Laundromat Books #1 & #2

As you can see, I haven't yet managed to break my bad Sunday posting habit. Last week was full of orthopedic (not-so) fun times, which kind of put a hiccup in most of my plans for last week. A couple of orthopedic devices (plus an ice pack and some painkillers) later, I'm back in the game!

Sunday is laundry day around these parts and I'm fortunate enough to live a stone's throw away from a laundromat. Some might consider owning a washing machine to be even more fortunate, but those people are wrong. More fortunate would be owning both a washing machine *and* a dryer. Anything else is for losers and babies.

That said, I own neither, but I can procure the services of both within like 30 or 40 yards from my apartment. It's a good setup and I forgot how much I loved being able to have all my laundry washed and dried on the same day (as opposed to washed on one day and dry three days later). Definitely not optimal, but it's tolerable. Anyway, fuck all that noise, because now I go to the laundromat.



The laundromat is magical (in that it takes about 50 minutes to wash and dry everything), yet somewhat boring place. That's why, right now, my clothes are tumbling in the dryer and I'm typing this up in my living room.

I could actually probably take my laptop with me to the laundromat now, because there's free wi-fi there now. So, I guess it's actually a lot less boring than a whole lot of other places. But before the free wi-fi, there was only the "Take a book, leave a book" shelf.

For the first few months in my new apartment, I'd stay at the laundromat the entire wash cycle. Eventually, I found the bookshelf (because watching the laundering process is boring as hell). But even after that, it wasn't until a couple of months ago that I noticed the sign that said that you can take a book with you, return it later, or replace the book with another book.

And since I've got some shitty books that I've inherited and want out of my collection, I've decided to trade those for more interesting books (or even just more interesting-sounding books) that I found at the laundromat. It's not every week that something interesting comes in, but I'll try to start cataloging them here.

Every week brings with it the hope of a great new find. Here are the first two (so far):

1.) Last month, I traded chick lit bestseller Good in Bed for Das Nein zur Vermögenspolitik: Gewerkschaftliche Argumente und Alternativen zur Vermögensbildung (No to the Political Policy for the Distribution of Wealth: Union Arguments and Alternatives to Wealth Accumulation. So far, I haven't made it past the first couple of pages, but I won't give up hope.

2.) Today, I traded Anne Rice's Vittorio the Vampire for So schreibt man an Behörden! (How to Write to Government Agencies!)

I couldn't resist after opening up to the first chapter, "Mitarbeiter von Behörden sind auch Menschen" ("Government Employees are People too").

I look forward to finding out many more enlightening pieces of information from this book.