• Buying a new bed. i want to get a new one, since i currently sleep on a 12 year old futon and sometimes my back hurts when i wake up (and stays that way all day). actually, that happens a lot. there was a lot of soul searching about whether to get a new futon or a bed, to get just a mattress or a frame too, to buy a real bed or a “i just got my first college apartment!” one, et cetera. after a lot of soul-searching — by which i mean the angst went on for weeks; i could not shut myself up — i realized that ikea was having a bedrooms sale, and that ikea comfortably fits in the middle between “i want to invest as little as possible (in fact i’d be thrilled with a $20 thing off craigslist except for the part where i’d have to get it up the stairs by myself) because i will only sleep on it for a few years, max, before i buy a real bed” and “i don’t see the point in investing any money at all in a piece of crap; i should buy a real bed now.” of course please note that i have not yet decided to actually go to ikea: driving out to schaumberg is an entire decision to commit on its own. (of course i’m also not sure i’m willing to actually part with any cash to buy any furniture if i do make it out there. but, what’s important here is that i decided on what sort of bed i would get, if i was going to get one, so now i can decide on whether or not i’m getting one.)

• Whether to take CTA to work on Monday or drive in. monday was, like, -11°F with a -30 windchill. i had a dental appointment after work, and class after that. taking CTA would entail a lot of standing on the red line platform at wilson followed by a lot of waiting at the bus stop at north and halsted for the #72. driving would entail traffic and paying $16 or so to park, plus cabs to and from the dentist, plus possibly trouble finding campus parking and certainly trouble finding parking once i finally got home (and i really didn’t want to blow that $35 or whatever it would have cost me). while sleepless sunday night, i spent literally hours focused on this dilemma. (no, i don’t have OCD. why do you ask?) in the end, i went with the CTA to avoid having to find a new parking spot — even if i really could have used those heated seats when i was waiting for the bus.

• Whether or not to hire out my laundry. i have wrestled with temptation for months now. four weeks into the semester at school — three weeks into sleepwalking at work all day thursday because by this time of the week i’m completely exhausted from not sleeping enough — i’ve decided that my precious little remaining free time is worth more to me than the difference between $16 in quarters to do my laundry in my basement versus $30 to send it out. especially since they come and pick it up and then bring it back to me all clean and folded. all i have to do is put it on its shelf, in its drawer, or on its hanger in its spot in the closet. i figure that the cost of this is paid for by my no-longer-bought two- or three-times-weekly $8 pack of cigarettes. still, it took me a long time to be able to justify the sheer laziness of actually sending my laundry out. like i am some privileged lady of the manor or something. i’m just a computer nerd with time management problems, honest!
• An electric blanket. and speaking of indulgences for the spoiled rotten, how about electric blankets. i think they’re risky, and i have a down comforter that i bought years ago specifically so i would always be cosy in bed even if i had a cold bedroom. and it works great! the only trouble is, my apartment is very drafty and my bedroom is always cold. my bed is tucked up next to an outside wall and a window, and it gets seriously very cold. it’s generally okay once i’ve been in bed for a while and it’s had a chance to warm up, but it’s AWFUL to climb into when it’s really cold. this week has been particularly bad, where i’ve climbed in to bed and gotten colder — since i’m already chilled from walking home from the bus or the el, and by the time i get home from class i pretty much take out my contacts and crash immediately. last night it was sufficiently bad that i actually got my electric heating pad out and used it to take the chill off the covers, though the futon itself was still plenty cold that once i got in and disturbed the warm bits, it cooled off and i got cold again. and i’m really tired of shivering myself to sleep because my apartment apparently entirely lacks insulation. — a few weeks ago, i went to kmart to see how much a cheap model was (since i would only use it to warm the bed before going to sleep, not sleep with it on, for safety paranoia reasons), and the entry-level full-size blanket was $80, which i deemed too wasteful for just a froo-froo comfort issue. this week, though? totally having second thoughts.
• Fixing my PowerBook G4. my lovely and much-loved laptop, shiny, needs some repairs. its dvd-rom has recently (last weekend) broken such that it can no longer have disks inserted, they just pop back out again. it has a dying fan which makes obnoxious noises. and its hard drive is small and slow. the disk and cd drive replacements aren’t hard, but in order to replace the fan — the most necessary fix, since if it overheats it could kill the laptop entirely — you have to disassemble damn near the entire thing, including removing the logic board assembly. this (understandably, i think) makes me nervous to do it myself, though i’d have no worries about fixing just the disk drives. so i kinda want to send it away for service for fear i’ll screw it up, but i don’t want to spend the money on repairs since i believe i should be able to do them myself just fine. i’m torn on this issue. computer pride versus computer paranoia in a to-the-death cagematch?

in other news, cupcakes: still awesome.