Puzzle

Here's a kind of a puzzle. Logic and puzzles aren't really my thing, because I'm not naturally good at them. What I'm not naturally good at, I have to work at. What I have to work at had better pay me, or else it's not apt to happen. In any event, here's one puzzle which I cannot get away from, and it has to do with my daily routine to get ready for facing the day. I haven't been able to crack it yet, but you may find you can.

It's all about the order in which I do things. It's like the near-disaster of the Apollo 13 mission. At one point, it was necessary to figure out exactly what order in which the men in the capsule had to turn things back on to prevent calamity after they had powered down. That at least is my recollection, and I really have not watched the film since not too longer after it had come out. I at least think that it is pertinent to this problem.

Clean Getaway

A rare thing happened yesterday. It wasn't that I spent the whole day among friends, although that's not incredibly common. It wasn't even that I was at a baby shower (for the menfolk), although it was a first for me. No, the specific rare thing that I had happen was that I went about a whole day out of the house without showering. I know that's slovenly and unappealing to me, but rest assured that it was not by design.

The thing is that I had meant to get up a good couple hours before I needed to be out of the house. That is typical for me. I have the chance to shower and get ready at a relaxed pace, eating breakfast and getting my hair entirely dry before I even think about heading out. Well, for the second time in recent memory, I somehow slept through my alarm. I don't know how it happened. I had to have turned it off, and this after waking up a couple hours early and using the restroom.

Finger-Clipping Good

I've been acting in a small film recently. Since my scenes were shot on multiple days scattered over some two or so weeks, an issue of some importance has been to maintain continuity. When scenes are shot in that way, and out of order to boot, deliberate effort must be made to make sure that things shot on Tuesday match up to the way they were Thursday. If one's left arm is in a cast on the earlier day, then of course the same arm must be in a cast subsequently. That's probably more elementary than requires explanation, but it felt like I ought to say so anyway. What's been on my mind is continuity of a kind that has some impact on the rest of my life.

What's been easy has been my facial hair. The mustache is as long and full as it can be, so there's no issue there at all. A little trickier is the beard area. Since I haven't had two shooting days consecutive, it's been simple for me to shave every day except the day of the shoot, granting me a bit of stubble which helps my characterization of an ex- Confederate soldier out on the trail. Nothing was ever said that I had to do this, but it seemed like what I ought to do. If there were not days off between my days on set, I would have to figure out how to not shave all the way as I always do. I suppose an electric razor could do that, but I have never used them.

Cleaning Up Is Hard To Do/Yesterday Is Dead And Gone/Oh, I Believe In Yesterday

Lately, I have been doing rather well at being neat. After a long period of doing the bare minimum in all things housekeeping, I broke down and went to work on it. I had to clean the dishes in stages, as there were too many to dry them all at once. Once that was done, I cleaned up my room, and now can walk around it without fear of stepping in anything or tripping. The last thing was doing my laundry (for it had been a little too long). Now it's only a matter of keeping the ball rolling.

Going back to Tuesday: after I wrote my last post, I found myself out helping my roommate providing for the continued availability of clean water in our apartment. This brought us first to Target and second to Rite Aid (a drugstore). There have been two things I've been looking for, and have not had any luck. The first is an ink cartridge for my printer. For whatever reason, it's near impossible to get them locally. One can always order them online, which makes me think that virtually all the cartridges are on a single place, with just a handful physically delivered to other places without bought by a customer first. I have no desire to pay shipping charges for something I ought to be able to get here, and so remain without a cartridge.

The other thing was mustache wax. As relatively few human beings cultivate mustaches, the paraphernalia for such facial hair is very much a niche product. I had bought a tube of the wax years ago, but did not use it regularly until recently. It had just run out, and I was checking every store I went into in a bid to find some. I had no luck with this until last night, when I finally did find some. I was especially happy that the wax came with a little mustache comb, as my own had gone missing. Now I have the wax, the little comb and the scissors. Things are beginning to go my way.