There is Power in a Union!

This morning, I woke up to the sound of a male voice only a few feet from my door. Finally, I thought. I've been beamed up into an alternate dimension where I am cohabitating with a male human being. Perhaps this means that my hip problems have also been cured and that I am employed. Yeah, not so much. It turns out that the mysterious male voice belonged to an employee of the Ameren Gas Company and he was in the process of discovering why our house was filled with natural gas. (I discovered this when the sweet nothings he was whispering were along the lines of, "Your furnace looks to be clear, so I'm going to inspect your hot-water heater" as opposed to, "Get up, my sweet darling. You're expected on the Oprah show soon to celebrate the fact that your book just topped the NY Times Bestseller List.") Turns out, our water heater had a bad case of flatulence (killer flatulence!) and the house had been filling with natural gas.

The fact that I did not explode thanks to the gas leak means that perhaps my luck is looking up. I decided to celebrate by bringing cookies to the striking grad students. Because the water heater was shut off, however, I had to shower at the gym and I also had to stop off at the grocery store because I'd eaten half of the cookies I'd made the night before and you can't show up to a picket line with 12 measly cookies and, long story short, I arrived at the picket lines just in time to hear a great amount of cheering. The strike was over. (There is power in a union!) My solidarity cookies had become celebration cookies and there was nothing left to do but go to Murphy's and drink a beer (after my pineapple tequila incident, I kept it civil and stuck to one beer). And ate a couple more celebration cookies instead of lunch.

So, yes, I'm now hanging out in the library listening to someone playing a computer game, because the library is a hell of a lot warmer than my house, which is currently at 62 degrees: something that my wallet approves of, but which leads me to quickly become chilly (because I am always cold) and dive under the covers for warmth, which leads me to fall asleep for excessive amounts of time, which is not conducive to getting work done. Despite the odour of the computer area and the fact that the paper towels smell weirdly of garlic, the library is actually not a bad place to be.