Suzie Homemaker

My alarm rang this morning at the standard time - 7 am. I rolled over, flopped one arm over to hit the snooze, and only managed to scatter my stack of tissues to the floor, where they drifted down to cover the book I fell asleep reading last night. Dune Messiah - Frank Herbert for the win!

But the magic of Saturday is that you get to let the standard time come and go. I went back to sleep, beautifully, and didn't get back up until nearly lunch. I spent all this afternoon getting my home in order. Well, home is a generous term. I live in a graduate dorm in a double suite, which means I have one room of my own attached to a bathroom and kitchenette I share with a roommate.

But you know what? It's my own place, and I like it to be in order. So I did the dishes, cleaned the bathroom, did the laundry, updated my finances, and cleaned off my desk. Then it was time to vacuum.

I borrowed out the vacuum from the front desk from the bored desk worker, and lugged it back to my room. The wheels on this one squeaked, so the whole floor heard me going by.... squee, squee, squee...

And it didn't work. It ran over the feathers on my floor (favorite down comforter has a hole from when I sat down with a wire stripper in my back pocket) and just spit them back out. The cracker crumbs just got minced into smaller pieces.

So I took out my red tool bag, grabbed my drill and sat down in the middle of the feathers and cracker crumbs. I am an expert in vacuum disassembly - I used to fix the vacuums in my undergrad dorm. I isolated the problem, removed the broken belt, and put everything back together. If it was my own vacuum, I would probably have a screw left over, but since it wasn't mine I made sure I put everything back.

I lugged the whole thing back downstairs (squee, squee, squee... shoulda hit that with some WD-40 while I had it open....). I handed it back to the desk worker, and then placed the offending belt on the counter.

"You're gonna need to order another one of these." I said. I heard a surprised laugh from behind me, and I turned around to find a group of three boys waiting in the lobby to go to dinner. "Only at World's Best School..." I head one of them say.

Apparently they'd never seen a girl in hot shorts returning a vacuum with repair instructions.