Towels and baths: A cautionary tale

Nov 3: Doh. I left home and forgot what Douglas Adams called "about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have," my towel. So here I was in a foreign country without my towel. I went to a store similar to Walmart and bought two subpar towels because it was convenient and cheap. I knew it wouldn't be great, but I didn't know it would be annoying. My first step was to wash my towel so I could use it. Little did I know it was going to shed about 1/4 of it's fluffy bits onto my brand new jeans. Most of my other clothes were unscathed during the wash incident of NZ09, but the jeans definitely bore the brunt of the attack. The two items, my jeans and my towel, actually came out of the wash tangled together. So I hung up everything to dry and lamented the transmogrification of my jeans. Later, I mounted a calculated counter-attack on the jeans with tape because I didn't have a lint roller on hand. This took care of most of the fluffy pieces, but there were still unfortunate remnants of the towel blitzkrieg. I had foolishly assumed that the pants party in the washer was the going to be the only towel incident. After my bath this morning I was drying myself with the towel and I realized it was attacking me like the jeans. It turns out that I was sloughing off skin and replacing it with blue fluffy towel bits. It was really annoying. So I threw both the towels back in the laundry for another wash, but this time I knew that they shouldn't be washed with any other articles of clothing. I can only hope that two washes is what it took to remove the fuzzies. I'm never skimping on towels ever again, no matter how desperate I get. So cautionary tale # 2: Never leave home without your towel and if you do, buy one quickly, but spend the a respectable amount of time and money picking out a nice towel and spend a tidy sum on it or else your towel will get get offended and slough fuzzy bits onto you and your togs.

When I was younger I used to take baths, but then I grew up and didn't take them anymore. I don't really enjoy sitting around baths or I don't want to waste time lollygagging in a bath. I guess I just feel that showers get you cleaner and take less time. As Chandler said "you just sit there stewing in your own filth." I don't think that phrase bothers me, but it's always been in the back of my mind since I first saw that episode of Friends. Background: Flatmate John fell through the wall of the shower one evening and broke it. So the bathtub is the only place to wash these days. It's annoying because I don't feel clean and there are two faucets, one for cold and one for hot. There is no middle ground, the water will come out of the left faucet and be really cold or the right faucet and be scalding hot. That means I can't wash easily via the stream from the faucet. So I've been bathing reluctantly, but often and throughly, in a bath for the last week. My fingers are crossed for the day when the shower is fixed. Though I suppose it could be worse and we could have no running water and have to bathe in a river behind the house.

Just to clarify a point, I'm living in the house, but I'm not actually renting the Room of Doom. I'm splitting electricity and internet, but I don't technically have a room yet. While flatmate John is off vacationing, I've been given leave to crash in his room. So my faithful sleeping bag and I are now in John's room for awhile. I have decided to name the sleeping bag Tauntaun. It's a good sleeping bag and I thought it ought to have an awesome name. When I'm cold I can get inside my Tauntaun!

Addendum: I just looked up tauntaun and the first Google hit was a sleeping bag that's shaped like a tauntaun called the Tauntaun sleeping bag, complete with a plush light saber zipper. My original thought was apparently not so original.

For those of you lacking the Star Wars background, a tauntaun is a beast that the Rebels use to ride on while stationed on the planet Hoth. Visually they look like a cross between a ram and a t-rex. Han Solo was riding a tauntaun while running patrols and looking for Luke Skywalker. Eventually he finds Luke Skywalker, but his tauntaun dies from the cold. Without the tauntaun, Han can't get back to the base and thus they are both stuck outside in a blizzard. So Han Solo takes Luke Skywalker's lightsaber, slices open the recently dead tauntaun and puts Luke inside the beast so he won't freeze to death.

On another side note, I was listening to my itunes on random while writing this blog and during the Star Wars paragraph, the song "Main Title and Ice Planet Hoth" came on from the Star Wars the Empire Strikes Back Soundtrack. Coincidence? I think not, I think the force is with this blog. It's really late and that's why I feel I can get away with that last statement. I'm leaving before the song ends!