You Weren't Doing Anything Next Week Anyways

So, all last week, I was at an ITIL Foundations course at the Mothership. (Which was initially supposed to be in February, I might add, and they kept shifting the date.) It was moderately stultifying--apparently there had been Special Requests to make the course longer because "it was too hard"--and it will probably come as no surprise to the Gentle Reader that I aced the test to obtain my certification.

Then there is Part II, the Intermediate course, which is specifically on Operational Support & Analysis (i.e., helldesk and friends). This finally ended up being rescheduled for three weeks following, i.e., the week of May 18th. This was a pain in my ass, since my final is that week, but I talked to my really excellent and cool professor and got it rescheduled for the 15th, i.e., the day after our last class.

Therefore, of course, last night, the person at the Mothership who is (mis-)arranging these courses sent mail saying:
I'm trying to fill a class of 12 for next week. Please let me know if you
can definately attend. The May 18 class is not confirmed. It may have to
be rescheduled if I can't get it confirmed by tomorrow.
[sic]

YES OF COURSE SOME FIFTEEN PEOPLE, MANAGERS UP THROUGH DIRECTORS, CAN DROP EVERYTHING ON A WEEK'S NOTICE. What in the hell? It can take two weeks' notice to get an hour of time on $OVERBOSS's schedule, and a few of the people in this course are at his level. A full week? Forget it.

o hai.

Hey lookie, I got the username I wanted on LJ. ^_^

- the artist otherwise known as syringavulgaris

Laundry day / see you there / underthings / tumbling

I've never had to use a laundromat before, believe it or not. I've been putting this confrontation off, Lord knows why, it's not actually that different from having coin-op-in-basement, and yet here was the avoidance behavior; but I need clean pants if I want to continue fighting evil this week, so.

This being the Upper East Side, there is a plethora of Chinese dry-cleaning/wash-fold-pay-by-the-pound establishments, but only one DIY location (as far as I can tell) in close range; it's one block down, one over. HOLY HELL, $2 FOR THE HALF SIZED WASHERS and $4 for the ones you can fit your comforter in. If it's not a big comforter. Oh dear oh dear. The dryers are 8 minutes for a quarter, as elibalin predicted, which might be okay depending on how sucky or un-sucky the dryers actually are; a question I will be able to report on in, oh, 20 minutes or so. Certainly the washers leave one's clothes more sodden than is quite right, which does not augur well.

It is possible (though I'm dubious) that it might not work out much more costly to take it all to the Here's My Clothes, Make Them Nice businesses, but the thought makes me twitch an awful lot. spride's recounted experience of "You drop off your clothes in a bag, they weigh them, they give you a form where you tick off temperature and whether you want bleach and whether you use fabric softener, and they toss it out and you get it all back nicely folded and two sizes smaller in a couple days" exactly meshes with my rampant fear-laden imagination, and I don't want people messing with my stuff. It could be argued that abandoning my unmentionables for forty minutes could also lead to unwanted results, but then they'd just be missing, not messed up.

I do not pretend this is a rational reaction, but it's what I've got to work with.