Linkstew

Since I've started college, I've developed this strange superstition of needing to have clean sheets at the beginning of the semester. I can't account for why I started doing this, but I did. And so last night, I washed my bedclothes.

Of course, doing laundry is always an ordeal for me, and last night was no different. For starters, 2 out of the 3 washing machines at my apartment are currently out of order, so I had to serialize my loads.

But as usual, it was the drying end of things that gave me more trouble. This time, 1 of the 3 driers were out of order. Worse, the coin eaters on both of the working driers were stuck, so I had to pound on them for quite awhile to get them to pop out. And of course, once I put my quarters in they got stuck again. And of the four times I put quarters into those driers, one of the times it not only ate the quarters but got stuck so badly that I couldn't get it back out at all.

But in a moment of clarity last night, I figured out not just one, but two reasons why those driers always seem to do such a bad job.

1. When I went down after my first load in the drier should have been finished, it was still all wet. I was about to feed it more quarters, when it occurred to me to hit the Start button again -- and the drier started back up. When I came back down later, they were all perfectly dry. Maybe someone opened the drier and didn't hit start when they closed it?
2. On my second load, some of the sheets got wrapped up in each other and didn't get dry, so I had to run them through again. I let them run for about half an hour and came down and opened the drier and took the sheets out while it was still running. As I was about to leave, it occurred to me to hit the start button... Maybe other times, people take out loads early, and then I put my clothes in and hit start, and only get half a cycle of drying, despite putting in more quarters?

Lesson learned? Always press the start button before putting in more quarters.

Leaving my PowerBook on the floor for a week did not make it magically get better. Its case did get kind of linty, though. So today, I took the poor little fella into a local Mac Store, and I left him there to be pampered and cared for.

"We'll call you in two to three days to give you an estimate, and get your approval if it'll cost more than $80." he informed me.

"Yes, yes, that's fine, thank you." I told him somewhat impatiently. "Can I just pre-approve anything up to $300?"

"No."

You see, I just want the thing back in action (preferably before OS X 10.1 comes out) as soon as possible.

That my posting volume has decreased in the week since my PowerBook has been out of commission is not at all a coincidence. Without my laptop, my writing routine has been seriously disrupted. Normally, I wrote post from bed right before I go to sleep, or from the couch while I'm watching TV, or from any random spot where I happend to have my laptop that wasn't work or my desk. But because the only computers I've been using in the last week are at work and at my desk, I just haven't been writing posts I was planning to write. Generally speaking, my laptop is where I write, and my desktop is where I code.

So until I get my PowerBook back, writing is a pretty forced endeaver, and infrequent updates and crappy posts should be expected. I'm just not at all in the right frame of mind to write when I'm sitting at a desk.

It was windy, blowing my mom's little SUV around on the road more than I would have liked, especially considering that I'd only been awake for about five minutes. I pulled the wheel through a curve, and glanced in my rear view mirror, and a thought occurred to me.

"54 mph? What an odd speed limit... oh, stupid mirror."

But boy did I notice that funny speed limit. It penetrated my drowsiness, and distracted me from fighting the wind, and in general, did a very good job of catching my attention. Because it was different. Of course, if they tried to get people to notice all the "we really mean it" signs (Take this turn at 25 mph. we really mean it.) by making each of those signs unique, people would eventually become habituated to the uniqueness, defeating the purpose.

Stupid brain.

At one point in my Japanese class last semester, we learned a way to ask "What do you do habitually?" At the moment I can't remember the construct, but if I remember later, I'll add a note. This construction was introduced on a Monday, though, and since we also had vocab tests on Monday, no one ever studied the grammar lesson for monday, just the vocab. So when the sensei asked us what we did habitually, we all looked at her blankly. A few flipped through their notebook trying to figure out what had been said, but most of us sort of averted our eyes and looked out the window. So the sensei asked us again, "What do you do habitually?" And after a short pause during which everyone averted their eyes, added "Look out the window?"

I looked it up today, and I believe the phrase I was looking for was "nani ga shimasu ka?" I'm not positive, though.

I woke up, got out of bed, checked my email and found a message from my friend Tyler (not burroughs). This email said that my unshaven face reminded him of a tatoo artist in Philadelphia.

Um. That's it, that's all I remember. I think it was just telling me that I needed to shave, because I don't like being scruffy. So I woke up, took a shower, and shaved.

So I'm sitting here reading my Geography Lecture notes, and every couple of minutes, my computer would beep at me. Then, I realized that after reading a paragraph and a half or so, my hand would wander to the keyboard and hit the down arrow, attempting to scroll the text down. It's weird that this happened at all. It's weird that I didn't notice it the first couple of times. It's weird that I'm still doing it occasionally now that I've noticed it. And it's weird that I use computers so much that this habit developed at all.

I just had a Pastrami on Sourdough French Bread with Dijon Mustard sandwich, and it was great. And when I say pastrami, I'm talking real pastrami, not that shrink wrapped stuff. If you've never had a sandwich of this sort, then you're missing out.

Given that now falls in the midnight hour, this would probably be called a Midnight Snack, though in my case, it's usually more like Dinner. Whatever. My modus operandi is "When Hungry, Eat", and thus far, that hasn't failed me yet. There is a slight variation on that, which goes something like "When food is available, eat, because the next meal in the DC (Caffeteria) could suck", though in practice, that outlook is only useful when eating at College.