I sincerely hope that the sore throat I started to get this morning continues backing off. I threw copious amounts of warm tea, grapefruit juice, and rest at it. We shall see. I so very much do not need to spend the Thanksgiving holiday sick. I plan to sew curtains then - a feat which I have never attempted before...

I *hate* shopping. It takes forever and even then I rarely even find what I went shopping for. Today I was out and about from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. Mostly. I was home in the middle for maybe half an hour. And I spent an hour eating lunch and reading and about 30 minutes at the library. So I was shopping for maybe 6 hours. For all that? I ended up with the fabric, thread, etc. necessary to make curtains, curtain rods, and... that's it. In SIX HOURS. Ugh. Granted I spent an inordinate amount of time picking fabric because I didn't have a strong idea of what I wanted going in. I also made short useless forays into Sports Authority (foam rollers much less expensive elsewhere) and Nordstrom Rack (walked out after 5 minutes because I didn't even want to contemplate trying on clothes). That is not 6 hours worth of activity. It just isn't. Where did my whole day go? Plus something about the lights or the air or the shopping experience makes me go brain dead and glassy eyed and tired even when there is no reason whatsoever that I should be tired since it was only 10 in the morning!

I'm not going to pretend that what I have written has been in any way scintillating, but I am proud of myself for, so far, posting every day. When I tried this last year I failed miserably. By day 3 or something like that... I have no new or exciting thoughts today because it is Friday and my brain is both fried and frozen. But next week I get the pilot light lit for my old inefficient wall heater, so that will solve one problem.

Okay, the blinds which have been precariously balanced in my bedroom window (I'm fairly certain they are the wrong width for the window - by only half and inch to an inch - so my landlord had jury-rigged a "solution" but they were always wobbly and couldn't be raised or lowered easily, etc.) gave up the ghost tonight. For now I have used thumbtacks and an old fitted sheet to cover the window. This weekend I get to look into alternate solutions.

Calling the landlord to ask him to do it would be a solution. But 1. it isn't really worth bothering him for something so small, 2. I am pretty sure he'd just put the same blinds up but even if he didn't, 3. I don't exactly trust any of his fixes. So far he has approached things with a sort of "least possible effort / money to get the job done, and by done I mean, at best, adequate" mindset. Which I can't exactly blame him for. But if I manage some curtains on my own it will be easy, I can make sure they actually fit the window, they could even keep the room warmer, and when I move out I can put the old jury-rigged blinds back up. Win all around for doing it myself.

Why Feminine Technologies Matter - part [whatever letter we are up to - f?]

I had much more to agree with in this section. First the author went through the history of our home storage habits as they changed through time. Short version - only rich people had 'stuff' that needed to be stored; then more people had 'stuff' so specialized storage came about; then people without servants had 'stuff' so storage moved around a bit so stuff was stored near where it was used and in closed off spaces instead of in the open. (Here's where it gets... iffy.) Women as housewives learned an efficient "filing system" for the family 'stuff' and so when businesses started needing to file papers women were pre-trained by life in general and thus the work could be called unskilled work and women could be paid very little to take on this professional role.

Honestly, I buy the "women were pre-trained by their roles in the household" argument a bit more when it came to sewing and other clothing-related jobs because I can see the direct comparison. I find it hard to make too strong of a connection between "filing" dishes in cupboards and towels and sheets in linen closets and filing papers in an office environment. The concepts are related, but not super strongly. In any case, the section ends with a charge that it is the invisible nature of women's mastery of the household filing system that makes it so difficult for the domestic duties to be split more equitably between spouses even today. I find that hard to relate to as well since my mother was no more likely to know where a certain item was in our house than my father was and I never really heard the whole "honey where is the [insert household item]" as a big part of my growing up years.

It might be interesting to look at this further as stuff has proliferated and overwhelmed us and some storage has moved out of the family's residence (sheds, rented storage spaces) and as in house storage has become so decorative and commercialized. The mere existence of something like The Container Store and the success of entertainment in the form of Clean Sweep, etc. says something further about our relationship with our 'stuff.' Of course, I find this interesting apart from any conclusions we might want to draw about gender although I am sure that would be a small part of it.

I promise I will get back to the STS stuff. Soon. But I am currently busy trying to avoid doing laundry for one more day (and what with the whole ushering tomorrow night I may even succeeed again!).

Scheduling problems are annoying. In the extreme. There are two things I would like very much to do this summer. It appears that it may only be possible to do one of them. Grrrrr... (And I seldom even bother trying to plan this far in advance so the fact that I am running into problems? Double-grrrr.)