I like things the way I like them—exactly. I like being in my apartment with my things all where I put them last—these days, usually cleaned and neatly back in their rightful spots, but even before then, the crusty socks on the middle of the floor where I left them, dammit.
I like working on my (old) laptop rather than my fancy, light-as-Macbook-Air because it has all my stuff on it, all the way I like it, and I like it connected to my Logitech mouse, Apple wireless keyboard, and Cinema Display. (For a person who cries "poor" all the time, I have ridiculously nice equipment, but I'm miserly with soap, gasoline, and vacations.) (And we won't even get into how old my underwear is.)
Every once in a while, though, my likes run up against each other.
For example, I like really good paper and I like writing on it with a really nice fountain pen. But I burn through spiral notebooks like Liz Taylor did husbands, and crikey, have you priced them lately? Spiral notebooks or husbands, for that matter. Not cheap. So I have settled on cheap spiral notebooks with cheap, crappy paper that bleeds*—10 for $9.99—and a freebie ballpoint that won't. (although when I went to replace the cartridge, I discovered that the thing they say about no free lunches applies to pens, too.)
I also like to be cool—temperature-wise, not personality-wise, which I've given up on. It has not been possible thus far to secure air-conditioning for my apartment, and so when summer seizes this city each year, I'm faced with a dilemma: work in the place I really, really like, but suffer through the heat; or take my bidness to an outside location with air-conditioning.
I am writing this from my library. It is noisy—a Saturday—and it is crowded. People do...weird things here. If you want to use the toilet, you have to make eye contact with a stranger and ask them to watch your stuff, which can be awkward for shy introverts. Their dictionaries are non-horrible, but they can't touch my behemoth, Bertrand.
It is not ideal; it is not even close. (Well, actually, it is very close, and that part is awesome.) But it is cool and it is lit and it has shorty tables for tiny-legged people like me for to rest their exhausted, overheated selves and hammer out blog posts.
And after two weeks of >90ºF temperatures? In the spirit of the series, let's just say it that if it isn't exactly how I'd have it, it's exactly good enough.
xxx c
*UPDATE: Not to mention lackluster design and typeface choices. How did I leave off that gem? I blame the heat!
The skinny on, plus all previous 21-Day Salutes™.