August 2, 2000

of kitchen sinks

earlier in our story...

Jazz came by the apartment after we went to Ti Couz, courtesy of Tara's car. (In case anybody's wondering, I nicknamed my friend "Tara" because every time I think of her, I also think of the massive "Gone with the Wind" poster she used to have on her bedroom wall. This is rather beside the point, of course; still, it's interesting to note that she sort of exudes a Southern belle feminine charm, which only goes to show that there's still some poetic justice left in the world. And if you didn't know that Tara was the name of the plantation in Gone With The Wind, join the club.)

Anyway, as I say, Jazz came by the apartment after we went to Ti Couz, courtesy of Tara's car, and then ended up using our bathroom. Smurfette was already in bed; the apartment was dark and still, and not a creature was stirring. I puttered around in my room for a few minutes, trying to get my computer to boot up.

After a few minutes, I heard the roommate's door creak open. I was busy playing with Quirk, who didn't feel like being played with; a few seconds after that, Smurfette was standing in my door, sleepy-eyed and blinking and glamorous in a flannel nightshirt and pants.

"There's a woman in our bathroom," she informed me, hesitantly: just in case I wasn't aware of the fact.

My cue was to scream and call the police.

"I know," I told her. Smurfette looked relieved and twinkled at me.

"Okay. Just checking. How was your evening? Did you go dancing?"

We chatted for a few moments longer, while Quirk licked dolefully at my fingers; after a few moments, I became aware of Jazz's plaintive voice, calling me.

"Yuhri? Uh. Yuhri--? Could you come here a second? (Crap.)"

She-Ra and I poked our heads around the corner -- and around the corner after that, and the next one after that -- to investigate.

Jazz was standing in the bathroom, holding the sink. She'd been brushing her teeth, or about to; a toothbrush was waggling out between her fingers, but her primary focus of attention was the sink.

Which she was holding.

Up.

"I swear I don't know what happened," she gibbered, somewhere between apology and hilarity. "I tried to turn it on and it ... it came off the wall."

Smurfette and I stared at it. Then we stared at Jazz. Then we stared at the sink again. There were pipey things coming out of the back, dangling, and a fat U-bend pipe that was swiveling helpfully with her shifts in weight.

We started to giggle.

"Jazz, meet Smurfette. Smurfette, meet Jazz." It seemed as good a time to make introductions as any; being encumbered by a sink made it difficult for Jazz to shake hands.

"I really am a nice person," Jazz protested, and wobbled with the plumbing. "This is not a good first impression."

"We should be able to turn off the water down here," Smurfette said optimistically, while I snickered helplessly in the background. She bent and fiddled around with the water wheel on the wall pipe, while I mocked Jazz for having pulled the sink off the wall.

"I don't know, I don't know!" Jazz wailed under questioning, harassed and guilty and giggling despite herself. "How was it stuck on the wall to begin with? It doesn't look like there are any screws. It wasn't bolted in or something--? Take a look and ... back there."

The eventual assessment was that the sink actually hung on the wall, using two little metal hooks. No bolts. Nothing stable. Just hung. Dangled, more like, off the wall. With a little bit of effort, we managed to get the sink back on to its little ledge, somewhat crooked, but none the worse for wear.

"I feel awful," Jazz apologized, later. "I swear, I'm normally a really good houseguest."

Smurfette and I both waved the apologies away. "What can you expect from a tenement?"

Day two ended, and all was well with the world. Day two was made notable by the fact that I got a telephone in the early half of the day, followed by a computer shortly after. The fact that ICS, the Computer Systems support, wasn't the one that supplied the computer, takes some of the shine out of my triumph. The admin took pity on me and scrounged up a computer from a neighboring cubicle. It's a Dell with a massive screen and a superbly unremarkable system : Microsoft NT, I think it is. Still, it was a computer.

"I'm not supposed to do this," she told me, "but you need a computer. It's ridiculous. You need one to work."

...which, it turns out, wasn't quite true. On day three, I did quite a bit of work. I ran around and made meetings; I sat down and talked to people, learned more about what was going on, and hooked up some disparate entities so they could pick each others brains. When I reported to my Director, I was told I was doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing.

Always nice to hear. The glow carried me through the rest of the day.

Day three has been made remarkable in that I now have internet access, if not necessarily inTRAnet. I can't get my email. I can't get onto the company system and do anything remotely useful on their information sites, which aren't accessible otherwise.

But.

I'm getting there.