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in less than 10 hours i will no longer have a roommate. does it make any sense that i'm both sad and happy at the same time? my roommate and i had one last long conversation. we exchanged contact info and he invited me out to his observatory the next time i'm in western china. it's not like i won't be seeing him again since he's still in town for 2 more months; he just won't be living here. without him around what will i have to gripe about? there's always the eternal struggle against old man winter i suppose.

i live chatted with somebody from an indian call center today. instead of being held hostage over the phone, i decided to try the instant message feature at the dell support website. i was returning a defective laptop power adapter still under warranty. the whole chat took almost 30 minutes, but it was kind of liberating because it was nothing more than a message window on my desktop. while i was waiting i could still watch tv, listen to my itunes, surf the web, or play another round of shanghai. i even made a phone call while i was still text chatting. the person on the other end was super polite and for a second there i thought she might've been a robot because the responses were too precise. when it was all over, i received a transcript in my inbox with the name of my agent. it was a unique enough name that i managed to find her easily on google, and it pointed to TSR, a large indian outsourcing repository. it's kind of weird to think i was "talking" with somebody halfway around the world and didn't even know it. had i known, maybe i would've asked her a few questions, like what does she think about our new president? but these chats are probably monitored and i don't want to get anyone fired, least of all somebody who was helping me out.

i washed my dirty shower curtains today. originally i was just going to scrub them in the tub, but that became too much of a chore and i remember hearing that you can just throw them into a washing machine (gentle cycle, naturally). so i did that with some detergent and a cup of bleach. 10 minutes later they were done and i hung them back up in the bathtub to dry. they seem a little cleaner but still sort of caked in soap scum (most of the mildew had disappeared though). also, each curtain suffered a small rip; i think they both got caught in some dangerous place in the washer. i may try handwashing them again but if that doesn't work, i'll probably replace them (they're 6.5 years old).

client N got in touch with me today regarding my long weekend fielding phone calls from the museum. there's a few change order items left to finish so i'm not completely off the hook yet. i still have to figure out a second invoice for them (even though they haven't paid me yet for the first invoice). on happier news, i received a check from client P today. looks like i'll be able to pay some bills after all! which reminded me to order some checks. after an exhaustive search, i decided to go with the cheapest option that featured a lot of girlish abstract shapes. i figured it'd be my little secret between me and the companies that normally get my checks every month.