Had my pool water tested and found out I needed to boost my Alkalinity. Needed 20 lbs of this special powder, which went for about $4 a pound. When I balked a bit the young fellow whispered to me that “it’s just baking soda”. So I took the hint and went to find 20 lbs of Baking Soda at the nearby big box home improvement store.

In fact, baking soda was a fraction of the price of the special pool chemical, at about $1 a pound. It was sold as air freshener but the bag even mentioned it was useful for swimming pools. While I was there I bought some toilet bowl cleaner. Not that expensive but I realized it was the same liquid chlorine that I put in my pool diluted 3:1. And a gallon of the pool chlorine costs about as much as the two smaller bottles of toilet bowl cleaner. To be fair the toilet bowl cleaner is in a fancy squirt bottle. I know what I’m doing when these bottles are empty.

i also saw, inexplicably, that my home improvement store is selling bacon fat, for about $10 a pound. Seems expensive since I have a bunch in my fridge I usually throw out.

I used to watch Godzilla movies as a kid on the Sunday Morning Movie. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the original or one that wasn’t (badly) edited for US TV. From the BBC.

‘A film that only Japan could have made’: Seventy years on, why Godzilla is the darkest monster movie of them all