They're late. My brand new dishwasher went on the fritz after we had a power surge or outage or something. Not having a working dishwasher can really impact one's schedule. In fact, our schedules have been so full, we didn't manage to get a maintenance tech scheduled for about 2-3 weeks after it went down. I know this is their MO, but it still pisses me off that a "scheduled" repair means the guy is supposed to show up somewhere within a 4 hour time span. 4 hours? In this day and age? C'mon people. Now I do want my dishwasher fixed, but can't you be a little more precise than that? My "appointment" was for some time between 8am and 12pm. After a long week of inadequate sleep, I was really enjoying laying in bed, but when 8am hit I had to get up because there was the outside chance that I would be the first stop on this person's route.

8:30

I'm wanting a shower. No dice, have to be there to answer the door. Guess I should feed the animals.

9:30

I'm distracted enough catching up on my Bloglines.

10:30

All caught up and beginning to feel the cabin fever. I'd scheduled other things in my day dependent on when this person is done. I guess I'll read over some of the blog posts/articles I'd stashed away for when I had more time and focus.*I know I don't have more focus, and it's anybody's guess if I have more time right now

11:00

Phone call! Maybe an "I'm on my way" update? Nope. Just a friend with whom I'd scheduled to get together with this evening. I decide to try out Backpack. It's pretty nifty and I really dig their implementation of ajax niceties.

11:30

I'm done migrating my tasklists into Backpack. So.... I'm at a loss. I fiddle with the stylesheet for my comments section a bit.

11:53

Ok, seriously. What's up? I could have been back from 9 holes at EastMoreland golf course and I can't play worth squat! You have seven minutes, dude. You'd best be knocking on my door.

12:15

I start writing this post.

It's 12:45. Still waiting.

Update

2:45

Knock knock. And 10 minutes and four button pushes later, the dishwasher works. And all I had to give up was 7 hours of my weekend!

For posterity, if you happen to own a Whirlpool Quiet Partner I (model DU1050XTPQ3) and the light above the Start button*Or was that the Cancel button is blinking, all you need to do is reboot the internal computer by:

1. Pressing the Hi-Temp Wash button
2. Pressing the Heated Dry button
3. Pressing the Hi-Temp Wash button again
4. Pressing the Heated Dry button again
5. Waiting a second while the system reboots

While waiting, maybe send a thought my way. After all, you could have just wasted 7 hours for that knowledge. </grumble>

Ever since I was young, I've associated certain colors with numbers. I wonder if the little fridge magnets when I was a kid happened to be uniformly allocated, number to color. Nonetheless, when I think about certain colors, their numeric value is part of my "mental meta data" for it. Mine are:

• White = 1
• Yellow = 2
• Orange = 3
• Red = 5
• Green = 7
• Purple = 8
• Black = 10

I asked Heidi if she did the same thing, and she confessed, but her colors were different. What was so amusing about the discussion was the profound hubris we each had about our pairings. "Brown isn't two! How could you even think that?" It simply wasn't up for debate which color was which number. It just was. I find that my associations of yellow=2,orange=3, and red=5 to be particularly strong. The others I might entertain suggestions, but just for the sake of fairness. 2, 3 and 5, though, are strictly not up for discussion. Do you have your own associations?

So the other day something dawned on me. One of those things that I've always known, but never noticed that it's kinda weird: Which side of something is the left and which the right depends on whether it is animate. When you're standing in front of Bob, facing each other, his right side and your right side aren't on the same side. However, as you stand facing, say, and armoire, its right side is on your right. As you perceive things that have some semblance of a "front", the left and right are swapped if the subject is endowed with its own capacity for perception. How funny is this? You are blind folded and put in front of something (or someone) that is "facing you", then are told to point at the object's right side. Now I know my right from my left, but it turns out this isn't such an easy question! I haven't lost sleep over this, but the whole thing gets pretty murky when you consider

• things naturally without arms, such as snakes
• things where the physical norms are askew, like flounder
• "to the right of X" vs "to X's right" vs "X's right Y"*"5 feet to the armoire's right" seems odd, but "the armoire's right door" doesn't
• statues of animate things
• ...a statue of a flounder to the left—I mean right...uhm—of a statue of a person

I'm pretty sure I'm still right handed, even though I write with the hand that's on your left. Weird.

I haven't seen my wife in almost two weeks. What's worse is that she's been home for the last half of it. We're both incredibly busy, and our schedules haven't crossed much at all. Yesterday she left before I woke up and got home after I went to bed. Recently we've at least had the time to give each other a hug or kiss in parting, but conversation (let alone QT) has been out of the question. Engaging in exhausted rhetoric a couple hours past our respective bed times isn't exactly making the most of each other's company. I had another horribly long and tiring day at work today, and though she got home shortly after I did, we were both basically zombies. We ate dinner together and exchanged a few words. Now she's in the other room playing the piano. She can't really play, so she's finding the keys to old classic tunes. It's like watching a movie where the main character is sequestered in solitude, their every slowed movement betraying their quiet desperation. Except we're each watching the other in that same movie. She's even providing the sound track, though I'm not sure if it's for her or me. "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" never sounded so morose. I really miss her.