It strikes me that we expend so much thought each day on the little, mundane things in life. And yet, when it comes to writing something on a blog, we reach for the grand ideas, the concepts that lend our fingers a little poetry on the keys. We write to make our existence appear more profound than our tiny daily obsessions would suggest.

But perhaps our little thoughts are what make us more human.

Here are some of mine:

It seems my conditioner is running out faster than my shampoo. I bought them at the same time. They are the same size. I always thought I used roughly the same amount of both. Maddening.

The dishwasher is a wonderful instrument. I wish it loaded itself.

And why can’t we fit a bigger bin in the tiny cupboard under the sink? It seems I have only just come inside again after throwing one bag away when the next is full. Whoever designed the apartment didn’t think about the placement of trash cans.

I have this strange pain in my arm. Perhaps from typing too much. Stabbing, twitching pain.

Why do I always call my parents just as I sit down with a cup of tea and a handful of Rich Tea biscuits? I need to learn that they don’t want to listen to me munching and slurping my way through a conversation.

Preoccupation with finding some way to keep the windows open at night without threat of spiders entering. (Lori more concerned with humans entering. Sensible).

(This type of writing seems to remove my verbs and replace them with an overabundance of parentheses.)

When did I stop saying brackets and rubbish and start saying parentheses and trash?

Gilmore Girls is more amusing than I thought it would be. We just started the first season.

Delight at having tricked the TIME magazine subscription system by not entering credit card details online but managing to get free trial anyway. Reading TIME magazine made more enjoyable by this fact. Wonder if trick will work on the Economist…

Why do all coffee shops over here close before 6? What about those of us who only crave a mocha after dinner?

Clippit was putting me to sleep earlier. There I am, struggling through the first page of my dissertation introduction, and his little sleepy half-closed eyes taunt me with their “I can daydream. You can’t” expression. And just when I can’t take it anymore, he raises his silly little eyebrows and glances down at my (lack of) typing, blinks, tilts his head to one side and looks me straight in the eye, as if to say “You’re not really working very efficiently today, are you?” He then pretends to ignore me (eyes diverted) and occasionally scratches his head in mock confusion.

But I get lonely when I turn him off.

Just don’t press the animate button. Addiction. (My favourite: the tornado, complete with spinning eyeballs).

Finished Freakonomics tonight; combing brain for children’s names.

Did you notice my new blog layout? (Who am I talking to?) I didn’t design it, but I did tweak it, which meant learning a little about CSS scripting (surprisingly fun). I’m rather impressed with it, to tell the truth. But it’s really just another way to not write my dissertation.