at the airport with nothing in my wallet

I planned it well: I have no money at all to exchange. I had some money in my wallet, including a ton of heavy change, so what I did was to pluck out W14,000—the exact amount needed for airport limousine bus fare—and dump the rest in a white envelope for John McCrarey's daughter-in-law as partial compensation for the gas, electricity, and water that I had used.

I left late, however: the damn washing machine chose that particular day and time to go all screwy with its timer. The washer's timer, I discovered, was untrustworthy to begin with, but today, in particular, it kept lingering and lingering while displaying "8 minutes remaining." After 30 minutes of waiting for 8 minutes to pass, I had enough, and turned the machine off in an attempt to pull the laundry out and let it hang-dry. No dice: despite being off (or "off," in this case), the machine's door remained locked, so I couldn't get at the laundry. Seeing that I was already late to catch the airport bus, I started the cycle up again, and simply left.

This is a terrible thing to do, especially with front-loading washers. Such washers are notorious for becoming mildewy all around the rubber ring that borders the door. Also, since the apartment's tenant won't be back for a few days, the damp laundry inside the washer is simply going to sit there, getting funkier and funkier. My apologies go out to John and his family for essentially leaving them an olfactory middle finger. When Daughter-in-Law returns, she'll need to clean the door's rim with an ammonia-based cleaner (like Windex) and wash a load of whites, this time with a good bit of bleach to clean out any other mildew growing in the washer's drum.* After that, she can re-wash the mildewy towels currently in the washer (they're colored, so it'd be bad to wash them with the bleach load).

John—you reading all this? Please pass the info along to the Missus and the D-i-L.

I've got less than an hour before I board. The check-in today was fairly painless, but took a while as the ticket agent tried to figure out how to check my bag all the way to DC (I'm not taking Asiana Airlines all the way to DC, and Alaska airlines, my connecting flight, doesn't have an obvious affiliation with Asiana). She figured it out, but I'll still have to claim the bag in Seattle to go through US Customs. She saw my 2PM departure time from SeaTac and told me that I'd probably have to run. To help me out, she shunted me from a rear seat to a forward seat on the Asiana flight, to give me a crucial extra minute or two when deplaning. Very considerate of her. At this point, I'm anticipating not making it to my flight, which means losing the ticket and having to purchase another. The only slots available, according to Orbitz.com, are overnight flights that arrive on Monday. Luckily, at YB, I'm off on Mondays, so I'll be able to arrive with a comfortable time margin. Let's hope. The next 24 hours are going to be a little crazy.

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*She'll have to be careful not to combine the bleach and the ammonia, unless she likes the odor of poisonous chlorine gas.


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