In my defense, the stairs are very steep and narrow, so it’s a real pain to bring them up. The real reason, though, is the above-mentioned laziness.
I just borrowed a level from my grandfather. (It is the same age as my mother is.)
But it’s got two vials of liquid in each viewing point, and only the bottom one works (in any orientation, the one at the bottom works). Why? The internet is not being helpful. The vials look like regular cylinders, but I won’t swear to it.
Update: of course I know they’re not perfectly regular, what I meant was that they looked like regular cylinders that are slightly curved, but I was really tired last night. And as pjm comments (which I received as I was updating), they are bent inward, so I knew why only one worked, but I was asking why there were two around.
I always sit in the bathtub as I fill it. Lengthens the time I have hot (hottish — I am sensitive to heat) water, for one thing, and also it’s easier to adjust the temperature. And of course I would forget about the bath otherwise. Is this weird?
I realise in writing this that I only know how one specific person gets in the bath — my mother, who is a bath-getter-inner only when the tub is full.
I just noticed today that my back door was slightly open. I last used it two weeks ago.
On the CBC today I heard the weirdest thing: a French cover of ‘These Boots Were Made For Walking’
The chorus goes like this:
Ces bottes sont faites pour marcher
Et tu vas l’regretter
Car je mettrai ces bottes
Un jour ou l’autre pour te quitter
Which is translated, loosely, as ‘These boots are made for walking, and you’ll regret it, because I’ll put on these boots one day or another and leave you’.
And it just changes the song so much. (The whole lyrics are quite different in tone, I think, but the chorus most of all.) It was weird.
Can’t smell the litter box that lives right near my head. Or the garbage that I forgot to put out this morning.
I just installed IE 7, and, wow, it looks eerily like Firefox (which I should upgrade soon). I haven’t done that much with it yet, but the basic key combos — ctrl-t, ctrl-tab, ctrl-shift-tab — all seem to work. Of course, I keep meaning to learn half the key combos in Firefox, which I haven’t done, either.
Why look: I just posted about avoidance on this here blog and followed it with . . . avoidance! I did, however, “tell” one friend, who said I could always talk to him. Telling actually means acting so affectless and lifeless that I creep people out, apparently. But you know, I wasn’t pretending to be a-okay, which counts, right?
Today, though, I went out and did things, which distracted me, which was good. A friend asked me why I had a letter from McDonald’s in the back, and I said it wasn’t that, it was, and then I blanked out, and she accused me of being secretive (me? no way) but really I just forgot the word binder. One day I will finally forget every noun.
I like Prufrock-the-pirate:
I grow old — I grow old –
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
(This post, unlike the others, should stay piratified.)
I was watching a movie with my sister, and we smelled fire. A barbecue, perhaps? I mentioned it smelled odd, and we didn’t think of it, didn’t notice the house getting slightly smokier until suddenly the power went off. (As it turns out, the lack of power was entirely unrelated to the fire.)
I went outside to see what was happening, saw the air filled with smoke and pink to the north, took the cat for half a walk and the other cat for the second half of the walk, then saw my sister who had had to break into the house after my other sister locked us all out (oops), and we walked towards the fire.
I battled with myself about going. Should I go? Wasn’t it tacky? Morbid? Was I not enjoying myself at someone else’s expense? Yes, I thought, but I kept walking anyhow, listening to fire truck after fire truck come by.
Eventually I got there. It was amazing, hard to believe. The house itself looked normal, but the roof had been changed into flames. I watched for a few minutes, heard that no one was inside, no one hurt, that it was due to something with the wiring. When I was little we had an electrical fire, and this might be my first memory, leaving in the middle of the night. But there was no damage, no roof doubling the height of the house. Watched the people watching the fire, and the people who were standing around, catching up with neighbours, the people who were eating ice cream, the people who’d walked their dogs there and were looking at them sniff each other, alert for a more local danger, the people who’d walked their babies there in huge strollers. The people who drove there and parked on a nearby street. Watched the occasional jet of water, watched the smoke drift up and around me.
I smelled of burning when I got home, and smoke drifted in all night.