You stole my palm pilot. You did. Admit it...

If you've never seen the movie Orange County you probably don't get that reference. Today had potential, some realized, some not. I did finish all of my letters to send out for my nonprofit stuff which was a definite bonus. After I finished that, I started spiffing up the house so that when C came home she could relax. I cleaned everything up,turned the heat up for her and then went to open all of the windows (because if you know C, you know she practically worships the sun). I pulled on the cord to raise the blinds in the front room, heard a snap, then a crash as I dodged the flying blinds. Cheap plastic crap. The long horizontal piece that keeps the blinds attached to the window well broke.

Luckily I could draw on the years of experience I gained while working at the car dealership fixing a galvanized sprinkler system with a pair of channel locks, teflon tape, $15, epoxy, vise grips, and a square nosed shovel. I got pretty good at McGuver-ing (hyphen for AK). On my mission I fixed the ward mission leader's power back to his hut with electrical tape, a light bulb and my pocket knife (ask me about that one later). Anyway, I broke out the JB Weld,which no household should be without, zip-ties, 3x5 card, and bamboo skewers. This is what I came up with.

We'll see if it will hold. After the blind fiasco was finished, I went down to start the laundry.

We live in an apartment complex and use the laundry facilities they have here, which consists of two washers and two dryers. Usually this works out pretty slick. It is relatively cheap at $2/load washed and dried, and I normally can do it whenever I want. I was going for husband of the week by having the house clean, the laundry done, and clean sheets on the bed before she got home from school. I took the laundry down at approximately 2:30pm to find that someone was using both washers. No big deal, I just set my stuff on the counter, clearly indicating my intention of doing my laundry, and saving my place in line. I took note of the time remaining on the cycle, and planned my return.

I gave them an extra 2-3min to get there and switch it over. When I returned I found that someone had the audacity to butt in line. That bothered me a little because husband of the week was now out. I decided that I would cook dinner to bring me back in the running. I went back upstairs and got working on some other things.

I went back down when the next cycle was supposed to be done, and someone had butted again. This happened an additional two times. I was pretty peeved. When I finally got my wash in the washing machine around 7:30pm, I saw the culprit, beer in one hand and cigarette in the other. He gave me some kind of lame excuse like "is that your stuff? Oh, sorry. My girlfriend told me that I had to come change loads." Yeah, keep pretending that you don't realize you snaked my spot.

I went back down when it was supposed to be done, but he just left it there, to wrinkle itself in the bottom dryer for quite a while. I went upstairs and waited a reasonable length of time before I went back down to check. Still there an hour later.

Now fuming and thinking all kinds of unkind things about the unconscionable acts perpetrated by my neighbor, I took a white garbage sack and removed the clothes from the lower dryer and set them on the counter for the negligent laundry-doer to pick up. By this point, the garbage sack was pretty charitable for me. I conjured many more, much less kind repositories in mind. I rotated my loads through so that the sheets and the darks were both in the dryer, with the whites yet to go in.

I went back down around 10:30pm (eight hours after I had started trying to do my laundry) to get the sheets so that C could go to bed, and discovered that the garbage sack was still there, but that half of my darks were missing, and from the upper dryer. What? Are people seriously that daft that they are unable to recognize their own laundry, or even remember which dryer they put it in? Apparently. Maybe this guy had part of his hippocampus removed (the part of the brain responsible for spatial memory), or maybe it was the can of "Natty light" he was drinking. I took the sheets up, made the bed and wrote a little note. I was nice and it took about all that I had. I explained that there had been a mix up and that I would like my clothes back. I left my phone number.

At 11:15pm I finally got a phone call from the dude's girlfriend. She told me that she had sent him to get it, and that when he brought it back he had no idea that it wasn't his. She told me she lives in #13 and that I could come get my stuff. I went to #13 and the lights were off. I knocked gently, and there was no answer. I called back. "#13? No, I live in #2," she said. AAARRRRGGGHHHHHH! Sweet. I just knocked on somebody's door who was sleeping. I went back down the stairs and met her. She made some kind of lame remark like "see what happens when you send the boys to do laundry?" She had the gall to include me in that statement. Happy to have my clothes, I came back upstairs. Now it's 12:16am and my whites are finally done. I'm going down to get them. They better be there, all of them.