Like many, my worst slacking happened in college. I was a Very Good Kid in high school and during freshman year of undergrad, but sophomore year I discovered professors who would let you cut a certain number of classes without it affecting your grade…eventually I succumbed, and it became a slippery slope. Like others I was smart enough to do a fair amount of slacking and still get by, but I pushed things too far at the end of senior year: I cut a philosophy class so many times that I wound up failing – despite doing well on the tests and exams (it was philosophy) – and I didn’t graduate on time! I wasn’t even allowed to walk with my class. I didn’t find out until so close to graduation that I already had my cap and gown. Telling my parents was not fun. I took a summer class, and graduated in August instead of May. In the long run it didn’t matter one bit, but at the time it was very embarrassing.
I’m learning that my washer (a top-loading HE Maytag) is kind of finicky/sensitive. Last night it got stuck on “wash,” then when I tried starting the cycle over it got stuck again…that time making a not-great noise, with no lights on the panel! I was finally able to get it to go through a full “rinse and spin” cycle, after which I decided that everything was clean (
) and put it in the dryer. But I lost at least an hour, and wound up going to bed later than I should have. It’s gotten stuck one other time in the almost-two-months that I’ve lived here, shortly after I moved in, but I thought it was the setting I chose; my weekly laundry for the past month or so has gone smoothly. I don’t think the load was off-balance, but it could have been that…or maybe the third Tide pod I threw in at the start (it was a larger-than-usual load) was too much. I’ll never know. I took a chance and started a second, smaller load right away, and that one went through the entire cycle with no problem. I guess going forward I’ll stick with medium-sized loads and a max of two Tide pods at a time!
I started the day by deciding to trim my bangs. My hair is weird: my bangs grow at a typical rate, but the rest of my hair…doesn’t. I’ve had exactly the same shoulder-length tresses for many, many years now. I also haven’t been to a professional hair stylist since before the pandemic, so there’s a chance I’ll actually lose an inch or so of damaged/split ends if I ever go to a salon again. Anyway, my bangs have needed to be trimmed for about a week, and this morning I decided to break out the scissors. Lately I’d been doing a pretty decent job of trimming them, and remembering to cut less than I think I need to, but for whatever reason I wasn’t careful today. 
I’ve definitely done worse to myself, but they’re too short. The worst of it will grow out in a week, and by two weeks from today they might look sort of alright again. The upside is that they won’t need to be trimmed again for a while…heh. I’m definitely a walking example of the old saying that the difference between a bad haircut and a good haircut is two weeks!
Luckily, my overzealous snipping didn’t set the tone for the rest of the day. 
It was another nonstop one, including a lot of multitasking, but not a bad one. Tomorrow will be a long day, but miraculously I only have two meetings…I might actually be able to get some stuff done. We’ll see!
One thing I missed/meant to reply to from the old thread, before I dive into this week’s:
Heh! He’s at Ft. Hood, right? “Only” ~170 miles from Irving! 
But, he’s closer to it than I am…it would be funny if we wound up at the same convention. I’m leaning toward going – flying to DFW on a Saturday morning and coming home the following Monday – but won’t decide for a couple more weeks. I won’t wait too long, though, so the airfare doesn’t spike too much; I have a “watch” on my round trip in Google Flights.
I’m glad he isn’t, but 
!
Ha! I used to thump Bailey’s ribcage all the time. No earthly idea why, and I never thumped her anywhere else, but she never seemed to mind.
