futon

Sometime during the summer, I got an email from Yasha's subletter, saying that a pipe had broken and the guest room was covered with water, and asking me to please tell the landlord to help.  By the time I answered the email giving the landlord's contact information (which the subletter already had), the situation had been resolved.  When I got back, Mitka had thrown out the guest-room futon, which had been damp and rotting, but that was all the water damage I could detect.  Mitka had arranged to buy another futon from the office of a departing math postdoc, so I went and wrote a check, and we figured we'd determine eventually how to transport the futon from the department to the guest room.

This morning, when Yasha and I talked to the landlord, he told us that he'd been so impressed by how polite and helpful Mitka had been when the pipe broke.  He explained that the polite way was not to compliment Mitka directly, but to deliver the compliment behind his back.  Mitka was indeed sleeping.  Between 2 and 3 he woke up, and then we rented Dan's car and went over to the department to get the futon.

As we were borrowing a spare office key from department headquarters, Padma and Hans came in with some people who presumably were new first years, to get mugs so they could go to tea.
Padma:  "I like your haircut."
me:  "I didn't get---  My hair only got longer, not shorter."
Padma:  "Yes, yes, that's what I meant."

Carrying the mattress out to the car, Yasha could only offer one arm, because he's had an elbow problem for a while and recently was directed not to use the elbow too much.  He'd also cut his heel the other day while trying to enter a dirty lake to go swimming.  Yasha, walking backwards to support the front end of the mattress with his one arm, commented, "Walking backwards is actually a lot easier on my foot.  I was worried that I'd have trouble with the futon because of my foot, but this is fine.  Maybe I should walk backwards all the time."

Yasha and Mitka drove away with the futon mattress, and I tried to disassemble the futon frame but eventually figured out that it requires two different sizes of "hex key" to unscrew, of which we had only the larger.  I stated that our choices were (a) buy the right hex key and then try to disassemble; (b) try to roll the frame home on a dolly that Mitka swears the department has; or (c) try to sell the frame without moving it.  We chose to (d) leave the frame in Mitka's office and he can try to find a mattress for it.
me:  "But then... what did we just move this mattress for?"
Yasha:  "Because it's going to take another year before Mitka actually gets around to buying a mattress."
Mitka:  "You don't need a mattress, necessarily.  You can just cover it with pillows or something."
Yasha:  "See?"

So, now we have the new futon mattress on the old frame, and we can sit on it again, and watch movies together or read bedtime stories to each other.  And have guests, which was the more pressing issue.

In the evening, I went to audition for the choir which has a name but which in my head is called "choir with Mira".  I answered some questions about my occupation and musical background, and then sang some warm-up exercises as directed.
director:  "Can you tell me if you have any idea what this note is?"  (plays middle C)
me:  (pauses in surprise)  "C?"
director:  "You have perfect pitch, don't you."
me:  "Sort of?"
director:  "I thought so."