3 outside the skinny blog

I'm considering dropping this blog. I so seldom have time to enter anything, and it's only going to get worse as we get more into the wetlands growing season (now through September). I don't know that anyone's reading it anyway.

Just in case someone is, and someone *else* has dribbled coffee down their fronts at this early hour of the workday, I'll supply a Handy Hint from Terry: First, try to do this while the coffee is still damp. Go into the restroom of your choice, wad up several dry paper towels. Stuff them under your shirt, or pants leg, or wherever the coffee stains are. Take another 2 or 3 paper towels and run them under the tap, get them a little wet. Daub the coffee spots. The underlying science here is "capillary action," that tendency of water to follow very tiny tunnels--if you've ever had a nurse hold a spaghetti-thin tube to a drop of blood on your finger and watched the blood rise up the tube all on its own, you've seen capillary action. Anyway, it's also a matter of diffusion--molecules tend to move from an area of greater concentration (the wet paper towels) to an adjacent area of lower concentration (the dry paper towels) until equilibrium is reached, or until you are satisfied that the darn spot is gone and remove the diffusion system (the paper towels on both sides of the fabric). Capillary action and diffusion will (this is my theory) drag the coffee stain with the water, out of the fabric and into the underlying dry paper towels. For dry stains (like you only noticed you'd dribbled *after* the meeting with clients), you may have to use a two-step process. Put a drop of liquid soap (like, out the bathroom's hand-washing soap dispenser) on the wet paper towel and dab the soapy solution into the stain; throw away both under- and over-sets of paper towels and repeat without soap to rinse the soap (mostly) out.

Be forwarned: You'll have a big blob of water on your shirt until it dries, so don't do this unless you can hide out in your cubicle for awhile.

Boy, if I keep rewarding readers like this, soon there won't be *room* for all the hits this blog will get.