The daily rundown, May 5

I woke up quite early in the morning, despite the late night watching hockey. I spent most of the morning doing the usual time-wasting kinds of stuff, reading e-mail, watching the world go by out the window. The girlfriend went to work at about nine, her usual time. I should have left earlier than I did, but I was feeling pretty tired by the middle of the morning, since I was going on about three hours of sleep for the night. I finally did get myself at least somewhat motivated and headed out the door somewhere in the halfway early hours of the morning.

I drove up to the laundromat, whose parking lot again looked pretty full. I knew that I just had to get some laundry done, though, so I trudged inside carrying the girlfriend's laundry first. She has to work right now, and I'm still unemployed, so I figured it would be better to get her clothes done now, and then I could just get mine done whenever I could. Surprisingly, there were actually a number of washers open, and I was able to get all four loads in the washers right away. Both of our dark loads were pretty big, and I was a little concerned that they'd overload the machines. It was actually good that I was concerned, because when I checked the girlfriend's darks, they were merrily churning away with all of the detergent sitting above the water. I pushed everything under and got the detergent to dissolve before closing the lid again and letting them finish. I should have checked mine, too. When her loads stopped, I threw them in the dryer. Unfortunately, I couldn't remember what temperature she'd asked me to dry them at, so I chose the medium heat setting and put them in for two quarters' worth, or 14 minutes. She said that usually dried them all right for her. Then it was over to my loads of laundry. I waited for the spin to finish and then popped open the dark load. The detergent had pretty much just dampened and then crusted onto the top of the clothes. The light load was all right, so I stuck that in to dry while I put the dark load back through the washer, making sure to push everything down after the tub had filled. By the time I had everything settled, the girlfriend's clothes had finished their drying cycle. They were definitely not dry at all. I put them each back in for another 7 minutes. They were better after that, but still kind of damp, but she said that a little damp was all right. I put all of mine in for 21 minutes on high right from the start, and the jeans were still pretty damp when I pulled them out. I still stuffed them into the bag and went home.

While I stood around waiting for clothes to wash and dry, I spent a fair amount of time people watching. It seems that most of the folks there were Hispanic, which isn't really too surprising based on my former experiences with laundromats in Oregon. There was one kind of cute redheaded girl there, but she never really talked to me or anything. Just sat there very quiet and listened to her music on her headphones until her clothes were done. About halfway through my washing, a nice-looking Mexican lady with a small boy came in. I'm glad that it was that late in the event, because the little boy was loud and obnoxious and she didn't seem to really have much concern over him running around beating on things and shrieking at the top of his lungs. At one point, he walked over to where I was sitting, pointed at the magazine I was reading, and said something in childish Spanish. I don't even understand adult Spanish, let alone the little kid version, so I just smiled and said hi to him. He shrieked again and ran off toward his mom. I don't even know whether he wanted the magazine or was just babbling or what, but I hoped he didn't go over and tell her I'd done something or make some other kind of trouble. Fortunately, it seemed that she was busy gossiping with with one of the other ladies there, so she pretty much completely ignored whatever he was saying to her. He was still running around shrieking and pounding on things when I left, so I was glad to get away with my hearing apparently intact. The one other interesting person was a middle aged man, probably about my age give or take a couple of years. I was getting my clothes out of the washer when he leaned over from a couple of machines away and asked me if they were 50 cents. I told him that they were, and he thanked me and continued to put his clothes in. The only reason I thought that was sort of funny is because he reminded me a lot of me. I usually wind up asking silly questions of people or otherwise just standing there watching to try to figure things out. Talking to the girlfriend in the evening, she said he was probably either newly divorced or newly widowed, which I hadn't really thought of. Probably never done his own laundry before...

When I got home, I laid out the girlfriend's clothes flat on her bed so they wouldn't wrinkle too badly. She said she's been known to leave them in the back of her car for a few days, but I just thought it would be better if they weren't all just stuffed in her laundry bag like that. She thanked me when she got home and told me I was sweet. I also hung and folded all of my own stuff before I headed out into the world again.

I drove down to my storage unit and grabbed a couple of things out of there. There were a few magazines that I'm going to put in the recycling bin whenever I get down there and it's not totally full. I also grabbed one or two little things that would either be handy around here, like a USB extension cord that I might be able to use with my keyboard, and my new atlas, which I just think would be cool to have around here. That tiny little bit of cleaning and organizing done, I headed back down University toward the Kroger shopping center.

I didn't really have much to get at the grocery store itself. I needed soda, so I got that and a bag of chips. I checked their price on motor oil, but they only had one or two kinds and they were more expensive than I wanted to pay. I really do need to stop somewhere and get some, but I'm not sure where would be the best place. The girlfriend suggested an auto parts store down the road from her house, so I'll probably stop there one of these evenings. I forgot about the fact that I need to get some more minutes for my phone. I keep getting all these damned telemarketing calls, probably because of the person who had the number before me, and I sometimes answer them if they're a local area number, just in case it's a prospective employer or something. But no, so far it's always been some damned automated calling system. Fuckers.

After Kroger, I went to Tuesday Morning, just down the way a little. We didn't have one of those in Medford, so I figured I'd stop and see what kind of stuff they do have there. Also, the girlfriend said that if I wanted to find Egyptian-themed stuff for Mom, for Mother's Day or whatever, that would be a good place to look. They didn't have any Egyptian stuff that I saw, but damn that place could be dangerous to my bank account. This time around, all I wound up buying were a couple of books, one for me and one for the girlfriend, and a nice silicone spatula for the girlfriend, because she noticed that her old one was starting to get all frayed and ratty looking a few days ago. The book I got for myself was a desserts and cookies baking book, and the one I got for her was a little book of crème brulée recipes, since she likes that particular dessert. There was a cute little redhead working there who I chatted with a little as I paid my tab. Nice little perk. It turns out that she came from California fairly recently, down in the central valley, so she's dealing with some of the same things that I am as far as weather and terrain, although I doubt she has the same traffic issues that I do.

Since I was parked right in the vicinity anyway, I also walked across the parking lot to the 99 cent store, which was plastered all over the place with posters and billboards advertising that nothing is over 99 cents. One of the first things I noticed upon walking into the store was the fact that there were a ton of things that had price stickers on them which read things like $1.29 and $1.49. Which, of course, makes me wonder just a little about the big posters stuck up in the front window. In any case, I still wandered through the whole store looking at what they had. I wound up buying a three-pack of those little two- to three-prong electric plugs, because this room has almost no three-prong outlets for me to plug anything into, and I need at least one or two of them. The girlfriend has a few of those adapters, but I don't want to take all of hers. Those did turn out to be only 99 cents, although I'm still getting used to the fact that 99 cents actually means $1.08 here because of the sales tax. After the 99 cent store, it was back home with me.

By the time I got back home, it was getting relatively late in the afternoon, and I plunked myself down and turned on a baseball game. I didn't really do much else with the remainder of the day. The girlfriend came home a bit later than usual and we watched the rest of the hockey game that was on. We didn't really have much in the way of dinner, just leftover pizza. Cory came out of his room during the hockey game, since the Stars were playing, and we watched a few Doctor Who episodes on his XBox after the hockey was over. I wound up staying up quite a bit later than the girlfriend, because I got kind of wrapped up in a couple of the episodes, and I think it was probably nearly two in the morning before I finally headed upstairs. She was already sound asleep, and it didn't take me long before I, too, was unconscious...