burun wrote:I had no hot water this morning so I could not take a shower, which put crimp in my day at the outset.

boo, hiss.

I used to live in a very old house with a bunch of other musicians/creative types. I was often the first one up, only to discover that the outflow pipe for the house had backed up (I don't know why this happened so often, but the landlord never did anything about it until we'd moved out) and flooded the room with the water heater, drowning the pilot light. I would have to relight the pilot light, then take a cold water shower and hustle off to work. The bathroom was often arctic, too, because the same heater sent hot water to the radiators. If I hadn't reeked of cigarette smoke and alcohol, I would have skipped the whole ordeal.

Later, when I got home from work, I would tell my roommates that this was happening and they'd often say "Well, the water was hot when *I* woke up... [bong hit]"

And then I would be forced to scream at them "THAT'S BECAUSE YOU DON'T HAVE A JOB AND SLEEP UNTIL NOON, YOU FUCK!!"

Somehow I managed not to kill them all. I do remember once, we were soooo broke, like Young-Ones-Catch-the-Lentils broke, when one of my roommates woke me up at 4am saying "MAKE SOME COFFEE, MAKE SOME COFFEE," and I switched on the light to discover that he was standing in the bedroom door with TWO trashbags full of doughnuts. He had happened to walk by the Dunkin Donuts on his way home and caught the guy as he was throwing out the last batch of doughnuts of the previous day.

Yes. Two 30 gallon trashbags full of doughnuts. 60.... gallons.... of.... doughnuts. Everyone who lived in that house was getting by on less than $450 a month. We were all starving. I have never been so sick... and happy...

In other appliance news: I put a belt on the drier last night. Did it meself after going to the appliance store and buying a belt. A clothes drier is a pretty simple machine, I have discovered. Motor/blower, heater, barrel, box. Hardly anything to it.

dontfeartheringo wrote:In other appliance news: I put a belt on the drier last night. Did it meself after going to the appliance store and buying a belt. A clothes drier is a pretty simple machine, I have discovered. Motor/blower, heater, barrel, box. Hardly anything to it.

You are far too handy. Fancy coming over and fixing my drier? I have a cubboard full of hobnobs...

The donuts story reminds me of when I had no money a few years ago. My flatmate and I got paid from our crappy jobs after not eating for a few days at the end of the month. We cooked hugest amount of macaroni cheese you can imagine and then started eating. 30mins later we both vomitted it all back up again... lesson learned - you need to ease an empty stomach back on to food.

And my details for today - This morning walking to work I decided I needed to get away. London is really getting to me at the moment - it's a great city, but sometimes it's just the most depressing place on earth. So at lunch I went to the travel centre and I bought a ticket to New Zealand. HOME. Man it felt so good to do that... just knowing that I will see my family in 4 weeks has made me feel so much better.

B_M_L wrote:

dontfeartheringo wrote:In other appliance news: I put a belt on the drier last night. Did it meself after going to the appliance store and buying a belt. A clothes drier is a pretty simple machine, I have discovered. Motor/blower, heater, barrel, box. Hardly anything to it.

You are far too handy. Fancy coming over and fixing my drier? I have a cubboard full of hobnobs...

My UK friends also noticed that I can't pass a broken thing without at least TRYING to fix it. Last time I was in the UK, I fixed two people's internet connections and replaced an alternator in a 2000 Peugeot.

The Puegeot was the easy part. What the fuck is up with BT's high speed "service"?

I imagine that, should I be lucky enough to get old, I am going to be that old guy who putters around with a set of wrenches in his trunk looking for stuff to do. My grandfather was like that before his eyes went. I spent much of my childhood being told to hold the flashlight.

On the bus on the way home, I rang the bell to get off at my stop. This very old, shrivelled but affable-looking fella got up behind me and pressed the bell again. He addressed me with a very thick Jamaican accent:

"Godda ring dee bell twice, otherwise you don't know if dee bus driver gonna stop".

"Oh, right," I said, smiling idiotically.

"Dey is fucking nuttaz, every last one of dem", he said emphatically. He followed this with a short maniacal laugh. I was kind of glad to get off the bus.

dontfeartheringo wrote: What the fuck is up with BT's high speed "service"?

Yeah - I think both the "high speed" and the "service" part of BT's internet department is open for debate.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/lifestyle ... dChannel=0

dontfeartheringo wrote:
Yes. Two 30 gallon trashbags full of doughnuts. 60.... gallons.... of.... doughnuts. Everyone who lived in that house was getting by on less than $450 a month. We were all starving. I have never been so sick... and happy...

Back in the college days, we knew the locations of the Frito Lay and Hostess dumpsters in my city and they were pretty close to the apartment. We'd raid them every so often. One night stands out in particular because at Frito Lay we scored about fifty bags of chips that were not even near expiration and then when we got to Hostess my friend Chris started to rummage and all of a suddden was screaming at the top of his lungs. Someone had left a dead deer head in the dumpster.

I have vivid memories of every cupboard and shelf in our kitchen loaded with bags of chips. Good eatin'.

Today was the usual Friday "Dunkin Donut" day at work. Except this time, they had ginger old fashioned glazed donuts for the Christmas Holiday.

I ate two of them.

El Protoolio wrote:Today was the usual Friday "Dunkin Donut" day at work. Except this time, they had ginger old fashioned glazed donuts for the Christmas Holiday.

I ate two of them.

I admire your restraint.

the video (created by someone on this forum and posted in some other thread) featuring battles synched over saturday night fever (found at http://youtube.com/watch?v=DMr63wFgwIg) having piqued my interest in this band i went to my local record stores in search of a record.

i searched in the "rock" section of the first shop, which only carries records: no placeholder.

"do you have anything by battles?"
"it's in electronic...do you think that's the right place for it?" the owner responds.
"where do you put tortoise?" i replied, intimating that they ought to be found in the same section.
"experimental."

El Protoolio wrote:Today was the usual Friday "Dunkin Donut" day at work. Except this time, they had ginger old fashioned glazed donuts for the Christmas Holiday.

I ate two of them.

Those gingerbread donuts will be my downfall.

They are so awesome. Spicy! Like gingerbread should be.