So The Bunny came home from work this morning with new DVDs. This in itself is not unusual. We're movie junkies, so there's a near-continuous stream of DVDs running into our house. Today was a bit out of the ordinary because of what Bunny brought home.

Apparently there was some kind of sale on two-packs. Two movies, seven bucks. You know how those two-packs work, right? They bundle one cool movie with one not so cool movie that the studio can't sell by itself.

Cool movie: National Lampoon's Vacation
Not so cool movie: Police Academy

Cool movie: Mystic River
Not so cool movie: Unforgiven

Cool movie: Miss Congeniality
Not so cool movie: A Cinderella Story

Yes, that's right. We are the proud owners of the Hilary Duff tour de force A Cinderella Story. I know you're jealous. Kneel before Zod.

There's another reason you should be jealous. I smoke, right? (No, that's not the reason, I'm getting to that part.) I prefer Zippo lighters. They look cool, they work great, and they last a lifetime. Seriously. I've got a functional Zippo from 1955.

Anyway, I'm bored with the lighter I've been using for the last seven or eight years and want something different. I decided to start using a Jack Daniels lighter I bought a few years ago and haven't done anything with. Because it's more or less new, I still need to break it in.

One of my favorite tricks for conditioning a new Zippo is to add more padding to the fuel chamber. A Zippo is just fine as-is, but it holds more fuel when you stuff more cotton into it. It's a much nicer convenience to refill my lighter every month instead of every two weeks or so.

After putting it off for a few days, I really wanted to get this done before work this morning. So I wandered around the house looking for cotton balls. I checked both medicine cabinets. I checked under both bathroom sinks. I checked the cupboards above the toilets. No cotton balls.

Dammit. I really wanted to do this. So I made do with what I had.

I used a tampon.

I saw the box sitting there in the cupboard and thought, "Hmm. That would work. It's cotton fiber. Or at least it's cotton-like. And it's already tightly packed. I could just trim off little chunks to stuff in my lighter."

And it worked out just fine. I stuffed my lighter full of shredded bits of super absorbency tampon, refilled it and went about my day. The lighter's working just swell.

This is why you should be jealous. I have a Hilary Duff movie and a tampon-powered cigarette lighter. And you don't. Neener neener neener.