So this was sort of amusing (sort of). First, let’s get some music for this post. Let’s see now… OK, here you go:

I woke up bright and early today to go do some laundry, which has been sitting around glaring at me for a bit and occasionally borrowing a book to read. Yeah, it’s been a while. I finally did gather up stuff a few days back and sorted it, so it’s three trips worth of what I would say are Santa-sized bags (“ho-ho-ho!”, but walking and smelling like dirty laundry). I was planning to head out early this morning. as the laundry here opens between 6:30 and 7am, do one load, finish around 8 or 8:30 and come back to do a second load.

Around 6:10, I’m having a cup of coffee and suddenly realize that I haven’t seen my wallet.

Uh-oh.

Now, I had the thing on the weekend because I had to go to the post office on Friday and buy postage for a box I was shipping out after my printer died while printing out a shipping label (boooo!). I also went on Saturday because I needed stamps (I sent out a few cards then). Yeah, I didn’t buy stamps of Friday because I didn’t need them at that time – the cards were bought the day after on a whim for a friend of mine who hasn’t been feeling well and I wanted co cheer her up a bit.

Anyway, flash forward to this morning and me looking high and low for something that was in the house, but I had no clue where. I usually toss it on top of a small table at night or sometimes I’ll leave it in my coat pocket, but it was in neither place nor accidentally placed in the laundry. The dirty clothes would have done themselves AND went out for a snack afterwards if so. I had moved some stuff around yesterday, didn’t see it while looking this morning, but I did see a few spots I really needed to vacuum under (sigh). An hour and a half later, and no dice, but I recalled being half awake last night and half hearing something I couldn’t place somewhere in the room making a soft thump sound, but I was too tired to check what it was (and besides, if the dirty laundry was walking around, I kind of didn’t want to know about it).

Here’s the funny part. I did finally find my wallet near where the table was. It had fallen off the table and between some boxes on the floor, opening up so it was kind of flat. I had missed it a few times because I was looking for a folded wallet not stuck between two boxes. Oops. Well that was annoying, but wait there’s more! I was off to a much later than expected start and finally got to the laundry at a little after 9am… only to find out all the card readers and cash machines were out of order.  The machines don’t take cash, (which is a STUPID service “upgrade” we suffer with here) and the laundry attendant had gone off somewhere no one had a clue where to. One woman offered up this info: “I think she left her card home and went back to get it”, which had steam coming out of one of my ears because, hey, why not be a TOTAL Monday, Monday?

I waited for about 20 minutes and the attendant came back, but she was besieged by a few people who wanted to give her money and use her single card that she had somehow forgot when she opened the place (I understand that the card readers were broken that past weekend too). As I had a bit of a busy day ahead of me, I decided to take my chances at one of the other laundries in the area. Of course, ALL of them are owned by the same company, and the three I want to all had the same problem: busted card readers and NO way to do laundry unless you had a card with money on it. The last place I went to, the lady in charge of the place told me to try a location that was another few blocks away. Well, about 1/4 mile from where I started out, to be exact. Same company, but she said they had cash-taking machines that worked.

So, cranky and tired me shuffled on over and guess what? The place had maybe five people in it and yes, the card reader and cash-changer were working perfectly. But nope, it wasn’t quite over. Of the three cards I had with me, the one I put money on was a bit defective, so when I tried to use it in a washer, I got error messages for a few minutes. This was turning into Westworld with a washing machine-shaped Yul Brynner challenging me to a draw. It took maybe 15 or so swipes, but the card eventually worked, although I had to swipe the card multiple times in each machine.

By the time I was done, it was about 11:20, but I was so wiped out by the walk home that I took a nap maybe 20 minutes after getting my now clean laundry back home. As an added bonus, the fruit market across the street from the laundry had some spectacularly low prices. They were cheaper than I saw at the rather large amount of supermarkets in the area and I ended up just buying some really good mushrooms and bean sprouts which went fine with the onions I’d bought elsewhere in an omelet I made later.

Well, I WAS going to post a few reviews today, but you’ll need to wait until tomorrow evening. I’m seeing two games tomorrow afternoon, I have a short medical appointment before that, and I just downloaded a new-ish game with the weirdest plot and won’t get to it until tomorrow evening or Wednesday at the earliest. One of the aforementioned reviews is for CATS, and boy, was that… something. Kind of like a crazy Monday. In Westworld, at that.

DRAW.

-GW