I am having a problem, in that I think I am losing intelligence by the second. I am a pretty intelligent person by all the standard quantitative methods of analyzing such things, but the following two incidents have recently caused me concern.

Yesterday, I finally "got" the Altoids poster of the goat standing on the Altoids box that has been around for forever. See, the Altoids are curiously strong...like strong enough to hold a goat. Why this never occurred to me earlier, I don't know. Clearly I am getting stupid.

The even more disturbing example comes from a Snapple cap. It said that Q was the only letter that was not used in the name of a US state. So I started running through the least-frequently used letters in my head (guided by the points awarded for them in Scrabble). There was TeXas and AriZona, and the DaKotas, and then I got to J. What state has J in it, I wondered. I went so far as to look at a list of the state names. People, I live in New Jersey.

Tomorrow, I leave for the Land of the Mouse. I was earlier thinking that it was a good thing that we had five adults to the three children, since that would help with the child-rassling necessary at a huge and exciting place like the big WDW. But after talking to my mom, I think we may have to put her in the "rassled" category as well. This is her first visit to Disney too, and she has all the rides she wants to go on circled in her guidebook.