This was posted over 19 years ago; my opinions, thoughts, attitude, and writing style may have evolved since then, and this post might have been different if it were to be posted today.
bruno_boy called after my bike ride to see if i still needed a haircut, since then we could head over to arundel mills to this cheap haircut place. unfortunately for him i already had my hair cut a few weeks ago, so i didn’t need one. i told him that i’d pick him up from campus and bring him to the apartment so we could watch the national league divisional series game 6, and then he could also see how it looked with more furniture in the place, but first i needed to take a shower since i had just finished my bike ride.
took my shower. cut myself shaving afterwards and ended up with blood on one of my towels.
drove out to umbc, picked up bruno_boy, stopped off at cluck-u so he could get some chicken, went to the apartment and watched baseball.
remembered i needed to do laundry, tossed some things into the wash.
watched more baseball.
remembered my towel i bled on so i put my towels in the washer, moved the socks and undershirts to the dryer.
watched more baseball. game ended with the mets winning! go mets!
took bruno_boy back to campus. realized i’d need to get gas, figured i’d get it on my way back since i drive right by a place that’s got it for $2.19 premium (!!!) right now.
stopped off at the gas station (my car’s range-o-meter said i had another 15 miles i could go on my current tank), swiped my mini cooper credit card and it seemed to be going fine; tried pumping gas and nothing happened – pump said “SEE ATTENDANT”. went to the attendant and she told me my card wasn’t read or something, so i said i’d try it again. swiped it again and the machine said “NO CARD READ / SEE INSTRUCTIONS”. went up to the attendant again and told her that maybe the card reader was out of order. she said she could run my credit card for a certain amount, so i said $30 since it’d be that amount at most. mini cooper card declined. tried another card, same amount, also declined. wtf?
drove back to the apartment to check balances online; range-o-meter says 5 miles to go now.
the mini cooper card says i’m not at my limit, but it also says my available balance is “$-4”. what? the other card shows money in the account so who knows why it was showing up as declined. hrmph.
it’s just before 1 am now and i remember i still have my towels in the washer. our dryer is a fire hazard waiting to happen (it’s got holes in the lint trap and is super-dodgy) so i didn’t want to leave my towels drying overnight while i went to bed, and i didn’t want to stay up for an hour until 2 am waiting for towels to dry when i’d need to be up for work at 6 am. took the clothes out of the dryer, and took the towels out of the washer and hung them up in my bathroom to dry. figured i’d see their condition once i woke up. went to bed.
6 am, alarm went off, hit snooze.
6:20 am, remembered that i needed to get gas before work. towels still a little damp, these won’t work for drying me off after a shower. i could get dressed and head to work, but i would have wanted to leave a little bit earlier in case there’s issues with my credit card again… i’m thinking it was a faulty card-reader at the pump, and the cards trying to be authorized for more than what was available. however, 6:20 am doesn’t really cut it for extra time in case of problems.
6:25 am, figured i’d call out of work – we have “ESN” days for “emergency short notice” where we can use a vacation day or a personal day without scheduling it ahead of time – the difference between vacation days and personal days is that the vacation days carry over to the next year while the personal days do not. we also are allowed to use vacation days before we’ve accrued them. the thing is, i’m not going to be accruing any more vacation days until 2007 (we get them on the 16th of each month from january through october), and at the moment i had 0 personal and 0 vacation days available. i couldn’t remember a time that they said that we couldn’t use vacation days before we’d be accruing them once they’ve carried over (if you can carry over a positive vacation day balance into the next year, why not a negative vacation day balance?), so i called in to say i was taking an ESN vacation day. have to leave my name, supervisor’s name, what team i’m on, and a phone number i can be reached at (though they’ve never called me back before that i can remember). went back to bed.
woke up at just before noon; towels dry so i can take a shower. phone says 1 new voicemail. oh oh. look at missed call list, last call was “unavailable” at 6:32 am. err, nobody’s really in the office until 7 am unless someone showed up early. i haven’t listened to the voicemail yet since i’m afraid it’s going to be a “hey what are you doing you’re not allowed to do that come into work right now blah blah” nastygram. i don’t want to deal with that yet — i still need a shower and who would have thought that pumping gas could be so complicated?
and now lj doesn’t want me to post. wtf lj? wtf.
eta:ahh, now it’s letting me post (2 1/2 hours after i originally tried!) and now i have gas. my mini card didn’t want to work (what’s up with that -$4??), but i was able to get gas…. except now my “get your engine checked soon” light is coming on. probably another air-bubble. grr, i hate internal combustion engines!