ink; light sabers; old age

My printer is out of black ink (or it is just angry with me; it's hard to say) and I had to turn in some homework yesterday. I tried printing it anyway, in the hope that it would just look sort of faded and old-school, but instead only the top half of each line printed so it was no good. No good at all.

So I printed it again all in blue. That was very pretty, and I a little bit want to just never replace my black ink ever again. All my homework will be printed in a variety of colors and everyone's (or at least, the TA's) day will be a little brighter.

I did try to buy a new ink cartridge on Monday, but I failed. For some reason I had decided that this one store at Union Station would sell me one. But, I was wrong. It had been a long and hot day by the time I got there, anyway, so I didn't want to give up: I looked and looked and looked and then finally went up to the counter in case they were just hiding printer accessories from all the thieving, ink-loving tourists.

They weren't. That store only sells musicky things, not computery things. No ink cartridges were to be had.

It was okay though because my day was made so much better by the small suburban-grandmother-looking woman in front of me, who spent $750 on a lot of 6-foot electric light sabers. Three red, three green. Or maybe four. She sort of stacked all the gigantic boxes around each other and staggered out into the world, lacking visibility but heavily armed. I spent the rest of the afternoon imagining her busting out the light sabers (one in each hand) in order to settle a duel, or hail a cab, or scold teenagers for coarse language.

Because everyone knows that's what suburban grandmothers spend their days doing: settling duels, hailing cabs, and scolding teenagers.