Okay it's been
2 weeks and 2 days since I've posted anything.... so yeah, that's way too long and I apologize. But the good news is, all the papers and everything are done and I just have one exam left on Wednesday. It's taxation and it's going to be brutal, but at least I will, in 61 hours and 19 minutes, be FREE for two weeks. That's not long enough. I know, I know, lots of people with actual jobs only get two weeks of vacation
per year. But I'm a student. I want like six or ten weeks off. Anyway, I'll complain more about that later...
I've come to realize there are some things in life that I just take for granted. And the thing about taking things for granted is, you really appreciate them when they're gone. I'm going to talk about these things over the next few posts. Here's the first one:
SINKS THAT DRAIN PROPERLY: I had some facial hair goin' on during the last few weeks of classes. I really hate to use the word *beard* because the hair grows rather sparsely on my face... but whatever it was, I shaved it off last Saturday with a razor. Yeah, no trimmer or anything, just a Schick Quattro and some Adidas Active Skincare shaving cream. I went through two razors and started on the third one by the time I got it all off and, because I don't have one of those anti-fog suction cup shower mirrors, I was shaving over the bathroom sink. I didn't really notice while I was shaving, but at some point the sink stopped draining properly.
There came a point, near the end, when I was dipping the razor in a sink half full of water to get some of the hair off the razor. I realized that this
could indicate a problem, mostly because I hadn't put the sink plug in so the sink should have been
empty. Yet it wasn't, and by then it was too late. I guess the hair got down there in the pipes and formed some kind of hairball dam, which started catching every bit of errant sediment that tried to get by. When I was done the water was still draining.... slowly... but within two days the hairball and whatever else was down there had formed an impenetrable blockage and there was a permanent pool of water in the sink.
So this gets me to the "taking for granted" part. With a sitting pool of water in my bathroom sink, I couldn't really brush my teeth and spit toothpaste out into it. I mean, I guess I could have, but it seemed like that would have been crossing some kind of line of decency. So what do I do? The logical answer, to me, would be to brush my teeth at the kitchen sink. But to do that efficiently, one would have to have done the dishes at some point. And of course, I hadn't. I thought of the toilet and the bathtub, but neither of those places seemed right. I don't know why; the bathtub was all wrong and the toilet is no place for that. I also considered spitting it out the window. I bet people used to do that before they had plumbing, so it would be like the olden days. But I'm sure the neighbours would frown on me spitting toothpaste out my second story bathroom window. So, as I would stand there, day after day, with a mouth full of ready-to-be-disposed-of toothpaste and nowhere to put it, I would reflect upon the awesomeness of having a bathroom sink that drains properly.
Seriously.
Eventually I went and bought a bottle of extra stength Draino. Before I could use it I had to get a coat hanger and fish around down there so the water would at least drain a little bit, letting the Draino in. And speaking of fish, the Draino probably killed about a hundred of them when it hit the ocean. Probably not the high point of my week. But now, after two 15 minute Draino treatments, everything is working normally. So if you are in possession of a working sink right now, take a minute and reflect on how great that really is. Better yet, go to the sink and turn the water on, appreciating the ease with which the water flows into the basin and down the drain. Because when it comes time to brush your teeth and gargle some mouthwash, there's no better place to spit.
Okay well that's it for this installment of "things I take for granted." In the next few posts I'll discuss computers that work, sleep, and silence from above. And yeah, there's all the standard stuff like health, family, and whatever else. But draining sinks, working computers, sleep, and quiet ceilings are
important componants of my psychological well being. When they're gone I start to get anxious and the voices come back. And that's not good.
It's been a long time since I've make a list. So here are the last ten songs I downloaded on iTunes:
1. ELO Greatest Hits. Okay this is an album... not a song...
2. Still Water - Four Tops
3. Machine Gun - Commodores
4. Rapture - Blondie
5. Freddie's Dead - Curtis Mayfield
6. Go All the Way - The Raspberries
7. What Can I say - Boz Scaggs
8. War - Edwin Starr
9. Saturday Nite - Earth, Wind, & Fire
10. Saturday Nite - Earth, Wind, & Fire. Yeah I downloaded it twice by accident and paid for it both times. I hate it when that happens.
