I’ve long believed that a healthy amount of chlorine does the body good. After all, nothing dries your pores better. And since we’re going for a theme here, nothing irritates your eyes better, either.

While outside studying by the pool in the evening (in other words, after the 103-degree heat had subsided a bit), Dylan wandered outside and joined me. He watched me reading my charts and notes, and immediately got bored after all of three seconds. He grabbed his tennis ball and plopped himself five feet away. While he waited, he started dropping the ball and watching it roll away before tearing after it. Then he got bored with that and dropped the ball in the pool. And, after pacing around trying to snatch from the side, he realized (after five minutes of this) that he would have to jump in to get it. Jump he did. I noticed it not only thanks to the loud “kersplash” I heard, but also the spraying of water droplets in the general direction of me and my papers.

It was after the third jump or so that I finally looked over, and the water beckoned. Pleaded with me to jump in. So I relented, and in a few minutes’ time, I climbed onto the diving board and dove into the pool. What followed was an hour-long game of fetch, which consisted of me throwing the ball into the pool, watching Dylan leap in and grab it, and then both of us would swim to the shallow end. I ended up trying to race Dylan back to the other side of the pool by sprinting the length of the pool back to the other side.

It’s amazing how motivating a dog can be. Dylan’s ceaseless energy is contagious, and I was happy to sprint back and forth for the better part of that hour. If I had to peg it, I’d say it was the best workout I’ve had in ages. At this rate, I figure if I keep this up for a few weeks non-stop, I’ll be ready to take on Michael Phelps.

For instance, I could help them out with simple maintenance things around the house. Like, say, any problems they have with a refrigerator. A refrigerator that’s leaking, in fact. And I’d be like, “Uh, Girlfriend, it’s simple, honey. There’s this tray, see, and it sits underneath the refrigerator and catches all the water. And normally, it catches the water, and eventually the water evaporates, so it’s really no big deal, nothing to worry about. Unless it leaks, honey, and then you’ve got some problems.” And when the guy would be totally flabbergasted by my wealth of straight knowledge (not to mention enthralled by how savvy and hip I am), I would brush it off. “Eh, it’s something I learned from a couple of my girlfriends.”

And I’d be able to identify different scents in the air that are natural to a home. “Oooh, you have an older gas stove. Well, that means that there will always be a flow of gas to it, especially since there’s no electric spark to light the burner. Your stove doesn’t use any electricity.” And then I’d go to town telling him about how much that saves electricity, especially considering the place is so old that there’s only four circuits throughout, two of which are in the kitchen. And you don’t want to share an outlet with that refrigerator of yours, unless of course you’d rather constantly blow out your circuits.

And, scene.

It was the location of this wetness that confused me, though. It was concentrated around the front of the refrigerator, which initially lead me to believe that maybe I unknowingly purchased a container of juice that leaked, or maybe some ice slipped out and melted. Except there was no sign of leakage inside the refrigerator, and thus by a method of deductive reasoning that would impress Sherlock Holmes, I was able to determine that that was not, in fact, the source of the wetness.

I wiped down the floor and didn’t give it much thought afterward. That is, until I noticed another puddle of similar size the next day. Which I then cleaned up, only to find it replaced by still more liquid the following day. I wondered if perhaps I do have a leak, but it was of another variety. I noticed it had a light yellowish tinge to it, but thought that might have been due to the dirt or dust covering the floor.

This week, I’ve been keeping an eye on one of my favorite house-warming gifts I got from a new friend here the day I officially moved in. It’s a lucky bamboo plant. You know, one of those plants that’s pretty much lives through anything, no matter even if you forget to water it for a month, or something. I love it, and I like to put it in the kitchen windowsill so it can get sunlight and fresh air during the day.

Only it’s been struggling this week. A lot. An entire stalk of bamboo has been rapidly turning yellow. At first I thought it might not e getting enough water or sunlight, so I altered its location a bit to make things more optimal. Only it’s getting continually worse, and it suddenly occurred to me tonight that the air in my kitchen is probably what’s hurting it so much.

Which means, if I’m reasoning things correctly, precisely this: if the air is hurting my plant this much, it’s probably not being too friendly towards me, either. The same probably goes for my food, as well. I’m thinking it’ll be wise of me to talk to my landlord first thing in the morning, lest I breathe the gas-filled air too much and suddenly become one of those radioactive-induced superheroes. Though if it came to that, I’d definitely want to be The Tick.

Because I couldn’t sew the thing back together myself, I had simply opted to not wear the shorts until I figured out what to do about them. But oh no, I didn’t remember any of that this morning when, in my morning stupor, I decided brown shorts would be a nice change of pace from the usual lighter fabric I seem to end up wearing all the time.

All was well until, suddenly, I felt something light blow across my leg and flit away. I brushed it away. And it returned. And I brushed. Lather, rinse, repeat, for the rest of the day. I guess I never thought about how annoying it would be to constantly feel that light brushing sensation against my skin, and not for eleven hours, at that. And since you, dear reader, are probably dying to know what it feels like, I’ll tell you: it feels like something between a tickle and a windy sensation blowing across your skin, and instead of getting used to the feeling, it gets steadily more intense, until the point at which you suddenly snap and the next person who says “How’s your day?” to you will suddenly and unexpectedly be knocked backwards by your sucker punch, and you’ll be shouting “How does it feel, now, motherfucker!!!”, only instead of shouting this at said unwitting antagonist, you’ll be yelling at your nerve-shot left leg. And then when you find out that none of your actions actually alleviated the sensation on your leg, you seriously contemplate just ditching the shorts right there in public, feeling that walking around in your underwear beats walking around feeling like you want to saw your own leg off, public decency be damned.

• Stared at my homework for a little while, willing it to suddenly do itself.
• Actually did some of my homework. Typed a bit. Read some notes. Typed some more.
• Played with the resident canine. He came barking to my door so I happily stopped what I was doing to go play fetch. I even pulled out my camera and got some video footage, replete with a narrative track to make Anderson Cooper jealous.
• Failed when attempting to make a salad for lunch. Not entirely my fault: that bitch of a refrigerator froze my lettuce.
• Finished a report for grad school clinic. Still feeling like a lost sheep, but at least a slightly more productive one. This didn’t stop me from being Wendy Whiner, though.
• Finished reading my book, finally. One of the most satisfying reads I’ve read in a while. And for all the talk of cannibalism and coups and getting stoned, when it ended, I was actually quite sad.

I nearly ruined my delicious dinner of microwave lasagna and garlic bread thanks to my naivete. Of course, while they were busy cooking away remaining frozen, I was at my desk, checking my email and working on some homework. “It suddenly got really hot in here,” I thought to myself. Thinking I had forgotten to turn on the switch for the fan, I ran to the front door to see. On. I flipped it off, then on again. Nothing.

I ran to the kitchen. The microwave, itself an already silent machine², has no power. Neither does the toaster oven. Neither does the light in the living room. Neither does the light in the bedroom. My computer was fine, luckily. It’s such a relief, really, to know that the ENTIRE house isn’t on a single circuit. While I was trying to look for the cause of the outage³, I half-expected to find an old and faded paper stating that the series circuit for the place had been hand-signed for approval by Thomas Edison himself.

My landlord very graciously came to my rescue and flipped the switch on the breaker behind the house, since I had no idea where the thing was anyway. He even explained to me how to fix it myself. We’ll see how I do next time I forget the rule of thumb of running only one small appliance at a time. I’m clearly far more gifted at breaking things than I am repairing them, so don’t be surprised if I suddenly disappear without a trace. It probably just means I completely destroyed all electricity in the vicinity.

¹I had no idea they shared the same circuit. Hello, learning by trial and error!

²Even when I’m right next to the thing, I can barely hear it cooking away. I have the most bitchin’ microwave ever.

³Because, you know, I know SO MUCH about electricity and all.

Ever one for being delinquent for special blog events, so too am I late for Blog Day ‘08. Rest assured that amazing things lie beyond the links you see above. Click them. Read them. Love them.

While sitting in the clinic office Friday afternoon, frantically typing on my iBook in order to get some serious work done, I chatted on and off with a few of the girls around me. “You know, I haven’t even bought my books this semester,” I said. “I need to, but with so much else in life to spend money on, I just can’t afford my books right now.”

(Truth be told, I’m not entirely keen to purchase my textbooks. Every semester, I fall for the bluff from the teachers that you MUST have all your books in order to make it in the class. I bite the bullet and shell out the hundreds of dollars in textbooks for each class. I then lug them to campus with me every single day because I know how important they are. Only I never use them. And I still learn. And my grades remain pretty good. In addition to this inconvenient factor, textbooks for grad school have gotten out of hand. I’m taking only two classes this semester, and between the two classes, I’m supposed to have SEVEN textbooks. Which, in the modern university market, translates to something like $600. And that’s a conservative estimate. Fuck.)

“I just moved, too, so not only am I super broke, I don’t have any furniture in my living room,” I continued. “But you know, I think I’m going to go to IKEA this weekend. Obviously, I can’t buy anything, but I can dream. YOU CAN’T KEEP ME FROM DREAMING.”

By “can’t buy anything,” I really meant I couldn’t buy anything unless I encountered a deal so good that there was no way to leave the place WITHOUT buying it. Up to now, the only place for me to sit down at home has been my desk chair, which is only comfortable for so long, i.e. until I reach the point at which my butt needs a full-body massage. I’ve been itching to get a couch, but Craigslist has proven fruitless thus far, and I can’t quite afford a new one just yet. So when the IKEA voice directed me to the middle section of the self-serve warehouse floor to a plain yet comfy-looking armchair on sale, I only barely managed not to squeal in delight and football tackle the nearest sample chair.

Enter the delightful POÄNG chair (I’m not sure how to pronounce the brand name; I guess at it and it comes out sounding like “pwang”, which while amusing, I’m fairly certain is wrong), part of IKEA’s “Seize the Days” Sale. A chair for $59 instead of $89 automatically deserved my attention, and when I sat in the thing, one of the IKEA employees had to talk me down and convince me to stand up in order let another customer try it out, because I was not budging.

Thrilled is only the tip of the iceberg. I could barely make the purchase because I kept staring at the box in the shopping cart, and I suffered some pretty serious separation anxiety when I had to leave my new chair at the front of the building so I could get my car and bring it to the loading area. Now that we’re home and I’ve put my fabulous chair together, I’ve been hard-pressed even to get up for a drink of water because it’s just so damn comfortable.

You know that someone knows you well when you suddenly get a message that parrots something you write from time to time. Something that you don’t realize is a habit, even, until it’s brought to your attention thusly. For reasons that escape even me, I’m a big fan of using the equals sign when I write text messages or Twitter posts. They’re always so useful, they come in handy in so many ways, and they just mean so much.

I didn’t realize how often I use them, however, until I got the following in a text message today from Robert:

“Fish, garlic bread, mac & cheese = heaven!”

Just as my conclusion that Finch’s bassist is gay does, Robert even nailed my little equation structure. Now I can’t decide whether this little habit of mine is charming, or else boring and predictable. I’m hoping it’s the former.

*Not to mention nerdy.

Phil: Phallic relates to the penis.
Coworker: Not exclusively. It can be related to the vagina.
Phil: Since when? A phallus is a penis.
Coworker: But it can be feminine.
Phil: It’s a penis!
Coworker: …
Phil: It’s a penis.

As it turns out, we were both right. According to Merriam-Websiter online, ‘phallic’ can be relating to or being the stage of psychosexual development in psychoanalytic theory that follows the anal stage and during which a child becomes interested in his or her own sexual organs. But a ‘phallus’ is still a dick.