blarg?

If cartoonish incompetence were frightening, my apartment building would be a haunted castle.

I have just discovered that the washing machine in this apartment does indeed, as one might guess from the name, wash. However, the dryer does not actually dry. It “tumbles”, but does not “dry”. So now I have two large loads of clothing hanging everywhere things can hang from in my shoebox-sized apartment.

The relative humidity at the moment is 88%. Eighty-eight. I have lived in the Carribean for some time, so I am going gather close my machismo and stiffen my upper lip, but if my situation were not also humorous it would be grim indeed.

I may need to microwave my underwear in the morning. Ominous!

Update: I’m pretty sure this is not how the Fantastic Four got their start.

Dear People Who Are Under The Impression That You Are Coming To Our Wedding: Send The Email.

We gave you an email address, and you are supposed to tell us whether or not you’re coming, and what you’re eating. If you have done so, well done, and thank you. If not, well, why not?

A number of people have tried some innovative reply strategies:

• Mentioning it to us in passing.
• Telling one of our parents.
• Telling some random relative.
• Thinking you’ve told somebody, but in fact not telling anybody.
• Not telling anybody anything, and assuming we know.

I don’t think anyone’s tried anything really random yet, like spray painting it on the side of a giraffe or stapling a pencilled note to a hobo, but the end result is the same, and cursory examination of these strategies will reveal that none of them involve you sending email to the specified address or specifying what you’ll be eating. Let me, if I may, propose an alternative: email us and tell us what you’ll be eating. If need be, arrange for us to be emailed, and told what you’ll be eating.

R.S.V.P. is french. It’s pronounced “rep on day, seal voo play”. It means “Reply, if you please.” I would like it to mean “answer, or you spend the night eating leftover appetizers standing up”, but my mercenary approach to these things is invariably softened by my somewhat-kinder-than-I fiancee.

While opinions on the matter diverge, I don’t think I’m an unreasonable man. I am willing to make exceptions, in dire circumstances, to this “you must email us” rule. For example, were you abandoned as an infant in the dark jungles of the African interior and raised by babboons? Are the restraints too sturdy for you to gnaw through? Are you being held hostage? Are you actually, at this moment, on fire? An exception can also be made if you’re Geofford, but that’s because his invitation is still sitting on my desk.

Rep on day, seal voo play. You people are infuriating, and I’m looking forward to seeing you at our wedding.

Question: does that star-spangled banner yet wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Answer: Not so much.

Update: See also.

My job continues to go quite well, and I’m not going to talk about it for fear of jinxing it.

My living situation continues to be An Adventure, because in Toronto apparently “furnished” and “spacious” mean something different from what I’m used to. Furnished, I thought, meant “full of furniture”. Here, no! It turns out that in the big city, it can also mean “full of partly- (may also contain “badly-“) assembled Ikea furniture”. Swedish for debris, possibly?

I also didn’t realize that when people said “utilities included” that you had to spell that out – hot water? Heat, of any stripe? I don’t think a roof and a toilet count as “utilities”, strictly speaking – I’m used to think of them as more of a baseline than an extra, but as far as I can tell, those are the utilities that are included.

And the size, mon Dieu, the size of the apartment. I am not a big man, and it is still difficult for me to believe that this apartment is Actual Size, and not a mockup hastily put together for a demo of some kind. The special-effects mockup for “Cops: The Motion Picture”, possibly.

More updates as warranted.