The Best Friday Post (on this blog today, anyway)

The Hammacher Schlemmer catalog is one of the best unsolicited pieces of mail I receive. (I was going to say that the issues of Rolling Stone that come week after week might be the very best, because those have an actual retail price, but honestly, I almost never read 'em. Stop inflating your circ base, Rolling Stone!)

Take for instance the H&S catalog that most recently arrived in our mailbox -- on the cover is a strange, blue, bug-like device. This, I learned, is The Remote-Controlled Omnidirectional Submarines. (Of course it is.)

I love how everything in their catalog is THE item. The Ergonomic Garden Tool Set. The Rechargeable 24-LED Umbrella Light. The 900-Gram Plush Color Genuine Turkish Bath Sheet. The Hydrofoil Water Scooter. (Really, who doesn't already have one of those?) They're also punctuated, like they're complete sentences already. And when something has won an award, it's The Superior Item. The Superior Adjustable Tricycle that Hammacher Schlemmer sells is, clearly, miles above all the other ordinary adjustable tricycles that flood the market. And when the venerable Hammacher Schlemmer Institute has tested something itself, it's not just "Superior"; it's The Best.

According to their website:

The Hammacher Schlemmer Institute was founded in 1983 as a not-for-profit group
affiliated with Hammacher Schlemmer. Our primary focus is searching for products
that are the Best of their kind.

Fascinating. I wonder if people actually give to the Hammacher Schlemmer Institute. Is it a 501 (c) 3? So many questions with answers I don't really feel like finding.

Anyway, with all these incredibly indispensable items that promise to make my life at least Superior if not The Best, one would think that the Hammacher Schlemmer store would be even more amazing than the catalog. After all, I somewhat enjoy wasting time in Brookstone and The Sharper Image and their catalogs are actually kind of boring. One would think that the store with The Best catalog would be even better to visit.

(I think I formed this idea vaguely from that early 90s cinema classic, Joe vs. The Volcano, in which Joe visits the Hammacher Schlemmer store on 57th street and buys luggage you can golf on and other wildly impractical but totally amazing items before setting off for his death cruise.)

As it turns out, it's actually pretty boring -- definitely a bit less exciting than Brookstone. Which makes sense, if you stop and think about it -- most of the items in the H&S catalog that seem really, really cool are really, really big. And they're not found in their Manhattan store. (Their "Landmark" store, according to their website, although, it also appears that's their only store. They also claim it's "in the heart of midtown Manhattan's Shopping District" and I'd argue that it's actually sort of tucked away on a moderately less-travelled block.)

Yes, you can sit in one of those massage chairs for a while, or test the "massagers" that are ostensibly upscale, less-sexualized vibrators, but that's hardly bringing anything new to the game. There is no water slide to test out. No Geodesic Climber, either. And you can't give the Hydrofoil Water Scooter a whirl.

I'm not even sure they still sell luggage with a putting hole on top anymore. In short: if you simply must have The Best Nosehair Trimmer and happen to be in the neighborhood, it might not be so bad to stop in. But otherwise, the catalog is a vastly Superior Hammacher Schlemmer experience.

Brrrrzwhrrrr

I'm not usually a very OCD sort of person. Many family and roommates can attest to my total lack of obsessive cleaning or whatever. But every so often, my mind will get stuck on something. This is particularly true when I'm trying to fall asleep, but not completely relaxed and dead tired (the idea conditions for me to fall into long, blissful sleep).

Tonight, I have become fixated on the damn air conditioner.

Right now, it's only 67° according to AccuWeather, but it feels a lot warmer in the apartment, mostly because it's not a terribly easy to ventilate space. (I don't know why, it just. Isn't.) So yes, I do feel bad running the a/c but whatever. (Al Gore, I haven't forgotten your slide show, but honestly, you take jets everywhere. If you get to do that, I get to run the air while I try to sleep, 'k?)

However, the air conditioner has decided to make a really, really annoying sound. I am pretty sure it's because we bought the cheapest model available at Home Depot (and ughhhhh that was such an excruciatingly irritating process that I never ever want to think of it again, but let me just say: NO one should EVER shop there EVER AGAIN, especially not the super super crappy one at 59th and Lex, ESPECIALLY not if you what home delivery this century) and it's made of cheap flimsy plastic that isn't particularly, well, sound.

It'll be quietly humming along and then suddenly burp out a horrible BRRWRSZWSERRT sort of sound. Over and over for like, five minutes. Then it'll go back to humming until I'm almost asleep and BERRRRWWWZHHHRRRR!!!

This didn't bother me last year. But for some reason, lately, I can't stop thinking about it. Even when I do sleep, the odd noises haunt my dreams. I'll dream about hunting down the noise and stopping it, only to have not really made it go away at all (kind of like those dreams where you have to pee and keep looking for bathrooms only to find you still have to go? except with a noise. and less bed-wetting potential.)

I've tried putting heavy things on top of the a/c, because I have this stupid idea that it'll stop the plastic from vibrating so much, except I'm not even sure the vibrating plastic is really the problem. It sounds so much more... internal. But then, I have no idea. Maybe I just need to buy a new air conditioner, this time from some place I don't hate.

Update

Yesterday, I went to pick up what I assumed would be the carcass of my laptop and the discs containing its remains, but instead found that they'd actually gone ahead and fixed the thing and just billed me for two hours' of time.

Odd, but good. (I mean, it would've been nice if the computer guy had discussed this with me first, since I could've gone ahead and bought a whole new laptop if I was an impulsive-yet-financially-solvent kind of girl. But whatever.)

However, at work, our servers have been suffering some kind of long, drawn-out meltdown. Which is not good. Right now, we have Internet access but no email, none of our files and can't print anything. Which means I can basically surf the web (at very slooooow speeds) and not do too much else. Sigh.

A few notes on my morning

1. About two weeks ago, I finally decided to give into the nagging message that kept popping up on my computer, telling me I needed to restart in order for the latest Windows update to take effect. I restarted the computer, and it never stopped. Just couldn't load Windows after that, not even in Safe Mode.

Thursday, I left the laptop with a computer repair guy. After a few hours, I get a call: Yes, my computer is dead. He can either reinstall windows and it should work again just fine, but it'll cost me $75 an hour and will take somewhere between 3 and 4 hours. Or, he can just extract my files for me, which will take 1-2 hours, same rate.

Yesterday, I decided that I couldn't really justify spending a few hundred dollars on a nearly four year old laptop that has never really served me that well. So, I said just get my files and be done with it.

(I'm actually not sure it was even really worth getting all my files, but I do have a lot of mp3s on there I'd like to get back and re-downloading all of them would cost a few hundred dollars, and more importantly, I have lots of baby DJ pictures on there.)

Today, I am using Jesse's laptop and contemplating my options. (A laptop with buggy Windows Vista? an overpriced and overly proprietary Mac?) I think I am going to wait this one out for a bit.

2. We are down to two or three squares of toilet paper. I know it's just around the corner, but I really don't feel like getting dressed and going to the store right now.

Life is so hard.