The little things

can be very gratifying. It's always a massive psychological reward when you can use any skills, however feeble, to accomplish something concrete and beneficial. I felt that way in France five years ago on my 3-week exchange program, and it's still just as true. Yesterday I mentioned that our AC unit was broken. Well today, breaking with typical Eric fashion of "let-it-lie-maybe-it-will-get-magically-better-or-someone-else-will-fix-it" I decided to get it fixed. I took the AC remote and went down to the lobby. By complete happenstance the lobby also just received a package from me which was thrust into my hands by the receptionist. I then told her that our air conditioner was broken, gave my room number, and tried to explain that it could be I'm an idiot that doesn't know how to use the remote. She didn't seem to notice or care about the last part, and as soon as she took down the number she told me that someone would be contacted. A half hour later or so a mechanic type guy came up, messed with the settings to make sure it wasn't just me being dumb (it wasn't) and cleaned the filter. Then, after making her repeat it several times, I gleaned from the housekeeping woman who was also in the room that she would come back in a few hours to see if it was now working. She did, and it wasn't. So she got the mechanic and another guy to come up again, they opened the window and started working on the actual AC unit that was outside our room. They got it fixed. All of this happened within the span of 3 hours or so. It was a really big warm fuzzy to get our cold steely going again.

The oral midterm went okay, it was a little short but there were some parts I absolutely nailed which the teacher pointed out at the end. The package, for those curious, mostly contained foodstuffs including Goldfish, Nutrigrain bars, and Flipsides. My father thought there was a slight chance it wouldn't make it, which I shared upon learning that my mom did not lie on the customs form about packing food.

Final word: does jelly and/or jam need to be refrigerated upon opening? I feel like it does but that is really not an option here...