Peculiar things can happen when you have a stranger staying in your room for a few days, which probably most everyone has discovered, but it's been ages since I had a stranger in mine. (Not that my aunt's by any count a stranger, just that she's not a routine part of this household.) The door being closed at peculiar hours is one of them; I'm a great one for leaving pretty much all but fire doors open, unless you're trying to limit heating and air conditioning to specific parts of the house. Also after just one night of her visit the room smelled considerably better than it ever has when I was there. That's no doubt due to her actually having and wearing perfume, whereas I mostly wear deodorant, but it's startling to smell the change happen so noticeably and so quickly. Also when she makes the bed in the morning she goes all the way to having the covers flat and ready for turn-down service. I'm satisfied having them in fairly good shape and basically flat, but not, like, ready for quarter-bouncing.
Another matter of urgent discussion was how the various base-ball matches are going. Normally baseball takes a pretty minor role in the conversation around here, since while we all like it it's not something we can do much about. But my aunt is a New York Mets fan, and the Mets finished up this season with a collapse worthy of the Boston Red Sox at their best. That would be enough to drive interest except that her husband and her son are New York Yankees fans, rabid as only Yankees season ticket holders living in New England can be. Add to it that she may have been less than kind in her comments in the early months of play, when the Yankees were playing like the Chicago Cubs, and, well, there's a lot of karmic points in play simultaneously.
She also wondered what to do about towels. The linen closet is inside the bathroom of my parents' bedroom, which is fine when I'm not working and am getting up hours later than my parents. My ``work'' days, this means I may be unable to get a towel to shower because a parent is showering, unless I swiped some extra towels over the weekend, which I've taken to doing. She was invited to use the towels I'd stockpiled on my mostly empty suitcase. Not a problem but I do need to stockpile more tomorrow when I have the chance. This is all, I realize, extremely silly, but it's less so at 6:18 am on a Tuesday.
Trivia: Two sunbathers were missed by about five meters by a meteorite in Binningup, Australia on 30 September 1984. Source: Rain of Iron and Ice, John S Lewis.
Currently Reading: Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould, Edward J Renehan.