new lows in life maintenance

i'm not home much. i work long days, commute 2-3 hours round-trip, and spend my weekends catching up with people and squeezing in some quality time with my boyfriend. as a result, many life maintenance tasks slip through the cracks. my hard drive isn't backed up, my mail from the last month is in a heap on my kitchen table, my Quicken is horribly out-of-date, and there are usually unclean dishes on the counter (not dirty, mind you, i did rinse them because, come on, i'm not disgusting). and my car is horribly neglected. not only have i not taken it in for a much-needed tune-up for a few years, it's dusty on the inside and crusty on the outside. this morning i was putting gas in my car ($3.999/gallon!) on the way to catch the shuttle. i decided, hey, maybe it's time to wash those songbird gifts off my driver-side window. so i grabbed the washing-squeegy thing, and scrubbed. and scrubbed, and scrubbed. then i went back into the car and emerged with my ice scraper, and i scraped. and scraped, and scraped. by the time my tank was full i was down to one diamond-hard chunk which i decided to leave as a reminder to get my damn car washed. to tell you the truth, i didn't know bird crap could do that, i'm starting to worry about my paint job. too bad you can't leave a car to soak.

one upside, though: i finally got some use out of the ice scraper.