azurelunatic | Life stuff: Costco, adventures in phones, and clothes.

This weekend, mostly I slept. I'm not entirely pleased with the Android app display on the Fitbit sleep tracking, because it seems to show average duration of the individual sleep sessions, not total sleep in that 24 hour period. Thus it appears as though I got 6 hours of sleep on Saturday, when in fact I got 12 hours of sleep. (This is normal for Saturdays.)

I also had trouble logging sleep when I'd forgotten to put on the tracker overnight. I'd left it on the charger because it was having some funny business, and then I wasn't feeling up to getting out of bed to retrieve it.

My "smart" alarm clock, which was programmed prior to the latest US time shenanigans, decided it was time to switch over this weekend. I can't rightly remember when the time actually does change, but I am certain that it will be heralded by wrath from my Overlady, who dislikes the whole thing more than I do. (Since I dislike it heartily, her wrath is impressive.)

I had Adventures with my debit card (and my Costco card) yesterday evening. I went out to run some errands (get my phone swapped back -- oh, right).

So my phone, Jonathan Strange, has had Close Encounters of the Di-Hydrogen Monoxide kind. Again. I'm pretty sure at this point that what I did was set him down in a puddle on the bathroom counter, but in any event he started acting flaky on Friday, and the cause was discovered to be water all up inside him. Not much, but enough to cause Flakiness. So I stripped him and tossed him in a bag of rice, as one does. From the previous Adventure,

norabombay had been kind enough to send me her old handset, a Galaxy S with slide-out keyboard (ooo!) who was promptly dubbed Mr. Norrell. (As one does.) So I traipsed down to the phone service place with Mr. Norrell and had him swapped in until I found out whether Jonathan would make it or not. Sunday, after allowing Jonathan time to dry out, I put him back together and he worked. So back to the store with us to do the swap again.

Incidentally, if you have an Android, I highly recommend SMS Backup (or similar, but that's the one I have used) to make sure that the things that Android doesn't sync off the shelf get ... sunk? Synchronized.

One of the recent new things in my life is a Costco membership. Perhaps some of you know that in my previous life, I worked at Sam's Club. Costco is like Sam's Club but not evil. Costco is good for, among other things: terrifying amounts of chocolate, inexpensive hot dogs, and cheap(er) gasoline. You need both your Costco card and your credit/debit card to operate the gas pumps there. (Knowing which side of the vehicle your gas tank is on is strictly optional, judging by the number of people who get in the wrong line, shrug, and pull the nozzle all the way over. The security tapes would make a great comedy vid sped up and with the right music.) So I stuffed the cards in my cardigan pocket when I was done with them...

... and apparently they slipped out. I had a merry half-hour or so of searching the car, calling Costco, and heading for home when I couldn't locate them before the next planned stop. Argh. I did find them (I was giving myself until 10am Monday morning before calling my credit union, as that was when they open) ... in the driver's door pocket. Hooray, physics. I sort of suspected they'd be there, but the parking lot light was pretty shitty, and I didn't want to risk them falling actually out unseen.

Clothing: I have an eternal battle with clothing, and always seem to be short on one piece. I tend to wear "uniforms" -- it just cuts down on the number of decisions I have to make when I'm already critically short of brain. (Weirdly, I can be entirely bubbleheaded about food/clothing and still be safe to drive, because that engages an entirely different set of skills.) The current lineup: Black Tevas, knee-high black compression stockings, long skirt (which would ideally be black, but blue-floral and loud-pink-and-green-carnation-print-on-black have entered the lineup), black shirt, black light cardigan, glasses (always), and braid with (usually) three elastics.

I had most recently been short on black shirts, but some timely finds (helloooo lightweight long rayon/spandex! Hellooo, ribbed tank top!) have put me to rights there for a while. Perhaps I can finally lose the formerly-black ribbed short-sleeve sweaters that have faded to brown -- or perhaps I can experiment with re-dyeing, because the fabric is sound. I will have to go through my shirts and toss things. The prospect fills me with a certain amount of glee.

Most of my hair elastics are the thick black fiber-covered no-metal kind that you can get in very large numbers, sometimes on a ring. I have been branching out a bit, and now have fiber-covered neon rainbow, and also some silicone ones. I have discovered that I can only use the silicone elastics at the very end of the braid: they grip very tightly, and the elastic next to my head needs to be able to slip, in order that hairs not be yanked out of my head or otherwise unpleasantly pulled upon. But they are perfect for the end of the braid.

I have also been wearing nail polish more often. Today it is black with purple-and-blue glitter (small purple, larger blue) and a clear top coat. Revlon Top Speed 890 Black Magic; Pure Ice Look My Way 1016; Sally Hansen Insta-Dri 3204.