Here’s what happened: Denny and I had checked out the complete second season of Coupling, my new favorite show. It was a two-disc set. The first disc was so badly scratched that quite a few parts of it were completely unwatchable, skipping and freezing and such. We stumbled through it, and when it was time to get to the second disc, I noticed that it was in just as bad or worse of shape than the first one. In an attempt to remedy the situation, I wiped it on my pants.

SNAP. The disc cracked. It must have been really weakened, because I didn’t wipe it very hard.

I got nervous. I didn’t feel like I should have to replace the whole disc, since it was 90% crappy before I rendered it completely unusable. I asked my friend Jamal for advice, since he is a former library employee. He recommended that I stick it together with superglue and feign ignorance.

I wasn’t very comfortable with that idea, because I’d have to live in fear every time I entered the library. Besides, if it happened to go undetected, I didn’t want to be the source of the next person’s disappointment when the disc was worthless. I felt very conflicted about the whole thing. You see, I love the library and I don’t want to do it harm. And yet, I’ve got a lot of expenses coming up, and I don’t want to pay for something that’s only partly my fault.

So what I did was I went to the library, found the friendliest-looking employee that I could, and described my situation much as I did above. I took responsibility for my part in the destruction while making sure she understood that it sucked previous to my involvement.

And…dig this! She said I don’t have to pay for it! And I don’t have to live in fear! All she asked was that I promise never to clean a DVD on my pants again. Fair enough. I am feeling very relieved.

There’s just something about a three-day weekend that makes a person not very inclined to be awake and perky at work on the first day back. Plus it’s busy. But that’s ok; it makes me feel productive.

DC and I saw The Life Aquatic yesterday, as planned. I liked it mediumly. I really want the soundtrack; Holly was right about the David Bowie songs in Portuguese. They were great. The rest of the movie had its strong points and weak points.

Speaking of Portuguese, Denny got the international travel grant, so now we’re going for sure. For freaking sure, people. The only kind of troubling thing is that he got a call from the place we got our tickets, and though he’s tried to call back, he hasn’t been able to get a hold of them. Hm. I hope everything’s ok there. But we’ll get the tickets one way or another, I imagine.

Whoa. I brought an apple to eat for a pre-workout boost, and it was on the shelf above my desk. Now it’s in my lap, and it’s darn warm. Apparently these monitors can really toast an apple. It feels nice in my lap, though.