Okay, so we've had one vote on what I'll write, so that is what I'll write about. Tomorrow. For now, it's very late. I have been cleaning my apartment for 2 days straight. Well, I call it cleaning, but it was much more like excavating. I literally had layers of junk in my bedroom. The drifts came up to my knees in places. It was truly horrible. But now my apartment is almost completely spotless. I had to go out and buy some bins to help keep peace and order, but it all seems to have worked out. It almost didn't, though.

I knew I had to buy something to put in my closet to hold my non-hanging clothes. I got out my tape measure and measured my closet's dimensions, carefully noting the size of the door in my notebook. Then I measured my bedroom door and my front door just to be sure that whatever I bought could fit past both, and I entered these measurements in my notebook as well. Right, ready to go. I went to the store, found the storage bins, and compared the dimensions to my notes. I finally found the perfect plastic container - it was a little plastic storage bin with 3 drawers, and it was just a little smaller than all the measurements I had taken for my doors. It would fit through them all without a problem. Yea for measuring. So with a little bit of struggle, I got my new storage bin on the shopping cart, got it up front, got it out the store, then got it to my car. And here is where I encountered a new problem.

Measure closet: check
Measure closet door: check
Measure bedroom door: check
Measure front door: check
Measure car door:

...


oops

Yeah, that was a slight oversight on my part. So at 9pm in the parking lot of a store in a strange city in Japan, I had to play around with geometry, physics, and other sciences. I'm fairly certain the theory of relativity went in there somewhere. I picked the box up, shoved it in sideways, which didn't work. I turned it on its side. Didn't work. I turned it upside down, shoved it optimistically, and it still didn't work. "Ah ha!" I thought. "The Trunk!" Didn't work. Meanwhile, I had around 5 young guys watching me from the front of the store. They weren't even disguising that they were laughing and talking about me and my struggles. Brilliant.

So hoping against hope, I dragged the thing out of its box, using my keys to cut tape when necessary. Sadly, it wasn't much smaller out of the box, but it had less inconvenient corners. I set it down, lowered my passengers seat all the way back, rearranged my car about 8 or 9 times, then pulled and shoved as hard as I could. It stuck for a few moments on something, but with a creak and groan, it eventually went in my car. After it was in, I got in and realized what it had been stuck on. Yea for flexible rear-view mirrors! Mine almost fell off, but proved to be made of stronger stuff than I thought. Woohoo! The door closed without so much as a hard shove, and I was finally ready to go. Good thing it was clear plastic, too, or I couldn't have seen out of the left side of my car.

Anyway, I just spent the last hour trying to shove the thing in my closet, which required quite a bit of rearrangement. And now I'm tired and going to bed. But I'm half-way finished with a long blog update. But this is all I'll write for now. Stupid cleaning. I was going to relax today and write my blog and catch up on emails; instead, I ended up doing laundry, washing all my floors, rearranging my tv room and bedrooms, and teaching an Adult Conversation Class. So much for my relaxing 4 day weekend. But I found a Laundromat that actually had hot water to wash clothes in (all the washing machines I’ve encountered so far only use cold water). I couldn’t pass up the chance to actually get my laundry really and truly clean-ish. Was it worth it? We’ll see how I feel when I wake up tomorrow.