Birthday Laundry

I had a nice relaxed birthday today. I slept in, baked a cake, then a friend came over, we had cake and tasty beverage, then hung out in the pool for a while - me in the sun, her in the shade as she has that skin that doesn't tan - then went out for BBQ. Nice, relaxing, fun day. Somewhat like the last time I had BBQ on my birthday when I got stranded for 9 hours by the airline in Memphis, only this time I had a friend with me.

Well, except that I also needed to do laundry. Since I got the condo with in-unit laundry machines, though, it really hasn't been a big deal for me. After waiting 30 minutes at the bank for a roll of quarters, I gave up on the basement laundry requiring 4 flights of stairs and 10 quarters/load. I used to either wash it at my friends' houses or take it to the wash-dry-fold that had a 10 pound/load minimum. So I would save up about 40 pounds, sort it into 3 loads, rig a handle for the bags, carry the lot down 3.5 flights of stairs and outside to my car. Then I'd drop it off before work and pick it up after, folded and somehow slightly lighter, but not as light at the top of 3.5 flights of stairs. Now I can dump in a load before bed and put it in the dryer in the morning. Wonderful stuff. I even snuck in my mattress pad.

Funny thing about the mattress pad though - it doesn't fit my mattress. Can aerobeds stretch? Because I can no longer fit queen sheets on it, nor do the mattress pads that came with the beds fit either. When I decided to celebrate some extra money this year by buying high thread count sheets, I had to return them and buy cal-kings in order for them to fit. I also found out that high thread count = slippery. The aerobed also seems higher than usual. When I realized my hips were hurting, I figured out it was due to hauling myself into bed with my knee. Then I put the slippery sheets on and the hauling turned into face planting with indifferent success in mounting. Now I just get a running start and vault into bed and it works better. I do think I need to ask aerobed why my queen mattress is higher than the pillowtop version I used to have no problems getting into and doesn't fit the sheets before it becomes the blob that devours my bedroom. After I figure out a way to get the mattress pad to cover it at least a little.

So I'm off to reassemble my bed while watching the olympics. You might wonder why I'm watching so much olympics when the coverage drives me batty. Well, my cable hasn't been working properly for a few weeks. I got back from SanFran and it wasn't working at all. So I got a new box and had the same pixilation and lack of channel decoding with that. So I got another box and it still doesn't work. I called again today and they're sending someone on tuesday to check the incoming signal. Why they can't figure that out remotely by talking to the box, I don't know. My guess is they'll fix the TV and break the modem.

When I plug my TV directly into the wall, I get better reception. But the channels are limited and wacky. I get NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, Bravo, latino MTV, HSN - in chinese!, the local access station, some televangelist channel with a perpetual 1-800 number in the lower left, and golf. This sounds better than it is. The major channels suck out loud for the vast majority of programming, I don't want to buy as-seen-on-TV fermented noodles, there's only so much golf I can take with my goal of not sleeping on the couch, PBS is hit or miss, local access is often just a page of text (although I did watch some interview of a local photography professor who used to hang with Ansel Adams talking about that experience). I've also seen some "Cribs" but it's not the same as watching home decorating shows. And I miss Jon Stewart's take on things. Thank goodness for Kathy Griffin and her foul mouthed, troup-entertaining jaunts around the world.

Yeah, I've been surfing the web while watching TV more than I've been working on the cabinets, but that's ok because my dad's showing up tomorrow to stay the week and help out. If he'd scheduled this a little before last tuesday, I might have been able to arrange for some time off to help... as it is, my boss was on vacation and unable to authorize any such thing. Our family's planning skills in action. Oh well, I probably wouldn't have been able to handle the anticipation anyway. As long as he doesn't mind sleeping on a pile of boxes or some misfit pumpkins it should go ok.