I have been happily drinking my tap water, but then today I noticed scum at the top of my glass. Yuck. So, I thought I'd put my old Brita filter thing on the faucet. I used a fancy Brita Aquaview thing in Alexandria, because it was centered across the back and our faucet would flip. The adapter I had in is totally stuck and I can't get it to fit on my new faucet. Nor can I get it out to replace it with the right adapter thing to attach. ((sigh)) My hands hurt from trying to twist these things off. I suppose I ought to either get a new on tap thing, as apparently the one I have is now discontinued, so I imagine getting the replacement filter would be hard to find, or get a pitcher for my refrigerator.

Or maybe it is my ice cube trays, having been in a box for two years. Either way, I think I want a filter on my water, since it tastes like city water, which never tastes very good. _

This evening, I got home, stuck Sam on a leash, and walked out the door, realizing once I was outside of my locked house that my keys, wallet, and cell phone were all inside. I felt really dumb. None of my roomates were home. I walked around the block. I rang the doorbell for the people upstairs, but I'm not sure what I thought they might do, but someone eventually showed up with a phone, but without the landlord's phone number. While he and I were standing there trying to figure something out, my roommate showed up, and saved the day. Still, I felt dumb, and figured I should probably have a spare set of keys. I don't know what that spare set of keys would have done for me, or who I would give them to that I could walk there from my house the next time I lock myself out. _

This weekend, while visiting my parents in Vermont, my stepbrother and his wife came to visit. They insisted that we all be inside at 4 to listen to The Moth. Now, I love the Moth. I do. However, I'm pretty sure I've never heard it on the radio, and I've certainly never insisted on making sure we all sit around the radio to listen to anything other than snow day announcements. I do podcasts for radio. I do TiVo for TV. I haven't worried about the schedule of entertainment in ages. It was hilarious. (Also, the Moth wasn't on.) _

Sam is fine, apparently. They gave him barium and it raced through his system, which means there's no blockage. He is still in Vermont, coming down to Boston tomorrow when my mom is coming down for book group. No surgery is good. I'm also glad that his first night at his new home is not while he might still be...expelling corncob and hydrogen peroxide and barium. That might...not have worked to endear him to his new roommates. _

No longer convinced that Sam is okay. We are taking him to the vet. I am very nervous. _

This afternoon, Sam ate 3/4 of a corn cob. The internet told us that this could be very dangerous, especially for a small dog, because corn cobs are undigestable and can get stuck in their intestines and lead to surgery and/or death. So, further internet searching suggested making him vomit, and that giving a dog 2 tablespoons of hydrogen peroxide will make it start vomitting. So, I mixed some hydrogen peroxide in with some chicken fat to entice him to eat it. And he did, and then he started throwing up. It was really gross and he was very sad. (We did do this outside.) His tongue turned a little purple, but it's pink again, and he's no longer throwing up. (Actually, now he is all better, jumping and happy and begging for food.) But, it was scary there for a few hours. Poor little Sam. _

Also, after having held onto my book club book for a month, the Post Office is finally willing to let me go to the post office in Charlestown to pick it up. Um...right...Do you have a time machine, too, Post Office, so I can go back in time and not buy the book again so that I could actually read it in time for my book club in the beginning of June? _

Things not to try starting at 7 in the evening when you are hungry: making gnocchi from scratch, when you have never done it before. I baked my potatoes wrong (how do you bake potatoes wrong?) and they wouldn't mix up at all. So I gave up. I'm going to eat spaghetti from a box, because it's easy.

Also, it doesn't matter how much I hit buttons trying to tell TiVo that the cable box is working, when there are no lights on, the cable box isn't actually working. So, no setting my TV up tonight, but fortunately, I spent an hour trying to get it working. _

In a fit of productivity, I cleaned my rotten food out of the fridge (should have done that before I went on vacation), took out the trash, and rearranged my storage closet so it could fit my last few boxes. (Note to self: packing boxes in before putting in bags of soft stuff makes packing easier.) And now I will sit around, and vaguely hope that my roommate of the many guitars will come home before I go to bed (last night, I heard him come in as I turned out my light) so I can ask him if we can please not have half the living room floor covered in guitars and pedals and tee shirts. I'm very nervous about this conversation. My living room and dining room leave me feeling vaguely embarassed, because the mess is so not my sort of mess (my mess tends to involve books and knitting projects, sometimes beading projects), and it's all over, and I just moved in. And Sam will be coming back with me after the 4th, and I'm terrified that he will try to mark territory by peeing on my roommates stuff which is currently stored all over the floor. (Sam is a good dog and generally doesn't pee in the house, but he has never lived with a boy before, and I am nervous. His dad used to pee on Connor's stuff everytime Connor came home from college. Not just things like dirty laundry, the dog peed on Connor's XBox.) _

Lovely. I may have opened a virus. I certainly fell for a spam message. It was more convincing than most, it certainly looked like it was coming from UPS. _

I flew yesterday from Richmond to Boston, and it was 90+ in Richmond, and I think it was like 75 when I left Logan. It was so nice. And now it's all hot here. Bad, weather, bad. _

Driving off the Outer Banks today, there was some random red British style phone box. No idea why. My stepdad says "look, it's a TARDIS!"

"No," I replied, "The TARDIS is blue. It's a Police Box, not a phone box."

At some point around this time, my brother says "What is a TARDIS? Not some sort of Southern Tar-jay?" _

Also,  I have made sponge cake. I have never made sponge cake before, and I'm not entirely sure how well it turned out, but the batter was tasty when we put it in the oven, and it seems to have a good texture. I made two, one normal one with proper flour and proper sugar, and one bizarre one with spelt and agave syrup for the woman who claims to have allergies but I suspect just has a slight eating disorder. But it is her birthday, and I was helping her daughter make strawberry shortcake. _

My mom and sister, on our beach trip, have been reading To Kill a Mockingbird and other high minded things. Someone brought along a series of books about science and spirituality (blah, new age crap), and there is, of course, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (which I also haven't read, but given its ubiquitous nature, it surprises me not at all that it is here. I have decided to give it until it is off the best seller lists to consider trying it, and making asking people again closer to the time whether or not they like it; so far, I have heard many "oh my god couldn't put it down" and two "um...not really that great" sort of comments, but the not so great comments were from people whose opinion I trust more than the masses). I brought along some Dorothy Sayers and some Chabon and some trashy vampire romance novels, and all I can read is the trashy vampire novels. It is hot. We start drinking early. Your brain turns to mush from heat and salt and alcohal and you just read garbage and hide inside at noon and watch the World Cup and curse at those idiotic horns that sound like bees.

(I don't do Twilight. I read Charlaine Harris, and at Tracy's recomendation, I have been reading some silly series along the lines of Nice Girls Don't Have Fangs. She put out three books in a year, I am just operating on the assumption that she took three books to a publisher rather than writing really fast, and I am on the third book. And then tomorrow I will be home and I will have to try to read real novels.)

Also, there is an absurd fight about food going on. They made vegetrian risotto, so my brother and I have something to eat, and then they wanted to add a bunch of things like eggpant despite me saying "please don't" and then my uncle started grumbling. I was like "excuse me, this dish was made so that those of us who don't eat the absurd amounts of fish that you are also cooking have something to eat and your grumbling that I would like it to not include mushy eggplant? And you took over someone else's cooking project? Are you kidding?!" _

We are at the beach. I have spent the day covered in salt water, sand, and sunscreen. There are dolphins and pelicans. (There are so many pelicans. And I have only see one regular seagull.) It's a blissful sort of slow vacation, all sunny and the sort of trip where I finished a trashy novel and pulled out The Yiddish Policeman's Union and realized that, blissed out on sun and gin and tonics, Michael Chabon might be too much. _

I feel like I am waging domestic war on an apartment that has been half heartedly inhabited by boys for several years. I paid a sweet girl to come scrub my bathroom and attack the grime stains on my kitchen floor. I have spontaneously vacuumed. I spent most of the day with my oven on self clean. There was grime and nastiness hanging off of the wrack. (Considering that no one cooks, I don't really know where that came from.) I am very proud of the oven, despite the fact that it did all the work. The first time I ran it, I filled the house with smoke that made me choke and made my eyes burn. Then it wasn't actually finished, so I took the tin foil off the bottom and ran it again. (Maybe I should replace it with more tin foil. Maybe I shouldn't bother and just keep it clean.) I ran it for several hours, with windows open and my AC off, because I figured it would be wasteful of the electricity. It is very hot. But it is now clean, with just some fine white ash at the bottom.

Go me.

Also, in the Tori Domesticity case, I have spent most of the day finishing my green cardigan. It is nearly done. I spent hours and hours picking up the front. It will be lovely. My goal is to have it finished tonight. I don't know if I will succeed.

Now, to figure out how to get the guitars out of the room I have set up as a living room... _

Discovery of the morning: I can type rather well with my eyes closed. I probably knew this already, since I used to type looking at the ceiling or the wall next to me just for pracice, but with my house full of smoke (roommmates have never cleaned the oven, so I am doing it now), my eyes hurt. And I have been typing up this blog entry blind. _

Last night, I sewed the elastic together to wear my fabulous red skirt. (I think I posted pictures of it a year or so ago, when I had the elastic held together with a safety pin.) And I am wearing it today.

It's an awesome skirt. It's a skirt that makes you sway your hips to show off. And it flares just over my knees when I walk, and it awesomeon stairs.

And there's just enough cashmere blended in with this cotton (this is Debbie Bliss cotton cashmere) that's luxuriously soft. A coworker just asked me if someone knit it for me, and I said gleefully, "I knit it for me." I love knitting myself clothes. Also, I love this skirt. I am seriosly considering making it in Rowan's Denim yarn so it will look like blue jeans.

  _

Sent from my phone. Please excuse any typos.
_

I have never paid someone to clean for me before, but there was mold/mildew on the walls of my bathroom, so Sonia's fabulous cleaning girl is over scrubbing my bathroom. The last time I tried to clean a bathroom, Lara almost took me to the ER on a Saturday night because the combination of bleach and bathroom ickiness closed my lungs up. I had a lungfailure for three days before I went to the doctor and was given allbuterol and advair and sent home. I feel mildly guilty. She is also going to mop my kitchen floor, which looks like it may have never been mopped. (I am sure it has been mopped, it's not that sticky.) Because she is better at cleaning than I am. (Yesterday I vacuumed. I felt very proud of myself, and then I watched old episodes of Doctor Who to remind myself just how terrible Davies was.) _