Bits and pieces update
First, Hawaii on Saturday! Woohoo!!!!

Second, a hilarious HALO 2 machinama music video:


Third, I've always used the term "dop kit" for the toiletries I carry on a trip. I've never known why it was called that, but my father called it that. Randomly, I decided to look it up on Google, and found The Word Detective:Dear Word Detective: My husband keeps his shaving gear and other personal care items in a zippered oblong leather case. His 91 year old father has one too. They both call this case their "Dop kit." I've heard the term from others also. However, no one can tell me why it is called "dop kit." For the longest time I've wondered where the word "dop" came from, thinking it might be the abbreviation D.O.P. for some military term. Can you tell me what it means? -- Ruth Camenisch, Monett, Missouri.

Well, first of all, I can tell you that both your husband and his father are more well-organized than I'll ever be. In fact, I'd probably shave off this silly beard if I could just remember where I put my razor.

In any case, thanks to a discussion of the term "Dopp Kit" on the mailing list of the American Dialect Society (www.americandialect.org) a couple of years ago, I can assure you that "Dop" or "Dopp" isn't an acronym or abbreviation for anything. According to newspaper accounts unearthed by Merriam-Webster's Jim Rader, the Dopp Kit was first produced by Charles Doppelt, a leather goods designer who immigrated to the U.S. from Germany in the early 1900s. Although it may have been Doppelt's nephew and employee, Jerome Harris, who actually invented the snazzy leather toiletries case, Doppelt was the boss and so the finished product bore a cropped form of his name, giving us the "Dopp Kit." Dopp Kits were manufactured by the Charles Doppelt Company until the firm was purchased by Samsonite in the 1970s, and Dopp Kits today are made by Buxton. The popularity of Dopp Kits was evidently boosted considerably by World War II, in the course of which the U.S. Army issued them to recruits by the millions.

Incidentally, the "kit" part of Dopp Kit is not quite the same "kit" we use to mean "a collection of parts used to assemble a whole," as in "model airplane kit." A soldier's "kit" consists of the standard equipment and personal articles issued to and carried by a soldier on a regular basis.