A Trip To the Laundromat - Did We Go Back In Time?

Abigail and I spent a little time in the laundromat this morning. Her pink floor rug in her room has been long overdue for a wash, and I had been putting this off. My mom told me this morning that she bought a red rug for Abigail's room and has hinted that it might be time to change the color scheme/set up in Abigail's room. I'm actually still quite happy with the pink and green in Abigail's room, so I thought. . . OK, it's time to get this done. Desperate times call for desperate measures! (ha ha, j/k mom ;o)  )  I asked our dry-cleaners about the rug, and they said they would ship it to a specialist in Atlanta, and it would take two weeks. I wanted it done by this Friday when my parents come into town, so I thought, I'll do this myself. So, off we went to a what I knew was a do it yourself laundromat, but was in a nice part of town, right by Vanderbilt, so I thought it would be pretty nice. It turned out to be much more "old-school" that I had expected. This was such an interesting and odd experience, and felt like a blast into the past. I can't even remember when I was even in one of these places. When did I ever not have a washer or dryer? My freshman year in college? Even then I just used the wash area in the dorm down the hall. As I write the word "laundromat" I wonder if that is even the right word to use to describe one of these places where you go in and put quarters into machines and sit and wait while your clothes spin round and round. Do people even use quarters anymore? I really thought that there would be a credit card option, but sure enough, there was not! Fortunately I had cash. We changed my $5 bill into quarters, and Abigail watched as the change machine spit out 20. Then we used the vending type machine on the wall to pick which detergent we wanted, and dumped it into the top of the machine.Then the nice lady (who was previously sitting behind the counter smoking INSIDE) helped us stuff Abigail's pink floor rug into the commercial-sized washer. We dropped in quarter after quarter, and once we'd put in enough to add up to $4.75, it started up! All in all, this experience was not all that foreign, however I did feel like I had flashed back to the 80s or something. There was a sign that said "Free Wi-Fi" and the Olympics were on the flat screen TV mounted on the wall, but aside from those two things, you would have thought it was 1983. 

When I saw this Ms. Pac-Man game, I was convinced we had gone back in time. We dropped 25 cents in and played. My three lives went quickly. . . it's been quite a while since I've used a joystick!