Guys, WATCH OUT for those zinc swabs. There's a class-action suit that they sometimes completely destroy the sense of smell and taste, permanently. That's why doctors stopped using zinc swabs in the 30s.

[link]

I have been both the messy one and the clean one in roommate situations. Tom and I tolerate around the same amount of/type of mess, and we generally get motivated in individual spurts. This winds up with one person cleaning more often or more intensely one week and the other picking up the slack the next week. Occasionally one of us gets annoyed at the other for slacking, but it's a relatively rare occasion. Tom tends to do the everyday stuff, and I go nuts on the vacuuming/scrubbing/bathroom stuff on the weekends.

Hec's commute broke my heart, as did sarameg's flight home of madness.

I got caught in the middle of a messy/clean roommate situation. One of the guys was a neat freak, the other a total slob. I was kinda sorta middlin' and they both came to me complaining about the other guy.

Nora's tagline reminds me that last night the term "cock blocker" came up in conversation, and I said how come there's not a female term for that, and only then did I remember VAGINA BOJANGLER, which made me laugh for several minutes all over again.

here to help, here to serve.

As long I don't have to actually, you know, *do* anything.

Ich bin ein snot monster.

Hello, hello, everyone. I am not sick, just fucking exhausted. I was at the library studying until midnight last night, and then I went grocery shopping. Every night this week promises to be more or less the same. I can't wait to go to sleep about 3pm on Saturday. oy.

So, between my last post and this one, here's what took place:

My conputer stopped working. "Freeze frame" sort of stopped working. Nothing moved, nothing responded (including the system administrator, whom I still didn't find), including the switch-off button. I had to unplug it from the electricity in order to get some sort of response.

I didn't finish trying to deal with that (I lost a couple of days' results, and was trying to figure out what was saved), when one of my roommates called. Our landlord was supposed to fix our stove today. Instead, he brought another stove, a used one that still works. It has to be cleaned and scrubbed from scratch, very thoroughly, and after that it has to be koshered. That slightly freaked my roommate out.

When they tried to put it in the place of the former stove, they broke the refrigirator's door. That really freaked my roommate out.

Luckily, the new rooommate was there as well, and she handled things marvelously. The landlord re-attached, sort of, the fridge's door. In the meantime, I ran there to help and to try to calm spirits down and balance a swinging fridge. The fourth roommate doesn't even know what sort of an afternoon we were all having, she's still at work.

So now, I returned to the university. The freaked-out roommate went to class. The (great!) new roommate is scrubbing like no stain in the 'verse can stop her, after we took the new stove apart [Edit: um, on purpose, this time]. Things seem to be more calm now, so I can return to facing the compute crushing.

I wish y'all a much calmer day, in which nothing (especially roommates, but also doors) gets broken.

I was thinking about the word "akimbo" in the wee hours of the night last night (what? that's normal!), so I just looked it up in the OED. It's fascinating - completely obscure etymology (Icelandic? Middle Latin? not convincing cases for either) and appears first in 1400 as "in kenebowe." God I love English.

Timelies, all.

Nilly, I can't believe your landlord gave you a used oven. That's so cheap of him.

Also, where are my Prison Break co-natterers at?