turtle! not fish!
Jul. 29th, 2006 01:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adrian_turtleWhen I left work yesterday, the sky looked dark and threatening, and the rain was just starting. I put on my hat (the new Biodome hat, intended to protect from rain and sun) and wrapped a plastic bag around the books in my backpack to protect them in case a little water came through the zipper. It was 6:15. I could wait inside, then catch the 6:30 bus at the close stop, have a long wait at Alewife, and get home at 8:20 or so. But it wasn't raining that hard. So I walked over to mall road to catch the other bus, the one that's supposed to stop at 6:34, and bring me to within reasonable walking distance of home in 20 minutes or so.
Hah. That was when the storm started in earnest. I didn't have a jacket with me, and I'm not at all sure my jacket is sufficiently waterproof anyhow. My hat sure wasn't. I was soaked to the skin in about 5 minutes. The 6:34 bus didn't come until 6:50. In between, I thought of my Palm Pilot, in its little leather case on my belt. And I thought of my wallet, in the front pocket of my jeans. How water-soluble *is* my insurance card? I didn't want to take either one out in such heavy rain, for fear of causing even more water damage. And I didn't want to unzip my backpack!
When the bus finally turned up, the other passengers laughed at how wet I was. The bus was ridiculously air-conditioned. I suppose the MBTA has been taking Jim Macdonald's advice on avoiding heat injuries (including a lot of sensible suggestions and "crank your home air conditioner to 70 or lower," which is probably a typo.) I can handle 20 minutes of cold in dripping-wet cotton clothes, but I was really unhappy when it stretched to 45 because the bus driver kept stopping to make phone calls for a couple of passengers. They were going to meet someone, who was waiting for them at a store that is ordinarily visible from the bus stop (only not when it's raining so hard). But they didn't want to leave the bus to go look for him; they wanted to arrange it all by phone, only they didn't have a phone. The bus driver was trying so hard to be polite to elderly foreigners that he kept saying things like "ok, just one more quick call," and "ok, but I can only wait 3 minutes." (They didn't get off the bus, after all. Just called and fretted, over and over.)
When I finally got home and thawed out, I discovered black smudges all over my hands, and all over my new hat where I had tried to wring it out. The leather case for my palm pilot is a BLACK leather case, and the dye is not completely colorfast. Though it's not so water-soluble as to wash out easily. Any suggestions for getting the dye residue out of my hat? Is this a solved problem among leathergeeks? If this happens repeatedly, will my almost-white hat become almost-black, so (I'll have to change sides or stop reading westerns or) try to dye the whole thing purple?
A more serious question concerns the palm pilot itself. I tried to dry it overnight before turning it on, but it turned itself on spontaneously and complained of HotSync being interrupted. (The power switch stopped working shortly after I got the thing. It usually turns itself on when I push the "home" key and turns itself off when I haven't used it in 5 minutes.) Early this afternoon, I tried to connect it to the computer in order to download another 8 hours of _Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell_. The "home" key worked, and I got the "drive mode" on, but the computer cannot recognize the connection. And now I can't get the palm pilot out of drive mode, or make it recognize anything that might make it reboot. It's been hours, and it doesn't turn itself off or respond to any of the buttons. Does this seem like it's just not dry yet? Or like it's permenently damaged?
Hah. That was when the storm started in earnest. I didn't have a jacket with me, and I'm not at all sure my jacket is sufficiently waterproof anyhow. My hat sure wasn't. I was soaked to the skin in about 5 minutes. The 6:34 bus didn't come until 6:50. In between, I thought of my Palm Pilot, in its little leather case on my belt. And I thought of my wallet, in the front pocket of my jeans. How water-soluble *is* my insurance card? I didn't want to take either one out in such heavy rain, for fear of causing even more water damage. And I didn't want to unzip my backpack!
When the bus finally turned up, the other passengers laughed at how wet I was. The bus was ridiculously air-conditioned. I suppose the MBTA has been taking Jim Macdonald's advice on avoiding heat injuries (including a lot of sensible suggestions and "crank your home air conditioner to 70 or lower," which is probably a typo.) I can handle 20 minutes of cold in dripping-wet cotton clothes, but I was really unhappy when it stretched to 45 because the bus driver kept stopping to make phone calls for a couple of passengers. They were going to meet someone, who was waiting for them at a store that is ordinarily visible from the bus stop (only not when it's raining so hard). But they didn't want to leave the bus to go look for him; they wanted to arrange it all by phone, only they didn't have a phone. The bus driver was trying so hard to be polite to elderly foreigners that he kept saying things like "ok, just one more quick call," and "ok, but I can only wait 3 minutes." (They didn't get off the bus, after all. Just called and fretted, over and over.)
When I finally got home and thawed out, I discovered black smudges all over my hands, and all over my new hat where I had tried to wring it out. The leather case for my palm pilot is a BLACK leather case, and the dye is not completely colorfast. Though it's not so water-soluble as to wash out easily. Any suggestions for getting the dye residue out of my hat? Is this a solved problem among leathergeeks? If this happens repeatedly, will my almost-white hat become almost-black, so (I'll have to change sides or stop reading westerns or) try to dye the whole thing purple?
A more serious question concerns the palm pilot itself. I tried to dry it overnight before turning it on, but it turned itself on spontaneously and complained of HotSync being interrupted. (The power switch stopped working shortly after I got the thing. It usually turns itself on when I push the "home" key and turns itself off when I haven't used it in 5 minutes.) Early this afternoon, I tried to connect it to the computer in order to download another 8 hours of _Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell_. The "home" key worked, and I got the "drive mode" on, but the computer cannot recognize the connection. And now I can't get the palm pilot out of drive mode, or make it recognize anything that might make it reboot. It's been hours, and it doesn't turn itself off or respond to any of the buttons. Does this seem like it's just not dry yet? Or like it's permenently damaged?
