a clean well-lighted place
or a well-lighted cleaning place

October 22, 2001

This Year's Bird Sightings:
Plum Island Year List

Today's Reading:
Autumn Across America by Edwin Way Teale, The Gilgit Game by John Keay

This Year's Reading:
2001 Book List

A shoe? Why is there a shoe in my back yard this morning? Well it's not a shoe exactly, more of a sandal, like a cheap imitation Birkenstock, and it definitely wasn't there yesterday.

The Russian Speaking Dog (I have yet to hear him say a word) woke me up in the wee hours this morning. Not just the dog but people coming and going, opening and closing doors, and talking loudly in Russian. There was also a great deal of banging around and scuffling in my yard. I'm assuming it was the Russian Speaking Dog and not his masters the Russian Parking Space Blockers in my yard scuffling and banging and leaving a shoe. Maybe the Russian Parking Space Blockers were chasing the Russian Speaking Dog trying to get the shoe back. Whatever. It took me two hours to get back to sleep.

So, in the morning, I pick up the shoe and hurl it into the parking lot in the general direction of their parking space.

Meanwhile, I've been driving around with two weeks worth of laundry in my trunk trying to come to grips with the fact that my usual laundry place closes at 7:00 PM. When I whined about this one day after a meeting's getting out at 6:35 caused me to miss the laundry and thus run short of clean clothes, those in the know kept telling me there's a 24-hour laundromat in Chelmsford and I should just suck it up or something.

I found a laundromat by that description in the yellow pages: Colonial Village laundromat in Chelmsford Center. I left work at 6:30 PM and got there at about 10 minutes before 7:00 PM. The sign says they are open 24 hours and that they have a wash, dry, fold service.

The place is huge. Bright lights illuminate acres of washing machines. Three tiers of front loaders spin the wash around at one end of the room. I wonder idly how anyone can reach the top tier without a ladder. The joint is jumping. It's jam packed. Hordes of people, mostly Asian, are washing tons of laundry.

I trudge across the floor dodging running Cambodian kids. I go on and on. How big is this place anyway?

The lights are so bright I wish I had sunglasses. Damn I miss those shades the car thieves stole. I never got good ones after that. The lights are so bright I'm getting a headache. How big is this place anyway?

I cross from the front loader zone to the top loader zone. I see dryers in the distance. Very brightly lit dryers. I'm getting vertigo. How big is this place anyway?

At last, I find some sort of service counter. The guy tells me the wash dry fold closes at 7:00 PM, which it now is. I beg pathetically to be allowed to drop it off tonight and pick it up tomorrow night. I can't stand the thought of staying here under the glare of the lights to do it. I already want to run out of the building and put on a hat to shield myself. I can't imagine staying another couple of hours to do laundry. The guy takes pity on me but says they can't have it done until Wednesday. "We're very busy, you know," says he. Um, yeah, I can see that...

And so, hungry and headachy, I head home to solve the riddle of the iBook and OS X and to revive the antique PowerMac and its flaky external 4.2 gig disk. Hmm, maybe I would rather do laundry under the lights.