Archive for December, 2004

Doodads

Saturday, December 18th, 2004

Strange doodads keep appearing in my bathroom.

The first one I noticed shortly after we moved in. It was on the counter just to the right of the sink in the main bathroom. It's a shiny metal bar, 2 or 3 inches long, with a hook at one end and what looks like a small flathead screwdriver on the other. I wondered around for a while with it in my hand trying to figure out where it had come from and what it was for. I was unenlightened, so put it in my junk tin and forgot about it.

Until today. Today, in exactly the same place in the main bathroom, on the counter just to the right of the sink, was another doodad, exactly the same as the previous one but dulled rather than shiny. For a moment I thought it was the previous one and that I had forgotten to put it in my junk tin but then I remembered putting it in the junk tin. I emptied the contents of said tin on the floor and rooted around until I found the first doodad. I now have two!

Gennie claims to know nothing about these. She says she found the second one on the floor of the main bathroom this morning and put it on the counter. I'm sure it wasn't on the floor before - I vacuumed the entire house the other day and I would have noticed it.

I am now convinced the universe (or the house) is playing a cosmic joke on me. Is this something that happens to homeowners like the proliferating walls I mentioned in a previous post? I am reminded of the bit about ratchet screwdrivers from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy:

Very few things actually get manufactured these days, because in an infinitely large Universe, such as the one in which we live, most things one could possibly imagine, and a lot of things one would rather not, grow somewhere. A forest was discovered recently in which most of the trees grew ratchet screwdrivers as fruit. The life cycle of the ratchet screwdriver is quite interesting. Once picked it needs a dark dusty drawer in which it can lie undisturbed for years. Then one night it suddenly hatches, discards its outer skin that crumbles into dust, and emerges as a totally unidentifiable little metal object with flanges at both ends and a sort of ridge and a hole for a screw. This, when found, will get thrown away. No one knows what the screwdriver is supposed to gain from this. Nature, in her infinite wisdom, is presumably working on it.

Any ideas where this came from or what it is for? Prizes for the funniest suggestion.

Radio over the wireless!

Saturday, December 18th, 2004

Right now I'm listening to a repeat (the BBC's "listen again" feature) of a repeat (BBC Radio 7's "Classic I'm Sorry, I Haven't a Clue") streamed via Real Audio over my house wireless network. Somehow it seems so very modern and also very old-fashioned to be able to listen to the radio in bed like this.