Efficiency and Stairs.

So, I'm a pretty efficiency-oriented guy. Many things I do are geared toward getting my everyday processes done as efficiently as possible.

My screen about half an hour before writing this post. Maximum efficiency.

One rather obnoxious everyday process that I've had to overcome is climbing the stairs. Now, climbing the stairs is a big deal. If I want to go from point A to point B, I want to just appear in the other location. However, since I can't Apparate, I instead just make my way over as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, stairs act as a limiting factor in the amount of time I have to spend ambulating. There are fourteen stairs in my house, and climbing them one at a time is simply too slow.

Shirley Temple didn't like
climbing the stairs either.

Now, the way down the stairs would seem to be a rather small deal, since I have gravity to assist me. I often clambered down two at a time, sometimes taking the last four at once. However, my maternal parental unit always freaks out when I do that, because apparently I fell down the stairs twice as an infant. Once she caught me by the heel, but apparently once I went the whole way. So my new plan of action is as follows: Climb down one at a time, but allow the knee to sort of "break," or fold, as soon as the foot makes contact with the stair, so that the next foot can reach the next stair as quickly as possible. That works pretty well, and it probably increases my time by at least half a second per trip.

The bigger deal, of course, is going upstairs. Previously, I would often either climb the stairs as 2-2-2-2-2-2-2 (which is to say, two at a time), or 1-2-3-2-1-2-3 (just because I liked the pattern). However, this got boring quickly, so I went out to Facebook and proposed the question: What's the best way to climb up my 14 stairs?

Various ideas were tossed about, and the pros and cons of each step being done as a jump, a step, or a leap were discussed. Finally, what we decided on was 3-3-2-2-4:

• The first 3 would be aided by my grabbing onto the banister's vertical supports with my left hand.
• The second 3 would be accomplished by means of the remaining momentum from the initial boost.
• The 2s would just be typical two-at-a-time steps.
• The 4 at the end would involve me placing my right hand on the top of the stairway and ending in a crouching position.

At the end, I would be ready to spring into action, directly in front of the door to my room but able to pivot to the right if I was running upstairs to go to the bathroom. I would also be feeling thoroughly invigorated as a result of the super-manly finish. The conundrum of the stairs had finally been solved.

So that's what I think about stairs.

A Pokewalker-Bathroom Story

So, two of the most common anecdotes I find myself having are Pokewalker stories and bathroom stories. Some of you may not be familiar with a Pokewalker. If that is the case, you're missing out. A Pokewalker is this pedometer shaped like a Pokeball that you can use to catch Pokemon, find items, level up, and attract chicks:

Chick magnet.

Meanwhile, a bathroom is this thing that people often use when they need to excrete bodily fluids and other undesirable content:

Somewhat less attractive
to chicks.

So I often have anecdotes either involving Pokewalkers or bathrooms. Occasions are few and far between when I will go to the bathroom and not return with an anecdote that I find to be thoroughly exciting. Similarly, I will often have embarrassing mishaps with my Pokewalker that will lend themselves to exciting stories.

So about a week or two ago, I was in the bathroom at school, minding my own business and peeing before class. It was a relatively populous bathroom - there were a good four or five people in there. (To give you a general idea, this bathroom has two urinals, three stalls, and four sinks.) I don't normally wear a belt, so my Pokewalker was somewhat loosely clipped onto the rim of my pants, which I suppose left it hanging limply upside-down to the right of my pelvis: the prime position for it to fall off.

So of course it fell off.

And of course, to my right was a stall.

And of course, there were people peeing in the stalls.

Obviously, my Pokewalker had fallen off my pants into the stall next to me, and the kid in the next stall over was undoubtedly like DOOHOOHOO LOOK AT THIS THAT'S LIKE A GODDAMN POKEYMAN-BALLS HOHOHO LEMME TAKE THIS THAT'S JUST TOO FUNNY. If I didn't know better, I'd say I heard giggling coming from in the stall. And I didn't know better.

So I had to keep my cool. I couldn't just pick up my Pokewalker with everyone watching. I finished peeing as slowly as possible, and slowly walked over to the sink and took my own sweet time washing my hands. I had first lunch. It was okay for me to take a while. These hooligans probably had a class to go to. I could wait them out. This was no big deal.

Unfortunately, every time someone walked out of the bathroom, someone else would walk in. I decided I would go out and get a drink, and by the time I got back, they should all be gone. A nice long drink. From a relatively faraway fountain. So I did that. However, when I got back, there were still two kids in the bathroom. One walked out as I walked in, but the other was still washing his hands. No one was peeing, though. I looked over at the urinal and saw that my Pokewalker had fallen right below it - it had never rolled into the stall anyway. Not that that changed anything. I couldn't have just picked it up from under the urinal. "What's that kid doing with his head right where he was just peeing?" etc.

I decided that I couldn't just stand around awkwardly and look like I was waiting for something in the middle of the bathroom. I had to strike. I put on my most confident face and walked toward the urinal. Yes, the other kid was still in there, but being judged by one punk freshman was nowhere near as bad as six. With a full sense of purpose, I knelt down, picked up my Pokewalker, put it back on my pants, and strode out of the bathroom. I was victorious.

A Note on the Title

It is worth mentioning, I feel, why this blog is so entitled. I seem to have a private lexicon of words that I use that no one else really uses. Some of these I pick up from other people by accident; others, I just decide are nice words, and I start using them ad nauseum. A few weeks ago a friend of mine tried to compile a dictionary of these words. Here's a sampling:

• Mildly, moderately, borderline, thoroughly, balls, mad - Intensifier adverbs.
• "That's moderately amusing," "This is balls cool," etc.
• Upsetting, exciting - My two main emotion adjectives.
• "Well, that's just upsetting."
• HNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG - A frustrated interjection.
• "HNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG"
• Oh, excellent - My means of expressing discontent. But like, with a :\ face. Not as if to legitimately express joy with the situation at hand.
• "My cat has just been run over." " Oh, excellent."
• Obv, natch - Obviously, naturally. I pronounce the former "ob-vee." Often used facetiously.
• "I left your papers in your closet." "Oh, obv. ???"
• Trash receptacle - General term for wastebasket, trash can, etc.
• "Is there a trash receptacle nearby?"

There are, of course, countless other words I have trademarked, but those should ideally become apparent as more blog posts transpire. (There's one, actually. Transpire.)

It is also worth mentioning that I have a set of rather uncommon emotions. Most of these I acquire from other people, which always makes me afraid that they're going to get upset at me for using their emoticons. My primarily used emoticons are as follows:

c:  :c  C:  :C  c':  :'c  C':  :'C  >:C  >:c  >:O  O:<  >:o  o:<  D:<  D:  D8  :>  :<  :o :O  :|  :\  ._.  >.<  o.O

The apostrophe, of course, means that I'm crying either from joy or from sadness.

This.

So I've just created a blog. I'm a bit against the first post being all GUYS THIS IS A FIRST POST WHAT UUUUP C': so I'll try to be a bit more substantial than that by providing a rough explanation for this blog. Basically, I come up with forty ideas a minute for Facebook stati. However, many of these have to be rejected, for myriad reasons. Some are too long, and after trying to condense them into the 420-character limit, I either give up, or give a disgustingly abridged recount that cannot possibly say what I want it to say. Other stati cannot really be put into the third person that easily; I'm one of those sticklers who keeps his stati in the third person like the olden days of "Greg Edelston is ____," and if I want to start my post with a possessive, then I'll either have to post "Greg Edelston 's _____" or "Greg Edelston My ____," or abandon the status altogether. I often go with the latter. Other stati still have to be disregarded altogether because I just had one ten seconds ago and what if people think I'm on Facebook every time I'm home (which would be an accurate conclusion) or what if they don't get to see my previous status because it's not at the top of my profile and the old one was so much better than this and so how can I possibly disown that old one etc.; thus, I lose the new idea.

I combated this problem by creating a Twitter. Well, sort of. I created my Twitter because I didn't really know anything about it and figured it would probably become the big thing some day. My reasoning behind this was that I was initially resistant to Facebook, which I now see as one of the most useful things we have available to us. I then proceeded to use Twitter for getting amusing updates from amusing people who amuse me. It serves me well as a pretty good source of the chuckles. Nowadays, though, I also use it as an extra outlet for status ideas. The deciding factors of which one I use for which idea are as follows:

• If it absolutely requires more than 140 characters no matter what, it goes to Facebook by default.
• If it would be funnier if read as multiple consecutive posts (sort of telling a story), it goes to Twitter.
• If it's something not really relevant to me so much as is just an observation of the world, it USUALLY goes to Twitter (because if it were on Facebook, I would have to use something like "Greg Edelston wonders whether," "Greg Edelston notices that," etc.).
• If it just feels Facebookier or Twitterier, then I try to fit it into the one it feels more like.

Granted, my Twitter posts get sent to Facebook anyway, so everyone can still see and comment on it anyway. Besides that, I have a whopping 22 followers, so it's not like I get more people to see what I post on Twitter than on Facebook or anything. I can only think of two real differences. The first is that Twitter is in third person, whereas Facebook is in first; the second is that a post just feels different from a status. It just does.

But I digress. The point was that I often have too many status ideas, and still some have to be rejected from both Facebook and Twitter. Thus, I'm creating this blog, entitled Mildly Upsetting. This is sort of my "musings," if you will; however, I do not want this to be like all of the whiny tween blogs wherein people post about their feelings. If you read this blog, you should know when I'm happy (hint, it's upwards of 98% of the time), but you should not know when I'm upset. You just don't want to read that. You'll probably just hear my anecdotes about my day or my ideas that I had or my thoughts on a subject. I haven't been chuckling to myself while writing this post in particular, for the obvious reason that it's just straight-up not funny. The objective of this post is to explain, about which I feel bad, because anyone who is reading this will feel as though s/he has wasted his/her time. Thus, I provide you with a graph relevant to two of my activities today:

I shall be catching you...

on the flipside.