Today is Sunday, which means...laundry! I have been hoarding quarters all week in anticipation. By this evening, I'll have clean clothes to wear to work.

When Daniel and I fantasize about the next apartment we'll get, first on my list is that we'll have our very own washer and dryer that I don't have to stick quarters into. First on Daniel's list is a dishwasher. I guess you can tell who does which chores around here. (High on the list for both of us for the fantasy apartment are more space for bookshelves and more home office space.)

I can't complain too much, though. For most of human history, doing laundry meant backbreaking physical labor. For me, it just means interrupting my web surfing to haul bags of clothes down to the end of the hall.

And laundry does provide a good excuse to get other chores done as well. I just gave the bathroom a quick cleaning, and will probably tackle a section of the Great Desk Excavation project. (In particular, all the material relating to the grant proposal that I was helping to edit that has now been submitted can be filed or thrown away, as appropriate.)

Next week, I start on another freelance grant proposal. This is another one on bioterrorism. On the whole, I prefer writing about bioterrorism to writing about undergraduate science education (which was what the last proposal was about). Actually, I did very little writing on this last grant proposal. I edited what other people had written, and I made Microsoft Word behave itself.
Picked up a fun book yesterday. It's called Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance. It's a history of the development and manufacture of the pencil. Oddest factoid gleaned so far: the word 'pencil' is etymologically related to the word 'penis.' 'Pencil' derives from 'penicillum' (little tail), which is the diminutive form of 'penis.' (Yes, 'penis' means 'tail', which means that the expression 'getting some tail' really ought to imply something other than what it usually does. But then again, 'vagina' means 'sheath,' so we're already well into mixed metaphor territory.)

Why is a pencil called a 'little tail'? Because the original pencils were very fine brushes, and the book claims that the first ones were actually made from animal tails.

That's gotta be the weirdest etymology I've come across since Fowler's Guide to Modern English Usage informed me that 'cretin' is etymologically derived from 'Christian.'