The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Wild Card => Topic started by: linnea on August 26, 2006, 12:16:13 am
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Dammit, I must force myself to drive to the landfill and dispose of my rubbish or else I'll have to get up early tomorrow and do it.
Anybody else have chores or responsibilities that are their most-hated? Jesus, I wish I had a boyfriend/husband/whatever who would take it out for me. That's the downside of living in rural Alaska. I cannot just tote out my rubbish bin to the sidewalk curb on Tuesday mornings like I could in Denver, Bloody Mary in hand.
No. That would be too easy.
Here, as part of my tough-Alaskan-woman training I guess, I have to load a fully-laden rubbish bin into the back of my truck, drive out to the landfill that is permeated with awful smell, gulls, ravens, and bald eagles, and then back up to the residential-rubbish-area and heave the bags into the bins. Yucky garbage-juice runs freely there, and you have to tbe super careful to roll up your pant legs or else risk getting them disgustingly soiled. Ravens dive bomb your head and threaten to peck out your eyes. It is terrifying, disgusting, and smelly. I HATE IT.
LANDFILL, I HATE YOU. Most annoying of chores. However...it could be worse. At least we HAVE a landfill, I guess. Also...At least we have indoor plumbing and a sanitary system here. In other villages, they use chamber pots and God only knows where they empty them. Digging a septic tank can be done if there is equipment to pump it out annually or whatever. Ew.
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I have to go to the dump tomorrow, but I don't really mind. It's actually one of my least detested chores.
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I would rather go to a dump than do anything that involves making a phone call.
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I'll freely admit: I really dislike doing dishes in the sink because I have an irrational fear of reaching into murky water and cutting myself on a knife. The dishwasher is fine, and washing dishes with full visibility of the task is fine, but when you've got that huge sink of grody water? Ew, no.
Also, I don't like the working-with-raw-meat phase of cooking, which is deeply stupid given my work experience and love of animal-flesh consumption. It's a shame they haven't made a tiny guillotine device that will form hamburger patties; that would have me set for life.
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I'll add another vote for washing up, but mostly because my sink is too low for me (OK, I'm too tall for the sink, I admit it) and so by about the fourth minute I am in paroxysms of spinal pain. Every time is like discovering a new type of pain, unknown to me previously.
I'm not especially fond of updating CMS software. It's really easy, though needs doing fairly often, but with the number of sites I have to do it for, and the knowledge that if one fails to take I will have to start screwing around, and potentially have to restore SQL databases and shit which can be a nightmare, it's suddenly a dreaded undertaking.
And waiting... I fuck*ng despise waiting, for anything. People to arrive, leaving for something so as not to arrive early... It just feels like wasted time, and I can't relax. I hate waiting. Not quite a chore I admit, but you know... I'd rather find chores to do instead!
There's probably a bunch of other chores I hate, but they're ones I just don't bother with anymore. I used to hate washing my car, but now I have a team of nubile women to do it for me.
They are a team. They synchronise.
I just don't wash it anymore. Hell, it rains.
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I have to admit that I love water. When I was little, I used to wash everything from money to my dolls' clothes in the sink, because splashing around is a lot of fun. I still don't really mind doing dishes, but I'm totally with smells on this one. Murky grody water (heh, I love that word) is nizzasty. Nobody wants to be splashing around in that. I always rinse out all my dishes first (sort of like a pre-wash, I guess) and then I fill up the sink with hot water and dish soap and let them soak for a bit, then for a final scrub and rinse. Yay -- the kitchen is safe for democracy and you've got a clean plate for your toast the next morning. It's a win-win situation, really.
I have also found that like tidying up, doing dishes as you go is far better than letting them pile up. I try to avoid going to bed or leaving the house with dirty dishes in the sink. It's much easier if you just wash them as you go rather than wait for a huge, soul-crushing pile to congregate in the sink. That's just gross.
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My most hated "responsibility" is wearing a seatbelt.
I don't give a shit how many lives it saves, I hate it to fuck*ng hell, and when an NYPD Seatbelt Patrol officer is walking up to my car there is nothing more I want in the world than to see the skin being burnt off his child-like, teenage face.
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My most hated "responsibility" is wearing a seatbelt.
I don't give a shit how many lives it saves, I hate it to fuck*ng hell, and when an NYPD Seatbelt Patrol officer is walking up to my car there is nothing more I want in the world than to see the skin being burnt off his child-like, teenage face.
I hate wearing seatbelts too, but how is not wearing a seatbelt going to burn the skin off police officers' faces?
Fortunately I live in a small town and I know all our police officers anyway, so I'm sure they're just waiting to bust me driving around without one. I am waiting for the day. Our maximum speed limit is 30MPH anyway, fachrissakes, so even if I was cruising around in third gear and hit a brick wall, I am not sure how much damage it would do. OH WAIT, we dont' have a hospital or trauma center, just a clinic, so I probably wouldn't give a shit anyway. That and it takes at least 4 hours to get medevac'd to Anchorage on a GOOD day when the weather's good and the plane is ALREADY HERE.
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We have a rule in our house, partly based on combined commercial-kitchen experience: NO KNIVES IN THE SINK. Knives lay behind the sink, or if no room is available there, behind the cutting board (which is only moved for cleaning). Also, we lived for two years in a house with no dishwasher, and couldn't afford to buy one. That really helps to engender a good set of dishwashing rules.
1) NO KNIVES IN THE SINK
2) I cook, you wash and dry.
3) We cook, one washes, the other dries. Call dibs.
4) Pans which enter the oven are allowed to soak. Nonstick pans are not allowed, when hot, to be rinsed. All other dishes are rinsed immediately after use.
5) Your coffee cup, you clean it.
That last one was mainly for me, because I would just set it in the sink and take care of it after dinner; the missus eventually began leaving her half-empty coffee somewhere on days I had to wash.
Most hated chore of the present day? I'm with wombie. As long as I don't have to talk to people on the phone, I'm fine. I'll even talk to people, but I bought a speakerphone specifically for "the on-hold scenario". I still hate it.
And I can't take my commute without bursts to 85. Luckily, I'm against traffic. Unluckily, it still takes 45 minutes in the morning and a full hour the way home.
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I'm totally with smells on this one. Murky grody water (heh, I love that word) is nizzasty.
Heh - she thinks I'm V. I'm complimented. Unless "I'm with smells" now just refers to any female poster...
Chores I hate: - throwing out food past its prime that got lost in the back of the fridge, cleaning up cat puke, not the dishes -I don't mind them - but, when doing the dishes, discovering a layer of fermented/sour/stank/slimy food stuffs that glues/suctions two bowls/plates/items to each other, discovering a small dead animal/bird and dealing with/avoiding it, and cleaning a car's interior (so awkward!) are my top peeves.
Yeah. There's a few chores I just don't do - mostly the litter and cleaning the tub, but both these are because of bad joints, though I don't want to do the littler anyway.
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Unless "I'm with smells" now just refers to any female poster...
Smells is TOUAMB's "Q Prime (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_document)", the female from which all other females are derived.
I find paying rent/bills to be a chore. Not in the classic sense, but more in the "good god I hate writing checks" sense.
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Vacuuming, because, like cats, I am terrified of loud noises.
Changing sheets on my bed after washing them, because OCD makes this much more difficult and time-consuming than it should be (I also make the bed every night before I go to sleep).
Cleaning up dog piss all over the house, because, obviously, it's gross.
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hm. my least favorite chore for a long time was washing dishes. We have a dishwasher... but you have to wash everything off of them before using it. I realize that this does not make sense.
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Changing sheets on my bed after washing them, because OCD makes this much more difficult and time-consuming than it should be (I also make the bed every night before I go to sleep).
Oh god, changing the sheets...
I've kind of gotten it down to a fine art now, but it still means spending five minutes waving a double-sized duvet around the room, and shaking corners out, and throwing pillows at walls, and rolling around on a mattress so as to tuck the sheet in. There are occasions on which I forget to not shower before I change the sheets.
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Thanks, Choop, I'm going to have to remember those. Just keeping the knives out of the goddamn sink seems like the most sensible plan (since when the hell would you ever need to soak a knife?), but sometimes it's difficult to convince the lizard brain of such things.
See, I love vacuuming, because it feels so clean and efficient in terms of time spent. Ten minutes of pushing a machine around, and damn! My floor is totally clean! You can even see the little stripes of cleanliness as you make progress, which is extremely great. I like doing the laundry for the same reason; while it requires skill, the effort required in most situations is negligible, and the results are wonderfully clean and delicious. That said, doing it in the dorm environment (having to carry your laundry up and down three flights of stairs, having to constantly patrol the stairways because underwear might have fallen out of your crappo laundry hamper, having to wait because there are only two washers for a building of 50 people, spending $2.50 a load for the privilege of damp laundry, &c.) is a freaking asspain, and I can't wait to have my own laundry facilities so I can do this right.
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(since when the hell would you ever need to soak a knife?)
When someone has used a microserrated knife to cut salami and then decided not to rinse it, that's when.
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Heh - she thinks I'm V. I'm complimented. Unless "I'm with smells" now just refers to any female poster...
Fuck! Sorry about that.
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I have drawn two conclusions from this thread so far: That one should housebreak the dog and buy salami already sliced.
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I think Somebody nice is just saying that V smells.
Man, that ain't no way to be talking to someone, linnea!
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I didn't mean it like that! I hang my head in shame.
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When someone has used a microserrated knife to cut salami and then decided not to rinse it, that's when.
Uh... entirely fair. I believe this is a good argument for rinsing, though, because nobody likes cleaning up nasty little salami nodules from microserrations.
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I think my most hated chore is cleaning up the copious amounts of cat puke my cats leave behind. Well, it's mostly just the one cat. She competitively eats, even though we leave out dry food at all times, and fresh water; but she still insists on trying to eat all the food. Then she can't keep it inside the cat. Blech. That is disgusting.
I also hate our wall-to-wall carpeting. It seems to attract and hold stains. Ew. But at least we get a free carpet cleaning each year at our apartment complex. But I can't wait to have a place with cork flooring (a girl can dream, can't she?). EZ clean-up.
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I hate sweeping the gravel drive every weekend. See, our house is at the beginning of a fairly long stretch with multiple houses along it, so our little bit of the gravel gets every single vehicle that makes use of the drive going over it. So every evening I have to cover up the mess created by the milkman/postman/fuck*ng SUV next door. It's boring, tiring and dusty work.
Not doing it would be out of the question, though. Got to keep up appearances, musn't grumble.
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I think my most hated chore is cleaning up the copious amounts of cat puke my cats leave behind. Well, it's mostly just the one cat. She competitively eats, even though we leave out dry food at all times, and fresh water; but she still insists on trying to eat all the food. Then she can't keep it inside the cat. Blech. That is disgusting.
I also hate our wall-to-wall carpeting. It seems to attract and hold stains. Ew. But at least we get a free carpet cleaning each year at our apartment complex. But I can't wait to have a place with cork flooring (a girl can dream, can't she?). EZ clean-up.
If your cat is eating too quickly, try putting a ping-pong ball in its food dish.
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If your cat has a crazy appetite but throws up everything it eats, it could have something serious wrong with it. Make sure you've had it checked by a vet before you write it off as the usual sort of cat that just barfs as a hobby.
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I hell of hate vacuuming but I think that's because I always seem to get stuck with it. Sweeping I love ever since I had McJob years ago and learned the zen pleasure of sweeping with one of those old style big witch-type brooms.
My ultimate least favourite job is using eye-burningly powerful antibacterial stuff to clean mould off the ceiling above the shower without goggles. But I only ever did that once, I leave the fan on when I shower now and the mould has not returned.
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I hate vacuuming and cleaning the underside of the range hood. The grease that collects there is unlike anything I've ever cooked with.
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We don't have a range hood and I've always wondered where all that stuff goes instead. Yeah, the paint behind the back of the stove and the cabinet above it are a little spotty, but not at all like you'd expect.
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See, I love vacuuming, because it feels so clean and efficient in terms of time spent. Ten minutes of pushing a machine around, and damn! My floor is totally clean! You can even see the little stripes of cleanliness as you make progress, which is extremely great. I like doing the laundry for the same reason; while it requires skill, the effort required in most situations is negligible, and the results are wonderfully clean and delicious.
Daaayum! that is one hell of a poetic description of vacuuming, a sentiment which I share completely. The stripes of cleanliness are awesome. When I am done vacuuming I try to preserve vast swaths of those areas, so that I can look at them later and feel superior in my house's cleanliness. If I didn't have cats, I would buy the carpet powder and shake it about just prior to vacuuming, because it leaves a nice scent when you're done. However, I worry about it hurting the moggies' respiratory tracts, so I don't use it.
EDIT: Dammit a song by Norah Jones (daughter of Ravi Shankar!) just came on last.fm and it reminds me of my awesome ex-boyfriend who is now in Florida and I will probably never see again. Does anyone else have this nasty habit of wallowing in regret? I hate myself for doing it.
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See, it's not the vacuuming I hate; it's the noise. The horrible, terrifying noise!
I didn't vacuum my dorm room once last year for this very reason; luckily, I have a flokati rug that accumulates just about everything without ever looking dirty or filled with dust bunnies (because it is basically a big ol' rectangle of sheep hair and dust bunnies anyway). But this year, I'll probably just wear ear plugs while vacuuming.
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See, it's not the vacuuming I hate; it's the noise. The horrible, terrifying noise!
I didn't vacuum my dorm room once last year for this very reason; luckily, I have a flokati rug that accumulates just about everything without ever looking dirty or filled with dust bunnies (because it is basically a big ol' rectangle of sheep hair and dust bunnies anyway). But this year, I'll probably just wear ear plugs while vacuuming.
Alternatively, you can spend like $600 on a Miele vacuum (http://www.mieleusa.com) like I have (why do I always try to spell it "vaccum"?). They are very quiet, although my cats still hate it just the same.
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Wow, you have a $600 vacuum. If I ever have a vacuum that expensive I will consider my life a complete failure. (Not saying yours is or anything, just with my outlook on the world I would feel like a hypocrite or something).
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I was reminded by Judy's driveway-sweeping of an outdoor chore that I used to hate the hell out of: picking apples up off the lawn. The first summer we lived in Nebraska, our house had these very picturesque apple trees in the backyard that would constantly dump a load of tiny, green, nasty-ass apples onto the lawn, and inevitably before every mowing they had to be picked up. Just as inevitably, by the time I would pick them up, quite a few would have rotted in the humidity, tiny land mines of disgust in the midst of drudgery. The smell! The wasps!
That September, not three months after we moved in, a freak snowstorm swept in and destroyed the apple trees. I think it was an act of God.
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Does anyone else have this nasty habit of wallowing in regret? I hate myself for doing it.
Nope, too busy wallowing in terror that the rest of my life will be a failure. No time to dwell on the past.
The alternative to a quiet 600 dollar vacuum might be one that's so cheap it doesn't make much noise. We have a cheap rechargable one that we use when I don't feel like dragging out the big one. It doesn't clean as well but it's better than nothing, and the animals mostly just look at it funny instead of running away in panic.
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Wow, you have a $600 vacuum. If I ever have a vacuum that expensive I will consider my life a complete failure. (Not saying yours is or anything, just with my outlook on the world I would feel like a hypocrite or something).
And while you live in your filthy hovel, I will be enjoying a living area that does not contain 6-year-old nacho crumbs. For a while I had the shitty $100 vacuums like you can purchase at Sears, but they always end up shitting out after about a year. You can either buy a shitty, loud vacuum every year, or you can shell out six notes for a decent vacuum that will last you 20 years. I guess it depends on your personal values and whether you think it's acceptable to share your place with vermin.
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If your cat has a crazy appetite but throws up everything it eats, it could have something serious wrong with it. Make sure you've had it checked by a vet before you write it off as the usual sort of cat that just barfs as a hobby.
Yes, she's been checked by a vet for the throwing up. She doesn't throw up everything she eats, just every few days (with no hairballs). She was also checked for feline diabetes, which was negative. So, according to our vet, she just likes to competitively eat. :)
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People have made me hate going to the grocery store.
I wish I could do my shopping the way my brother manages to, which is to go to a small, good greengrocers for vegetables and herbs, a damned good (Scotland's best they reckon) butcher, an awesome little, friendly giraffemonger, and then to Valvona's, which is a fantastic Italian deli. Basically, you can get everything you want, better, from these little places than from the shitty supermarkets in the city.
Here, I have a farmer's market every few weeks which is alright, the garden centre which does carry a small range of better produce (and these awesome ready to bake, frozen croissants which taste so good!), and a couple of shitty, but not as bad as city centre supermarkets.
We really don't have the population to support small produce shops when we have three or four supermarkets. It's like those geography lessons come to life.
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I actively hate washing the dishes. This condition has worsened in the last month because my girlfriend just moved in.
This means we have roughly 2x the dishes to wash (her old place had a dishwasher), plus she doesn't know how to properly prepare dirty dishes for handwashing. She'll leave a tiny sip of milk in cups, which then turns into either a tough milk film or a moldy spot on the bottom of the cup. She puts dishsoap on hot aluminum pans and she probably would've put cast iron into the soapy water had I not yelled an alert in time. And while she was very good about pre-rinsing the dishes that went into her fancy automatic dishwasher, the plates or bowls she leaves in the sink are usually chunked up with dried rice or something.
Her dishwashing is faster than mine, but it's also less thorough to the point that I'd rather make myself angry for an hour and do them myself instead of picking up a drinking glass and seeing something she missed at the bottom.
We get along very well about almost everything, so it makes me doubly reluctant to confront her about her lackluster dish skills because I don't want our biggest fights to be about something so trivial.
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I think the biggest fights are always over something trivial.
End of the day though she probably won't change her style so you're probably best just sucking it up and doing the dishes yourself.
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I have two general rules about chores and relationships. One is that if you can possibly solve the problem by throwing money at it (buying a dishwasher, hiring someone to clean), that is money well spent. Two is that you are not allowed to complain about how someone else does the chore -- either do it yourself or shut up. Those are your only choices. If you don't like the way she washes dishes, do it yourself. If it's not important enough to you for you to do it yourself, it's definitely not important enough to argue about. And probably she hates the way you vacuum or something, and she should do that herself. And you'll probably end up each doing half the chores once you figure out who cares about what.
The situation is somewhat complicated if the other does something that makes your chore harder, like how she doesn't rinse things she puts in the sink. We have the same problem at my house. While I can sort of see the point, I really can't get all excited about rinsing something so perfectly that it practically doesn't need to be washed anymore. So I make an effort but it's apparently never good enough.
I think you have to meet halfway - she needs to promise to try to remember to rinse things at least half-assedly and you have to promise to shut up about it not being absolutely perfect. And you need to believe in each other's good intentions - as long as she's making an effort you have to believe that she is doing what you asked, as far as she can do it.
But if you really need the dish-rinsing to be perfect, then you go back to rule 2 above: YOU need to rinse her dishes after she puts them in the sink. Because those are your only choices: Doing it yourself or shutting up. Or, of course, living alone.
Sometimes the application of Rule 2 is amusing. The Technical Staff actually writhes in misery when I load the dishwasher on the occasions that he doesn't want to do it. It's SO hard for him not to say anything about my dishwasher-loading incompetence. In my case the difficulty is usually the 'shut up and eat what's in front of you' application of the rule, when I haven't done the cooking.
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wombat, I wish you were my mom.
But I guess the rule is different when applied to Kids.
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Having no offspring I suppose I am not entirely qualified to speak on the matter. Having been someone's offspring, though, I would say that there are at least limited situations where it's the same deal. Like if you want the kid's room cleaner than he wants it, clean it yourself.
I think 'throw money at it' definitely doesn't apply, though. I worked with a couple of zoo volunteer teenagers who appeared to have never used a broom. They would have been better off if their parents hadn't had the housecleaner do everything, you know? You do need to make sure your offspring acquire some skills before they leave the nest.
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no, I mean, my mom constantly told me that I didn't do a good enough job doing the dishes.
but I didn't, really. No excuses here. I was just bad about noticing residual grease.
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That is because your mom loves you and wants you to go out into the world with skills, see. That's why it's different.
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More free college advice, Inev: be grateful your mom taught you, because as soon as you start group cooking in college, you will realize that everyone hates the dude who does not know how to do basic kitchen-care tasks. There were dorms at my college that actively lost their kitchen privileges because they were consistently leaving them so disgusting that Buildings & Grounds said "no more, you little shits." As soon as you develop a group of friends with whom you throw lots of parties or cook a lot (or maybe you've already observed this in college), there will quickly be three groups, with varying levels of resentment: "People Who Pull Their Weight," "People Who Mooch In a Basically Harmless Fashion," and "People Who Mooch and Fuck It Up." Be in the first group if possible, but whatever you do, do not slide into the third. Please do not be the guy who puts an inch of cooked-on charred nastiness into someone's mom's best cast-iron pot because he can't cook and then runs away because he can't clean either. Seriously. Don't be that guy.
(Another thing to avoid if you don't want to be that guy: fermenting your own mead in a friend's spare garbage can, then drinking it to fall-down out of a ram horn. But that's another story...)
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I like your concept of doing the chores you want/volunteer to, but what about the nasty ones no one likes?
This is where we throw money at the problem. There is no better application of hard earned cash to marital harmony than hiring a housecleaner. Ours only come once every two weeks but it makes all the difference in the world.
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yeah, I know. she taught me hell of skills. I can such as cook ramen or kraft macaroni without destroying anything. Also, I have made her promise to teach me to make
tortillas, and her recipe for Salsa.
my friends were aghast as I added things to my standard ramen, to make a new, delicious ramen. (small amount of corn starch, soy sauce, rice vinegar. Actually, I didn't have these ingredients, but I mentioned needing to buy them. and then explained.)
when cooking with a group of friends, I am always the middle example (mostly helpful, but no great shakes), and occasionally I point out some helpful idea ("um, dude, when you're pressing down the edges of a dumpling with a fork... do it horizontally. There's more than one tine." I was proud of that one.)
The real issue with my mom is that I am naturally a stubborn person. But only in certain contexts. One of these contexts is when I am planning on doing something on my own dang time, and someone keeps bothering me about doing it. I realize that it is her house, her rules, &c. But I am a teenager, and I reserve the right to disagree with my mom about one dang thing in my whole life. I guess she'd prefer I do hell of drugs, though. I am generally a very agreeable kid. Just for the record. The dish-washing thing just bothers me because she seems to assume that I'm just being lazy. Which is not the case... I don't want the pots to be all greasy any more than she does. That is just gross.
also, I find that keeping my room neat at home (when I have a whole house to live in) is not as pressing as keeping my dorm room neat. I am living in this room. with another dude.
ironically, I think I'm going to have to buy a basic pot and pan. because... the ones they have in the kitchen here are encrusted with hell of grease and stuff.
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But if you really need the dish-rinsing to be perfect, then you go back to rule 2 above: YOU need to rinse her dishes after she puts them in the sink. Because those are your only choices: Doing it yourself or shutting up. Or, of course, living alone.
I originally started my last rant by claiming that my girlfriend has "temporarily" moved in with me, but anyone who has co-habitated knows that the only way to un-cohabitate is to break up. So I don't think I'll be living alone again for a long time. And the kitchen does not permit the introduction of a dishwasher appliance, due to space and plumbing and basically being a repurposed bedroom (there is no vent hood over the range, and I have one HUGE cabinet on the wall instead of an array of them like a normal kitchen).
I've come to peace with the fact that I must do the dishes, because I'd rather do that than get all passive-aggressive about re-drying the knives, making sure the cups are all upside-down in the drying rack, or that the crusty edges are totally out of the saucepans. She's caught me in the act before and that was worse than just taking matters into my own hands.
We definitely have a Do It Yourself Or Shut Up agreement about the housework, which is why she never asks me to vacuum the carpets or to mop the kitchen tile. It's also why I never ask her to wash the cars.
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TN - they have tiny "apartment" dishwasher's now. Also, most of the non-built in ones have wheels on em, and all the take is having any old sink - no special plumbing involved.
In regard to throwing money at chores, I actually brought three pairs of ****** to the tailors today -two for hemming, one for repair to a torn zipper. It was really nice to bring my ****** to a friendly Italian lady. So much nicer than the swearing and rage that my own sewing maching fills me with, followed by the even worse possibility of destroying them by hemming them too short, or hemming them too long and having to start over again. The fairly meager amount it costs to have them done for me is nothing compaired to the potential frustration. And I've been wearing these ****** for a couple months without hemming, walking around looking like an idiot with my cuffs rolled up. I'm way too old to be depending on my mom to do this for me. I felt like a really grown-up girl today.
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*tries to unroll his cuffs subtly, without smells noticing.*
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WTF!?! Was this the University of Penitentary?
This was Williams College, frequently ranked the finest small liberal-arts college in America. The short explanation for all of this is that this guy was an extremely crafty whackjob. The long version is... way long and kind of inappropriate for this thread.
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I look forward to the appropriate thread.
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*tries to unroll his cuffs subtly, without smells noticing.*
*slams hand on desk* I saw that!
theinev, you are a young enough pup that these things still fly, but me... sigh... I am too old for improperly fitted #####. It is a sad state of affairs. Enjoy your youthful cuff rolling days, for one day, apparently ten years from where you are now, you will be as Adam and Eve were in the garden of Eden, except instead of looking down and realizing you're naked, you'll look down and realize you have to pay a professional to hem your trousers. Or maybe I've just watched too much What Not to Wear. Jesus... am I really ten years older than you?...it only seems like yesterday.
Thanks a lot! Now I'm having an existential crisis!
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Oh don't watch what not to wear SS. You are better than those people.
If it's the british one I'm thinking of anyway.
I'm sure any equivalent show would be just as bad too.
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yeah, I was lying. My ##### are all too short to cuff. Because of my small waist. Also: cuffing jeans is different maybe?
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I pay attention and know that V I just wanted the inappropriate story...
Well, fine! After this, the thread should get back to being about chores, though.
Sean (as I will call this young man, because it was his name) could be summed up in one word: "townie." He was a western Massachusetts native, by which I mean that he was extremely weird. He became very famous for his hat, which was a sort of hunter-green fedora with a feather and various other bangles. He would also wear kilts not-infrequently, and somehow he managed to talk other guys into also wearing kilts so they could have some sort of Man-Skirt Solidarity going on.
The mead story, unfortunately, is pretty much as it sounds: Sean decided he wanted to attempt to make his own mead. He talked another friend of ours, who will be known as Hank because it is a serviceable pseudonym, into letting him borrow an empty, clean garbage can for the fermentation of this mead. Presumably fermentation occurred, and then Sean decided to drink this stuff out of a ram's-horn vessel. I wasn't there for this part, but apparently this led to substantial vomiting later in the night; I can't say whether this was a consequence of volume of alcohol consumed, the fact that he was basically drinking jailhouse booze, or a combination thereof.
Damn good times!
Now, to get back sort of on the real thread topic: I hate the various little tasks associated with communal bathrooms. I hate realizing that, despite all standards of human decency, someone is using my goddamn soap and making it unusable to me in the process (by, say, breaking it, or leaving nasty hairs all over it). As I appear to be in this situation for one more year, do people have suggestions, or should I just do the sensible thing and not leave my stuff in the bathroom when I'm not actively using it?
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Save your soap by either getting one of those plastic snap-top soap travel coffins and keeping it in there, or get all fancy and replace your old-school bars of soap with liquid/gel bodywash. I use a bar of Dial if I'm legitimately dirty/sweaty, but I use an eucalyptus/mint gel product by Anthony for my day-to-day personal hygiene.
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V, most joke shops carry a soap that deposits a black dye onto the user. When I was a kid, I think it was called dirty soap or tar soap or something. Buy some, and leave it for the soap thief while coveting your own actual soap in a special holder as noted above. Or buy a bottle of body wash - I use this instead of soap with a little exfoliating puff thing, and since it squirts out, unless someone is trying really hard, you will not have curly-whirly's in your soap anymore.
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Eeeuw, I would never leave my supplies in a communal bathroom. Ash is right, get something to carry stuff back and forth. You can buy something girlier than he suggests if that helps.
CHORES, since you asked: I just bought the greatest sponge mop. You push the handle down and it squeezes the sponge out by folding it in half. This is better than the old kind where there was a flat thing to squeeze it out, and better than the other newfangled mops I have tried and discarded. It is excellent! I could mop all day!
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Paying the rent. Mainly because the realtor's office is on the way home for the SO but she won't drop the rent off so I have to got out of my way to do it. She tried doing it once but accidentally took our rent to the South Korean Embassy instead of the realtor's office.
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I bet they were all "Are you looking for North Korea Embassy?" and she was like "No, Rental Office," and they were all "North Korea? Please don't slap!" and she was all "No, RENTAL OFFICE," and they were all "North Korean office? Please, please don't slap!" and she was all "No, R-E-N-T-A-L O-F-F-I-C-E," and they were all "Please don't slap South Korean Office!" And then she just slapped them. Slapped them silly.
Also, if stopping by the rental agency is a problem, why not give them a batch of post dated checks? Or are they fuck ups? Most of the rental agencies I've dealt with are total idiot fuck ups. But in my first apartment, I just gave the rental agency six months worth of post dated checks every six months. They had a really nice, organized office lady, and I never had an issue. I had serious, serious issues with my downstairs neighbors... but not the office.
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smells. I am not sure why the south korean embassy would be like that, but they would. I laughed hard at this.
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Save your soap by either getting one of those plastic snap-top soap travel coffins and keeping it in there
Oh, trust me, that soap was in a travel coffin. People were actively opening the travel coffin, using/fuck*ng up my soap, and putting it back. I think that may reach the legal definition of sociopathy. Anyway, I suspect I'll just suck it up and get a soap/shampoo caddy for future use.
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V! Please go purchase said caddy! I'm picturing your soap being covered in little microscopic dudes from your avatar.
It's just not the thing!
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They were taking it OUT of the plastic thingy?
How is it that some stuff that is so obviously wrong to some is just fine and dandy to others.
Don't their brains go:
THIS IS NOT YOUR SOAP. WHY ARE YOU USING IT.
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They were taking it OUT of the plastic thingy?
How is it that some stuff that is so obviously wrong to some is just fine and dandy to others.
Don't their brains go:
THIS IS NOT YOUR SOAP. WHY ARE YOU USING IT.
That is fuck*ng sick. That just turns my stomach, thinking about other people using soap that is rightfully YOURS. I would buy a bottle of liquid soap and switch to that, because man...that is just wrong. Liquid soap means that other peoples' germs can't get on it.
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To clarify my previous post: If I am in a communal shower and there is a bar of soap just sitting on the soap holder I'd figure it's up for grabs since it's just sitting there, but having to actually open a container and take it out crosses the line. The plastic box is a definite sign that this is not yours.
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To clarify my previous post: If I am in a communal shower and there is a bar of soap just sitting on the soap holder I'd figure it's up for grabs since it's just sitting there, but having to actually open a container and take it out crosses the line. The plastic box is a definite sign that this is not yours.
Ugh... Doc, admit it. You left a HUGE hair on Molly's new Aveda soap, you sick fuck. Now she's just going to have to throw it away.
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I guess some people just don't have fully developed soap instincts. To me the soap rules work both ways. I don't want some dude opening my soapbox, using my soap and infecting it with his cooties. But the reverse is true as well. I can't imagine invading some other dude's soapbox and using his soap. Because I know it's strange cootie infested. I mean, why does somebody even want to use somebody else's soap? Yuck.
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Ugh... Doc, admit it. You left a HUGE hair on Molly's new Aveda soap, you sick fuck. Now she's just going to have to throw it away.
Throw it away? That soap cost 13 dollars! I'll get my potato peeler.
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I guess some people just don't have fully developed soap instincts. To me the soap rules work both ways. I don't want some dude opening my soapbox, using my soap and infecting it with his cooties. But the reverse is true as well. I can't imagine invading some other dude's soapbox and using his soap. Because I know it's strange cootie infested. I mean, why does somebody even want to use somebody else's soap? Yuck.
My assumption here is that the soap-pilferer is somebody who normally uses their own soap -- I presume that nobody is a chronic soap-abuser, or, at least, I hope so -- but has abruptly run out, doesn't have any replacements of their own in reaching distance, and is probably already in the shower. When the option is "shower without using any soap" and "use someone else's," a lot of people will pick the latter. (This has happened to me, but with shampoo; while using someone else's shampoo is an entirely different game from soap, I still didn't do it. I will admit that I am one of the people who will use a load's worth of laundry detergent if I run out and there is a bottle sitting in the laundry room that isn't clearly marked "THIS BELONGS TO (X) DO NOT USE IT YOU FREAKS." Mea culpa.)
To get this back on the subject of "chores/errands I hate": I hate it when laundry detergent, shampoo, or something else of that nature is starting to run out, and the resultant playing of the "How Long Can I Go Before I Remember To Replace This?" game. I think I'm just going to start buying three containers of HABAs/cleaning stuff every time I go out, to attempt to avoid the inevitable crushing moment of "oh, shit, there is not even a half-lather's worth of shampoo left in this bottle; I would make a note to get more, but I am in the shower now, and I am going to have nasty-ass hair all day, fuuuuck."
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Here's a dirty little secret related to forgetting things: I am not a hairy dude so I don't shave for going to uni but do shave before I go to me 'real' job at a gas station, this means I generally shave about three days a week which works out alright. Where this falls down is that if I am going to uni in the morning and work in the afternoon I'll often forget to shave in the morning so I bought a bunch of disposable razors and keep them in a filing cabinet in my office at uni but I am so incompetent that I will put this action off until just before i leave then generally leave from uni for work in a hurry and forget to shave. So now I carry around a few disposables in my bag too, because I am that incapable of being a halfway competent human being.
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The mead story, unfortunately, is pretty much as it sounds: Sean decided he wanted to attempt to make his own mead. He talked another friend of ours, who will be known as Hank because it is a serviceable pseudonym, into letting him borrow an empty, clean garbage can for the fermentation of this mead. Presumably fermentation occurred, and then Sean decided to drink this stuff out of a ram's-horn vessel. I wasn't there for this part, but apparently this led to substantial vomiting later in the night; I can't say whether this was a consequence of volume of alcohol consumed, the fact that he was basically drinking jailhouse booze, or a combination thereof.
Ooh ooh, I have a mead story too!
We had a little group of homebrewers in our fraternity house. Fortunately, we were serious about it, and the ringleader was a chemistry major, so we had some ideas about sterilization and such.
So one day one of our dudes comes home all excited because he found a recipe for mead. He went out and bought all the ingredients, then enlisted some assistance and spent the rest of the evening all brewin' up mead. It made not quite a case of 16-ounce bottles, which he capped with our capping equipment, put in the case, and put in the bottom of his closet to ferment.
A couple of weeks later, in the middle of the night, he was awakened by what sounded like a gunshot from his closet. He sat up in bed, wondering what the hell was going on, and then was startled by a bunch of such explosions in succession. When it subsided, he turned on the light and gingerly opened his closet, to find his clothes covered in broken glass and sticky goo. Apparently he'd overfilled the bottles, and the fermentation and carbonation was intense enough to blow them the fuck up. One bottle survived intact; he wrapped it in a towel and put it out on the second floor balcony.
Two weeks later (when the stuff was supposed to be ready), we retrieved the bottle. Upon opening, it shot out liquid like a soda that's been shaken in a paint mixer. What was left behind, we tasted. It was gross.
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Ooh ooh, I have a mead story too!
WTF? Did the "chemistry major" flunk the fuck out?
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The chemistry major wasn't the mead guy. He stuck to making beer.
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also, chemistry major isn't necessarily == "I have intimate knowledge of brewing mead."
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also, chemistry major isn't necessarily == "I have intimate knowledge of brewing mead."
No, but anyone who has taken a very basic Biology course and is familiar with the process of alcoholic fermentation could tell you that there is a strong possibility that the bottles containing the fermenting mead will explode.
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I had to go to the landfill again today. I really should have brought my camera. The garbage was quite spectacular.
Inside the baler building, they usually have two large metal bins for household refuse. These get picked up with little bobcat-like loaders and dumped into the baler, where they are compacted into rubbish-cubes for deposit into one of the landfill cells.
Today... oh god.
There was a huuuuge mountain of rubbish. Fifty cubits high, and a hundred cubits wide. The garbage juice that flowed was disgusting. I pranced around, trying not to splash any onto my jeans. Later, when I got home, the contamination was so bad that I took off my jeans in my entryway, put on some other #####, and then went to the little outbuilding that houses the boiler and the washer/dryer.
Where were the bins? Why was I forced to throw my bag of rubbish into the huuuuuuge pile? Jesus. I really wish I had my camera, because you guys would not have believed it. I have no idea how many loaders it would take to scoop all that garbage into the baler.
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I call that juice "garbage tea". I used to horrify my brother by smooshing the trash bags (pre recycling days - kitchen waste, lawn clippings, 11/12ths empy beer bottles and all) and dribbling the tea from the bottom of the bag into a plastic tumbler. I'd then chase him while droning in a Boris Karloffy Frankenstein's monster way "Gaaarbage Tea, Scott. Garbage Tea!", and sloshing it menacingly. Its a wonder we never got hepatitis or something.
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I call that juice "garbage tea". I used to horrify my brother by smooshing the trash bags (pre recycling days - kitchen waste, lawn clippings, 11/12ths empy beer bottles and all) and dribbling the tea from the bottom of the bag into a plastic tumbler. I'd then chase him while droning in a Boris Karloffy Frankenstein's monster way "Gaaarbage Tea, Scott. Garbage Tea!", and sloshing it menacingly. Its a wonder we never got hepatitis or something.
Oh maaaan... You had better be glad that you're not my brother. I would be scared of garbage reprisals if I were you.
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Oh man, the second that nasty shit started pouring from a garbage bag I'd be running to drop it as fast as humanly possible so as to wash my hands. I admit, I'm a bit squeamish with things like that... I know not why, I just don't like to be covered in skanky, disgusting things. If I ever meet Courtney Love, I'll be safe.
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Oh man, the second that nasty shit started pouring from a garbage bag I'd be running to drop it as fast as humanly possible so as to wash my hands. I admit, I'm a bit squeamish with things like that... I know not why, I just don't like to be covered in skanky, disgusting things. If I ever meet Courtney Love, I'll be safe.
That's why I hate going to the landfill. It's unavoidable. I have to go once a week to drop off the rubbish, and it sickens me.
I wish I was married so that I could just force sweetly ask my DH to take the rubbish to the landfill.
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I hate hate HATE folding laundry. I don't know why, but I just do. I do the laundry without a care, but then it sits in the basket, all clean, the whole week. I just simply can't stand folding it. It's quite irrational, really.
Most other chores don't bother me too much, although I generally dislike chores that put me in close contact with bacteria (despite my extolling bacteria's virtues in another thread, for things like cheese and beer... bacteria for things like staph is a definite thumbs down). Washing toilets (even with a brush, and a bleach-heavy cleaning solution, I just feel like the bodily function bacteria are just going to leap out at me and take me down), taking out the garbage, and cleaning out the fridge do not rank high on my list. Thankfully, Mr. Muse handles all of the "gross jobs" and the laundry folding, and I pretty much do the rest; food shopping, cooking and dishes are pretty evenly split between us though.
I love food, and I love to cook, and grocery shopping is a source of great joy for me, except for having to deal with other humans and their young. Circumstances have forced me to shop at a supermarket rather than the small specialty shops I prefer, so I generally try to go at bizarre hours when I know that the helmet-headed suburban moms, and their wailing masses of unfortunate genetic material, are fast asleep in their beige houses, and the only people fondling the produce and looking for wheels of gouda are restaurant workers coming off shift, or potheads with the munchies.
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I really dislike doing laundry.
Which is a problem, because somehow I suddenly only have 6 pairs of socks.
And getting to Target to buy more has never worked out.
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so I generally try to go at bizarre hours when I know that the helmet-headed suburban moms, and their wailing masses of unfortunate genetic material, are fast asleep in their beige houses, and the only people fondling the produce and looking for wheels of gouda are restaurant workers coming off shift, or potheads with the munchies.
I know a lot of people who work or own restaurtants. I know a lot of potheads.
They are the same people. In fact, I am pretty sure that every drug in a college town has been through a restaurant, especially coke.
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Heh. You have a point, Keith.
I know quite a few chefs and restaurateurs myself.
I stand corrected.
;)
And a can to you, sir, for being so astute.
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Dammit. DAMMIT! I have been so busy with preparations for V-day that I missed my weekly trip to the awful landfill yesterday. They're closed on Sundays, and I'm 99% certain that they're closed on Mondays...and tomorrow is a holiday, so they're certainly closed. AUGH!!! Now I'm going to have to sandwich in a landfill trip this week, which is going to be a NIGHTMARE..not only do we have rehearsals, but the play starts on Friday night, I have to work Saturday because of my obsessive-compulsive boss, and then Saturday night is the play again. god dammit.
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Well, I made my weekly landfill trip yesterday (Saturday), and I just cleaned the hell out of all my drawers, cabinets and closets... i'm still not done, but I have four huge garbage bags in my Pathfinder to take to the landfill on Tuesday.
I need to cull the herd and get rid of some of this shit. I need to be more ruthless and just throw (almost) everything out.