Having a brother-in-law in the house for a month has been surprisingly painless.
Almost completely painless, in fact, but I can’t very well fill a blog post talking about the things he hasn’t done.
Matt does have one quirky and annoying habit. He always closes the bathroom door.
This is a very good thing when he’s in the bathroom.
But it’s a very, very bad thing when he’s finished.
(I can hear you whispering “Travis has lost it, he’s crazy” from here, you know.)
First of all, when the bathroom door is always closed, you never know when it’s occupied. This leads to lots of knocking, and some embarrassing moments. I also fear it’ll lead to the ultimate embarrassing moment, if I assume that a closed door doesn’t mean occupied.
Second, a closed door can also mean “Warning, Explosive Fumes”—now, there’s no way to determine if the premises are safe for humans. And if he leaves the fan on to clear the occasional miasma, with the door closed, the fan can’t be heard, so it runs all day.
Third, I always go to bed last. I turn off all the lights and head upstairs in the dark, so as not to disturb the sleepers. Not to disturb them, that is, until I PLOW into the bathroom door in pitch darkness as I head to brush my teeth.
You’d think I’d figure it out by the third time, but no, I never remember.
As an ancillary note, he doesn’t always lower the seat. Now, I detest the guy-bashing that swirls around seat raising or lowering. I firmly believe that a man and a woman living together need only to agree on a common, uniform seat state, whether that’s up or down. Neither the guy nor the woman has priority here, so long as an agreement is reached.
And I think best of all is to close the toilet lid entirely—that way, you don’t drop the book you’re reading into the toilet, not that I’ve ever done that and certainly not in Grade 6 with a Robert Heinlein library book. (Damn, that sentence ended way too late.)
So all I’m saying is that it’s a little odd that he’s got a 56-and-0 record for door closing, but he leaves the seat as open as the source code for Firefox.
Matt goes back to Boston on Friday to set up Hop Studios East. I’ll be sad to see him go… but I might just leave the front door open when he leaves.
“I find myself thinking of a checklist Wozniak wrote a few years ago describing how to become a genius. His advice was straightforward yet strangely terrible: You must clarify your goals, gain knowledge through spaced repetition, preserve health, work steadily, minimize stress, refuse interruption, and never resist sleep when tired. This should lead to radically improved intelligence and creativity. The only cost: turning your back on every convention of social life.”
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream.”
You told me it makes mold grow! Had i known about your book-dropping-in-shit-bucket problem i would have tried harder.
Posted by matt at 5:22 pm on Jul. 18, 2006
I'd like to hear from Matt: What's behind this strange behaviour? Did you throw a library book across the room when you were in Grade 6 only to have it accidentally fly through the open bathroom door and into the toilet? If that's the source of it, I would suggest that Travis' closed toilet-seat concept is a more elegant solution. Of course, some people just think washrooms look "dirty" and want to hide them... Or maybe that's just what you guys do down in the States?
Anyway, I'll also be sorry to see you go, Matt! Take care!
Posted by Jason at 11:53 am on Jul. 20, 2006
We've had guests before who were also closed-bathroom-door folk, and I've never understood this strange behaviour. For us, it raised an additional problem: Roxy's litter box is in the bathroom.
Eep.
Please wish Matt well for me, I was glad to meet him!
Again, a womderfully humorous read!
Too bad about that library book...
Here's a little fact to help you on your "close-the-lid-completely" crusade.
Everytime you flush the comode...bacteria from whatever was just deposited floats up into the air. From there, it eventually settles on the surfaces in the bathroom. This may not seem like a huge concern...unless you happen to have your toothbrushes out on the vanity.
You can scroll right easily by holding down the SHIFT key and using your scroll wheel. (Firefox users trying this will end up jumping to old Web pages until a) Firefox releases a fix, b) they change their settings like so.)