Sudden onset of laundry

Well, speaking of emotionally cathartic posts, today is one of "those" days. I'm torn between being peeved and laughing at myself & life. C'est la vie indeed.

It started with laundry and parking: I was hoping that if I delayed my usual activity hours (and brave the subsequent onset of traffic down in PB as all the surfers hit the beach) I'll have a spot closer to my apartment so I won't have to haul my laundry (and detergent) that far (because remember? I switched cars last week and so lost my lovely spot that was right across the street from where I live). No such luck though. NO ONE had budged at their usual times and so I ended up having to haul my laundry, all the while comforting myself that at least this is good exercise.

Move on now to exhibit B: solely laundry.

The laundry place that I've been routinely going through went through remodeling (I think I posted about that too) and now it apparently is switching owners. And going through remodeling again. There was no deadline for when it will be open again but based on the advertisement for what kind of service they WILL be offering, I probably will no longer be able to afford going there. (Well, technically I can but it's unnecessarily wasteful and given the option, I'd rather spend the money at the used book store, where I can buy colored hardcovers for a dollar.) (Or possibly the used CD store. I need to investigate more to see which one is good though.) I went to the other laundry place that is at PB that I found during the last remodeling directly, but it turns out I should've gone home (assuming I could find a parking spot somewhere) and looked up the operating hours. The other place, for reasons that I've not yet determined, is only open from 5 to 11pm on Saturdays (i.e. at a time where there will be no parking space near my apartment for a three block radius). ...so that is a fail. Lastly I went browsing along one of the downtown streets for a coin laundry place that I remembered passing. I found it. That wasn't an issue. The issues were that it shared a parking lot with a car shop, which in the downtown areas, means no parking, and that the laundry machines there were all for multiple loads. It's no doubt cheaper and more efficient if you're the sort who hauls the equivalent of a person's weight in laundry in each time. For me, who does laundry regularly, it's probably cheaper just to drive up to La Jolla and use the laundromats there. (It is a sad day when you have to drive to another town to do laundry.)

Exhibit C: now onto car issues and me feeling extremely stupid.

My dad and I switched cars last weekend, as I may have mentioned, on the account that his car is the least likely to break down on the highway in the family (99 Camry) and makes my parents feel better about my general safety. (It's a nice touch. I am touched. Pun intended.) Given that I've learned to drive on both of my parents cars, there wasn't any adjustments to make, so I never thought to worry about anything except to incline my head a different degree when I'm getting in so I don't knock myself in the head. (Has happened before, and ow.) All of this means that when I got into the car at the end of my last laundry place excursion I was...stunned, if you will, to discover that the parking break is stuck.

I looked through the manual (not helpful). I tried jiggling it (no effect). I tried pressing it harder because occasionally it is a bit tight and that's all I need, but all it got me today was possibly bruised thumbs. (I've never had those bruised before, so it's a novel experience.) In the end I went over to the car shop that is sharing the parking space with the laundry (so you see, it turned out to be handy) and asked one of the staff there for help. What I learned from this particular adventure is that, since my issue was that the button on the break won't depress, I need to pull the break up, further, to relieve the tension, and then I'll be able to press the break down.

Seems simple, doesn't it? I'd never have thought to try it on my own.

So now it's past noon, I've finished about 20% of what I was planning to do this morning and I still have a basket of laundry in the back of the car. Animal shelter's a no-go now, since now all of the volunteers are there already(well most, since something like 90% of us only show up on Saturday and only in the late morning / early afternoon --which is why I only go in the morning because they don't need me in the afternoon. The shelter's closed to volunteers and public alike on Sundays, by the way). (Speaking of which, it's July now and I've just never found the time to make it down there. Then again, given that my life is lab Monday through Friday and the Saturday afternoon volunteer overflow, Saturday morning is my only time slot, so maybe I should just look into doing other stuff instead.)I wanted to get most of my stuff done today so I can go hiking tomorrow, so now I suppose I'll do laundry (at La Jolla, since I'll be passing by there anyway) and then go hiking or something, and aim for somewhere closer to hike at.

To top it all off: there is still no parking space when I returned just now, and the space I vacated this morning was taken as well.

I think this calls for ice cream.

Can I blame the weather?

[Edit]
Daemon's LAN capabilities are broken along with wireless. In fact, all networking functions are down. I wonder if the NIC's broken. Software I can cope with (or at least try to cope with), but with hardware I'm way out of my depth.