My dad’s first cousin is a now semi-retired sheriff’s deputy in a rural county in Kansas. He emails out a weekly report of his work. I’ve written about him before.
This act of kindness was in his latest email:

I was dispatched to [Redacted], KS to check on a homeless woman. She had about worn out her welcome in [Redacted]. She told me that she was traveling to Huntsville, Alabama from Decatur, Alabama, but got side tracked . . . The woman was barefoot, was wearing warm up slacks with draw strings to hold it up. She had not bathed lately and the weather was hot. She told me she was waiting for a truck to come by that was going to Huntsville, Alabama so I told her about a bigger truck stop in [Redacted], KS. She danced across the hot concrete at the convenience store to get to my patrol truck. We stopped in [Redacted] at the Law Enforcement Center long enough for the Detention Officer to bring me out a pair of rubber shoes that are issued to prisoners. We then proceeded to the truck stop at [Redacted]. She really liked the rubber sandals. When we got to [Redacted], I pointed out McDonalds Restaurant and gave her a $5.00 bill. The woman thanked me and then took my hand and said a prayer for me and my safety. I drove away feeling like I might have transported an Angel unaware. It was quite a surprise.

Everything You Need to Know About Fast Food
Of all the interesting stats in this infographic, this one caught my attention the most (emphasis added): “Super heavy users,” [are] those customers who visit the store at least ten times a month, making up 75% of McDonald’s sales.”

Sent to Consumerist: Buy Matzo ball soup mix (during Passover, no less), get a coupon/ad for a ham!

I saw several incredible sales like this yesterday at HEB:

This (more or less) spam message that I received this morning makes my head hurt:

As a huge fan of NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, I thoroughly enjoyed this parody of the last Wait Wait! broadcast during the zombie apocalypse.

I just finished my first week on WeightWatchers online. I have followed the WeightWatchers plan in the past to lose weight, and I have to say, I prefer the current plan–the online version–over the previous plans.
The first reason is the online part–in the past, the WW plan focused on attending your weekly meeting. I’m an introvert and I hated the meetings; I never wanted to share my experiences, and I felt that didn’t get much from others’ experiences. With the online plan, I get all the advice, and the diet and exercise tracking using an online and iPhone app with no expectation of attending meetings.
The second, and bigger, reason reason I like the new plan is how you track your eating. Everything you eat is tracked as points, which you can look up in the apps (a point is roughly 60-70 calories, but also takes fat and fiber content into consideration). That’s the way WW has done it for several years. With the current plan, though, you get X points per day, plus 35 weekly points to use whenever you like during the week (plus, exercise earns you more weekly points).
Most days last week, I followed the plan really well, but I went over my daily points a little two or three days. But with the weekly points, that was no problem. And on Saturday, we visited my mother-in-law’s and aunt’s house in San Antonio, which is always an eating challenge: they keep lots of sweets and the meals aren’t often very dietetic. On Saturday, I ate better than I have in the past, but I still ate some cake and we ordered pizza for lunch. I consumed about 50% more than my daily points! On a ‘traditional’ diet, that would have been a failed day, but I had enough weekly points left to cover it. Again, no biggie.
By the end of the week, I’d used all my weekly points and a few of my activity-earned points, so I stayed on the program; more importantly, I lost some weight and felt successful.

Check out the angels in this Christmas display in our neighborhood

(Not to mention Santa Claus at the manger)

Simple ignorance is a curable condition, stupidity is a misfortune, willful ignorance is a character flaw.

Source.

I assume it works for people, too, but fortunately, I haven’t had the opportunity to try it. A former coworker’s dogs were sprayed the other day, and she was not aware of the state of the art in skunk smell removal until I shared it with her. So, here’s my public service announcement for anyone else who might need it.

Several years ago, I was walking our two dogs off-leash in a field near our house before dawn. In the dark, I could see them chasing a cat a hundred yards away (I didn’t worry; they’d never caught one before, and if they did, they’re cat friendly). Then, they suddenly stopped chasing the cat. Odd, I thought. Then, they started running back to me. When they got near, I realized it was no cat. They smelled lovely.
I was raised in the country and have dealt with skunk spray a few times; we always bathed our dogs in tomato juice, which didn’t work very well. However, when the spraying happened a few years ago, I thought: it’s been 20 years since I dealt with this, and now we have the Internet; let’s see if there’s a better way of getting rid of the skunk smell.
Sure enough, the current state of the art is a bath with a mixture of peroxide, baking soda and soap or shampoo. Full details here: Skunk Odor Removal.
I can vouch for this method. We bathed our two dogs about three times the day they got sprayed, and the smell was completely gone. It stripped every bit of oil out of their fur, so they were fuzzy messes, but that was a small price to pay.