can tell you that swamp cooler plus gray shirt somehow equals death pits. How can I stop it? Anti-perspirant? Yeah, that works. But only for 18 hours. I’ve tried shaving, I’ve tried skipping work, I’ve even tried eating 4,000 calories a day and drinking my weight in Sam Adams seasonals. But none of those things helped.

So, what — WHAT — can I do? Get refrigerated air and stop wearing gray shirts? Oh…yeah, I guess that would work.

The coffee tastes disgusting this morning. Whoever made it should be as ashamed as I am disgusted. I will drink this coffee, yes, but I will do so with a frown until another carafe is made and this horrible wrong is righted.

Bad Coffee tries to seduce me by disguising itself as a sexy librarian. Well played, Bad Coffee.