Isn't this a lovely day to be caught in the rain?

We've got the washing machine going pretty heavily today, the result of a week without any laundry being done. This isn't because the washer or dryer were broken, for a change; instead it was the floor. The floor wasn't really broken either, it's just my parents had decided it was time to replace ... decade-old linoleum. You know how that goes. So my father had laid out a practice tile configuration, your standard small-square, large-square, rectangle pattern on a diagonal and after getting some other chore done and being stuck around the house for a couple days anyway while his Jeep Something was getting fixed (They had to special order a part that didn't want to come in), got to work chipping up the old floor.

Apparently, standard practice in linoleum floors for something our laundry room size is to lay down glue around the edges and roll out the mock tile, flat. Also it turns out the builders deviously didn't rely on standard practice and instead glued every square millimeter of floor down, turning the tear-up-the-old-floor process from one of a couple hours to one lasting roughly as long as the Palaiologan Dynasty did in Byzantium. So we'd be without laundry a little longer than expected.

I go through a lot of clothes, what with my wearing them every day. And my reserves aren't so deep, since I've been donating away older, fatter clothes and buying smaller ones slowly as I figure out what my new size will be. And there was another surprise change as the tile pattern changed from the diagonal to going parallel to the walls, although this would be a net saving of time since diagonal tiles are a real pain to do. (Also it saves on tile costs.) But ... there was still waiting for the cement to dry, and this had to be done in two stages because of how hard it would be moving the washing machine out, and there's more delay waiting for the grout to go in and dry and ...

I was ready Friday to give up and go to the laundromat, but thought the washer and dryer were ready to be hooked up again. They weren't; one tile needed re-setting. Saturday while I did my WiiFit exercises this was finished and we got everything hooked up again, which is good as I was down to my last sweatpants and only had clean shirts because I picked up a couple when the Dockers at the mall shut down. Clearly I need more depth in the clothing drawer.

So with a little pause while I learned the water wasn't actually turned on, I've got what had been a mountain of uncleaned laundry cleaning.

Trivia: During the tense wait between the launch of what became Explorer 1 and the detection of it in orbit Army Ballistic Missile Agency commander Major General John Medaris sent the Jet Propulsion Laboratories a message to take it easy a while. JPL answered back, ``BEING NONCHALANT AND LIGHTING UP A MARIJUANA''. Source: A Ball, A Dog, And A Monkey: 1957 --- The Space Race Begins,Michael D'Antonio.

Currently Reading: Triplanetary, E E ``Doc'' Smith.