Washday

These thongs are not all they’re cracked up to be. One week is about all you can get, and then you really have to wash them. I’ve been toying with the idea of edible thongs, and doing away with the washing thing altogether – wear them a week, then eat them and start off with a new pair – but I’m still not sure it would be cost effective. Sure, you save on breakfast, but washing powder’s not that expensive. So I still have to work on the economics.

Anyway, for now it’s washday. Nice clean thong to look forward to tomorrow.

This is the reality of extended-stay hotel life. On the plus side, even though there’s only one washer and one dryer in the laundry room, there’s never anyone else using them; on the minus side, there’s never anyone else using them – they all have lives!

It says on the laundry room wall that the wash cycle ($1) takes 30 minutes, and the dryer cycle (also $1) takes 45 minutes. They lie. I put my washing in, come back 30 minutes later, and it looks as though it’s been sitting there, finished, for a while (I sometimes wonder if it’s done any more than dampen my clothes so that it looks as though they’ve been washed – it’s the kind of thing I might do if I thought no-one was watching); so I transfer it to the dryer, come back 45 minutes later, and have to stand around until it decides to stop tumbling. I’ve never had the patience to actually wait in the laundry room and time it myself (but then, since I don’t wear a watch, that probably wouldn’t help much anyway).

So what do I do in between? It’s almost too embarrassing to confess to, even for someone of my age. In my defence, I’d have to say that it’s hardly my fault that “Wheel of Fortune” coincides with my personal wash cycle. There you have it – my secret is out. Once a week I watch (parts of) “Wheel of Fortune”. And it can’t be only me that thinks that “BANKRUPT” comes up far more often than it should if the odds were straight. I keep meaning to watch this show on a regular basis, and record the number of times each position on the wheel comes up, but you have to draw the line somewhere.

I can’t say it’s exciting, but it probably beats going to the Swedish Massage Institute (“all female staff”) just down the road, where their cheapest package would set me back $135. If you don’t believe me, check out their web site, but, be warned, this site is not for the faint of heart (or even normal human beings). It’s nasty.