Seeking cleaning advice

I didn't mention it in April, but I got myself a little present that has become one of my favorite things ever: a reusable iced coffee cup. I love iced coffee; I hate throwing out all of those plastic sippy cups. This has been fantastic.

However, I noticed at the beginning of July that my drinks were starting to taste "off." I wash the cup daily, but running soapy water through the straw wasn't cutting it, so I bought a tiny cleaning brush to clean out the straw, and that helped. But now, 3 weeks later, I'm still finding it hard to get the cup as clean as I want. I scrub the threads and the seals with a toothbrush, but there just seems to be gunk or residue that I can't get off.

As far as I can tell, this isn't a problem with the cup. I always have this problem with drink containers: water bottles, travel mugs, and so forth, especially ones that have threads near a drinking surface. I don't have this problem with regular glass and stoneware - I've had the same cups and mugs at home for years. But the travel containers seem to accumulate ickiness, and I can really only get a couple of months of use out of them before it starts to affect the taste of the drink. I does seem like one bottle every 4 months is still an improvement over throwing out 100 disposable bottles in the same period, but I can't recycle the reusable ones. So I feel a little frustrated.

How do you clean your water bottle?

And then you'll be sorry...

Yesterday evening, I tried the "all you can eat" sushi special at Manna Sushi in Arlington. When I mentioned to people that this was to be my first "all you can eat" sushi experience, they all warned me to be careful. "I never eat all-I-should-eat" said one friend. "Rice expands in your stomach" said several others. Even my dining companions warned me.

But no, I had to show off. I had to send back the waitress for one more heaping plate of fishy goodness.

As a result, I spent a good portion of last night sprawled out immobilized on the couch, in definite discomfort. The fishes, they got me. Ouch.

My dining companions will also be pleased to hear that I later discovered that I had laughed sushi rice into my nasal cavity. I didn't realize this until blowing my nose later in the evening. That's how uncomfortable I was.

I never learn.

Diary: June 2010

June is pretty exciting for me. June is my birthday. June is when I traditionally take vacation (to make sure I'm off campus during commencement, which is loud, invasive, and generally hellish). June is when strawberries become cheap and plentiful. What's not to like about June?

Unfortunately, as June came in, I got sick for the first time in what felt like forever. At first, I thought it was allergies. But it was pretty clearly a cold after a couple of days, and I spent most of my traditional Commencement Week Staycation* in bed, instead of reading in my hammock.

My birthday this year was an exceedingly good time. We went to Mooo for a lovely dinner, and LimeLight Stage and Studios for karaoke. This is my second time at LimeLight, and I really think I need to find a better karaoke venue. It seems like it should be awesome, but I haven't been really happy with either experience. Perhaps the biggest disappointment is the fact that the software that they use for the music stutters. It gets hung up, and it's got a really terrible user interface. It's just not good. Mooo, however, was spectacular, and I can't recommend it enough.

I also ended up with a new Kindle 2 in June, due to some awesomeness on Grayskale's part. I still love my first generation Kindle, but I've moved over to the Kindle 2 for most of my reading, because the battery life is better, and it seems to get better reception for downloads. It's pretty awesome.

Health Update: I'm largely recovered from the foot drop. By the end of June, I was only wearing the foot brace for long walks, and it was hard to remember to do my physical therapy because things felt pretty OK. I'm still not back to doing the stairs at Porter Square station every day, but I'm about ready to tackle them again.

* I am by no means advocating the use of the word Staycation. It's ugly and awful and I hate it. But it was concise here.

I can sleep when I'm dead ... or when I have to work

I don't know why, but it seems to be consistent:

On workdays, I set the alarm for 6:15 and nearly always sleep until almost 7:30. I just keep pounding the snooze alarm until the cats lose patience. Even once I get up, I'm groggy for a couple of hours. This usually gets me about 6-7 hours of sleep. On days when I am not working, I seem to wake up consistently before 7 am, and can't go back to sleep. I am fairly alert, and want to get up and do things, even if I stayed up fairly late the night before. Last night, for example, I got about 4 hours of sleep. I'm hoping I'll be able to take a nap this afternoon, because otherwise my weekly Rock Band singing will be interrupted by yawns.

Of course, now that I'm up and dressed, "want to do things" has gotten a lot less ambitious. When I was still horizontal, "want to do things" included weeding the back yard, washing the dishes, and cleaning the bathroom. Now it mostly involves puttering on the internet and reading a book. Maybe I should try to grab that nap now...

***

Edited at 10:55am: So, the nap didn't happen, but an hour-plus of weeding did. Additionally, I went through the backlog of junk mail, and found a cash back check from my credit card dated 2 weeks ago. Glad I didn't shred that. I'd say it was a nice surprise, but I had to request the damn thing. I just forgot. D'Oh!

Blog-worthy

In the May Summary, I said

I think "stuff worth blogging about" is a big enough topic that I should give it a separate post

It only now occurs to me how "meta" that is.

Anyway. I give my blog posts a lot more credit than I think they're due, at this point. I used to write posts because I knew they would start a conversation. Of course, that's back when I was posting on LiveJournal, where my blog wasn't so much a "blog" as part of a really slow chat. So, I thought very little of writing one-line posts, or posts about nothing in particular. Now, I feel like my posts have to stand on their own a lot more. I'm unlikely to get comments on them, and if I do, they're often delayed by several days. That's not a quick enough turnaround to get two people commenting at each other, which made for some of my favorite parts of keeping a blog on LiveJournal.

So, for lack of a running commentary worth reading, I feel like the post itself has to be worth reading. And that feels like a mighty tall order to live up to in the time I have available for writing blog posts (also shorter than was available Back In the LiveJournal Days). I think FaceBook and Twitter have taken up some portion of the conversational aspect of LJ that I missed. The FaceBook Fuzzy Feelings I wrote about last week are certainly related to the way that posts are more rewarding when they get comments. This is coming off as a blatant cry for attention, and it's not meant that way (at least, not more so than any other blog post is).

At least on FaceBook, I don't feel like I'm setting each post out into the wilderness to fend for itself with nothing more than a can of beans and a pocketknife wrapped in a handkerchief and tied to a makeshift walking stick. It's more like I'm sending it off to a group home where it can drool on itself and make a couple of ashtrays until I remember to visit. It will be supervised, and not much is expected of it. I'm going to cut this analogy off before I feel any guiltier about it, but I think you see where I'm going. The things I write on the internet are my children, and I knew I wasn't cut out to be a parent.

Early morning vignette

Dan blearily stares at a screen...

Huh. Is it supposed to stay the same for this long? Maybe there's something wrong with it. Do I need to be doing something with it. Huh. That's weird. If I shift my eyes this way, it looks like the screen is moving. It still hasn't changed. I bet there's something wrong with it. Wait, if I move my head and my eyes, it shifts a different way. That's weird. So wait, what am I looking at here. I don't think I'm doing anything to the display. This must be a television. This is a really boring show. Wait, did it just change? I can't tell. I feel like it just changed, but now it's staying still. Hm. There's no keyboard under my fingers. This is definitely a television. This show is really boring...

It took me a solid two minutes to realize I was staring at my alarm clock. I kid you not.

That fake fuzzy feeling

My birthday is probably the only day I really like having a FaceBook account.

I'm not that great at remembering people's birthdays myself, but I probably hit over 50% of my Facebook friends (who have a birthday listed) with a "Happy Birthday" wall comment. So, on my birthday, I get email notifications of wall posts all day long, many from people I've barely spoken to (but who are far more committed to FaceBook than I am). Anyway, it strikes me as a little sad that I actually do feel more "loved" based on the FB notifications on my birthday.

Not that I don't feel awesome from the things that actually take effort, the things my wonderful friends do (or put up with) because it's my birthday. Getting a monkey card from my mother, a comic book from my sister, the REALLY funny and inappropriate card from my coworkers, these are all great too. It's nice to feel like maybe, just maybe, I'm making more people happy than I'm pissing off, on the balance.

Still, the fact that the zero-effort, could totally do if I was a shut-in, facebook fuzzies have an effect at all bothers me. I wish they didn't, but I can't pretend that I don't get a little smile when each of the little notifications comes in. Yes, oh classmate from 2007, it is great to hear from you, and I'm so happy that you noticed my birthday on the FaceBook home page! Except, I kind of am. Every time someone notices me and doesn't remove me from their "friends", that feels like some kind of win.

I'm partying tonight, and wearing my karaoke hat to work. And my friendly local convenience store gave me free coffee. So far, it's a good birthday.