Today was my penultimate day at Microsoft so I decided to clean up as many of my things as I could to make tomorrow less stressful. The day had already been horribly marred by the millions of tiny things I need to finish up at work, my worries over Julian’s arrival on Thursday and the dreadful weather we’ve been having (snow causing huge traffic problems all over Seattle and the surrounding areas) so it was nice to take a break from that for a moment. For the entire year, I had been keeping an empty “Blackblack” gum jar on my desk which I filled with the non-quarter change I got from the cafe every day at lunch (the quarters I took home to use for laundry.) Basically, it was completely full of nickels and dimes, probably upwards of $15 or $20. Rather than lugging that home with me (as it was quite heavy) I decided to put it to better use. I took it with me to the kitchen and proceeded to feed it to the vending machine in exchange for candy bars. Now, as one might imagine, feeding a vending machine $15 worth of nickels and dimes is a pretty lengthy task, so by the time I’d put about $8 I was getting some really funny looks from people. I felt it was time to move on, so I went down to the second floor and did the same thing there until I ran out of change. I ended up with an armful of candy bars which I can now share with my buddies when they come over, and I didn’t have to lug 10 pounds worth of change home.