I absolutely hate the word “blog”

Let’s see if it sticks.

No, not the cheesy Shakira album. I mean actual, paid laundry service.

See, we have assigned time slots in our building to do laundry in the shared, coin-op laundry room. And lately, some inconsiderate neighbors have been stealing our time slot, despite the fact that we repeatedly leave increasingly frustrated-yet-still-begrudgingly-polite notes about it. (At first, we figured it couldn’t possibly be the same people over and over again, and that it must just be new-ish tenants who didn’t realize there was a schedule. But then, our caretaker informed us that it’s the same assholes over and over again, so now we’re in full combat mode.)

Needless to say, the fact that they’d thwarted our FOUR most recent attempts to do laundry had left us with quite the backup. So I caved, and we looked into getting professional laundry service. And can I just tell you, MY GOD IS IT WORTH IT.

For a mere $0.95/pound, Russell will come by your place, pick up all your dirty things, wash them according to your specifications with your choice of products, and return them within a day clean and dry and nicely folded and bagged. You don’t even have to drop it off or pick it up. He says his rates may go up soon, but considering that we did at least four loads worth for $35, I’m not too freaked out about it.

Don’t get me wrong — this is a major splurge for us, so it will probably never become our principal form of laundry-doing (at least not unless we’re making six figures each). And now that we know we have the building’s proactive caretaker in our court, we’ll probably continue to do battle with our neighbors until we win. (Next week: Me sitting in the laundry room reading, waiting until they show up so I can confront them in person. Fun, fun.) But still — this was a very welcome help-in-a-pinch option, and I plan on having Russell come take care of our excess sheets and towels again the next time we have houseguests!

OH MY GOD. I am SO FRUSTRATED with security questions lately! Guess that’s my fault for doing my banking online, but holy crap. This last round, I literally DID NOT KNOW THE ANSWER to any of the available remaining questions for my FIFTH required security thingamabob. So what did I have to do? MAKE UP an answer, and store it in a Notepad file called “Security Questions”, because I will FORGET otherwise and my account will be locked down due to suspected theft. Again. Awesome. Nice and subtle and theft-proof, there.

I mean, I know this topic has been done before, but I’m just not done harping. My favorite is when they put completely subjective questions in there — “What’s your favorite hobby?” Well, jackass, it was stone sculpture back when I opened the account SEVEN MILLION YEARS AGO. Now I prefer World of Warcraft, and no fucking way is that the correct security answer.

Or how about, “What’s your favorite movie?” Um, it was probably The Rocky Horror Picture Show, back before I had taste, and now, it depends if you mean the public answer (Being John Malkovich) or the private one (Finding Nemo). Or whatever film du jour I’ve just seen and fallen in love with, because I AM NOT SO CLOSED-MINDED AS YOU, CHASE FINANCIAL SERVICES. YOU CAN HAVE MULTIPLE FAVORITES, IT’S OKAY. STEP OUTSIDE THE BOX. Or at least customize the box to account for things like middle school and self-censorship around snobby film students.

Or the really memory-taxing ones, that catch you on a technicality — “Where was your first job?” Um, fuck if I know? Does babysitting count, or are we talking real wages, or my first full-time job, or my first lemonade stand, or my first job where I received an actual check instead of cash but does it matter that I was getting paid under the table because I was only fifteen and couldn’t legally work for another year but they needed a Spanish teacher willing to take eight bucks an hour and I was more fluent than the older gals so all the checks had “misc. office supplies” written in the memo field? THAT DOESN’T FIT IN YOUR FORMS EITHER, ASSHAT.

Wow, I’ve been off the blogosphere for a WHILE now!  But I swear, I have a good excuse — I went to my college reunion.  (OK, that was weeks ago, but since then I’ve both gotten sick and started a new job, both of which suck up valuable blogging time.  But it all started with that college reunion.)

Bryn Mawr is a bit odd in that we don’t have an official school mascot.  But our unofficial one is the wise old owl.  (Gives ya some insight as to how we spoiled pretentious nerd-girls view ourselves, I guess.)  I’ve always kinda dug the owl mascot, though — few people who went to BMC did so for the great sports teams or Greek system.  It’s all about the academics, and our friendly little pseudo-mascot backs that up nicely.

And in recent years, the owl motif has become SUPER trendy. They’ve been all over clothing, jewelry and accessories for a while, and they’re popping up on more and more household items now. (I myself have at least two owl shirts, an owl purse, at least one pair of owl shoes, quite a bit of owl jewelry, and a pair of owl bookends.) This aviary surplus has been nice for us Bryn Mawr grads — we all wind up snatching nearly every owl-spangled item we lay eyes on, as a subtle way to pay tribute to our alma mater. (And yes, we all compared owl gear at the reunion.)

But seriously, people. This has got to stop somewhere. My last trip to Ross Dress for Less, in which I sought only sheets, led me to one of the eeriest shelf displays of all time. I mean, there is such a thing as TOO MANY OWLS. And these three aren’t even cute, they’re just vaguely avian and bug-eyed. Please take note, Housewares Department. They were better when they were just on shirts.

So I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that this is not a good thing to spot in a WOOD FURNITURE STORE.

I mean seriously, this guy wasn’t even lurking under a coffee table or anything. (S)he was strolling casually along on the wooden walkway that wound between all the different delicious, nutritious wood furniture displays.

Needless to say, we bought our bed elsewhere.