didn't know I was a sinner, but if they say so well I must be

[the_siobhan]

Today was a good day.

• I got up at fuck-God-o'clock to take the Old Man to an appointment - and was LATE ANYWAY because of TRAFFIC - but then the bus driver waited for us and we got him to the hospital on time.
• He got done with the appointment early so we went to the park next door to the hospital to hang out in the sun while we waited for the bus scheduled to take him home. They just happened to be having their first farmer's market of the season complete with a three-piece band playing music so we sat and listened to them while we waited.
• My daughter met us at the retirement home just in time for lunch so went to the bar across the street. It has a huge patio full of planters and garage-sale furniture and we proceeded to get day drunk for several hours. I accidentally butt-dialed my sister, so I made her talk to everybody.
• I just got home and I couldn't be arsed to make one of the three (3) meals that can be produced in a toaster oven, so I bought a pizza from a takeout place on my street. Now I'm sitting in front of the computer with my feet up. I am going to do NOTHING USEFUL for one night only.

***

May
7 – World Laughter Day: is there anything, or anyone, that is almost guaranteed to make you laugh? How would you describe your sense of humour?
8 – Etiquette Week: the first Monday of the second full week in May marks the beginning of national etiquette week. Are there any social conventions you wish would go away, or that you wish would come back (or be observed by more people)?
9 – Sleepover Day: Did you do sleepovers when you were young?

7. I laugh a lot. It's midway between nervous reaction, laughing so I don't cry, and genuinely finding everything about the universe absolutely ridiculous.  8. In my albeit somewhat limited circles, making comments about weight seems to have gone out of fashion. I think the next step is people not assuming that everybody is able-bodied. 9. If "sleepovers" means people crashed at my house, then yes, it happened a fair bit.

10 – Stay Up All Night Night: When was the last time you stayed up all (or most of) the night on purpose (e.g. not because you were tending to an ill child or suffering from insomnia)?

Hrm. Been a while since I did it on purpose. I used to stay up all night on May eve and then go to High Park at dawn to see the Morris dancers bring in the spring. I also have a friend who used to celebrate midsummer by greeting the dawn on the beach of Lake Ontario. Both of these things usually involved flasks of something alcoholic, but the beach required a lot more climbing up and down cliffs.

 

***

Work has lost my fucking computer.

I normally remote into the desktop that used to be on my old desk when I was working onsite. It gets turned off a lot - the building is really prone to power outages and normally I just call tech support and they send somebody onsite to hit the power button. Yesterday was day four since I opened the ticket and as of signing out last night they had not yet found it.

They keep calling me to ask where it is, and I'm like, Does my job title indicate that I have anything to do with inventory control? Your department moved the work stations around, it's wherever you put it.

Mind you, these are the same people who keep send me a notice every six months about the laptop I turned in two years ago. Each time they do I email them a scan of the purolator label and they go, oh never mind we found it!

***

My bathroom is literally the definition of two steps forward and one step back.

Step One: I figured I would start with the bathroom sink drain, because that would be the easiest - sinks are designed so you can just unscrew the u-bend. Not so much - this one is glued together. Discovering that gave me an abrupt insight into the head-space of the person who installed our bathroom plumbing.

Wrenching at it made everything bend alarmingly but did not break the seal. So I said fuck it and went in from above with one of those plastic poking things that looks like a fish spine. Much more fiddly and it means I don't get everything, but it worked and the sink empties now.

Step Two: the drain in the toilet room floor. Actually the easiest, I was able to unscrew the cover no problem. I went into it with the fish spine thingy but it's too small to get much up. I have a vague memory that the roommate once bought a tool for getting properly into the drains, I will consult next time I see them. Otherwise I'll hit the plumbing store at the top of my street and ask them what they recommend.

Step Three: The drain in the shower. Research indicates that there is a tool to dig out old grout - but it won't work in this case because the drain is set below the level of the tile. I'm stuck with shoving a knife down there and grinding it out manually. This is INCREDIBLY TEDIOUS so I can only force myself to do 5-10 minutes of it at a time. I have one end pretty much free, but I don't want to yank on it because I don't want to either bend the metal or break the tile.

Step Minus One: Yesterday the extraction fan stopped working.

This fucking house.