The One Where I Clean The Toilet!

Today's been suitably sweaty hot.  The kind of hot that makes your hair do odd, vertical things even if it's fairly long.  The frizz!  I'm not used to humidity any more with my heat, but this week's been heading for a storm. I'd forgotten how it gets into everything and makes your bum-crack sweat.  Was that TMI?  I think possibly.

Let's continue like that then, I guess.  Today was a cleaning frenzy. Living in a hard water hell hole the toilet had a crust of rusty nastiness on the bottom no matter how often or hard I scrub it, it never looks clean. Mineral deposits. Looks for the world like someone left another kind of deposit in there, if you get my drift.  I know you get my drift.  I'm a big vinegar and water girl when it comes to cleaning and a store bought cleaner and a little non enviro-friendly bleach in the toilet, but when it comes to these big, brown mineral deposit thingies I had to hand the task over to the superhero villain of the toilet world - Lysol Black.  That isn't its actual name I don't think, but it's in a black bottle of DEATH so you know it's not taking any hostages, plus I'd tried everything else. Holy crap (ha!) that thing worked a charm.  It made everything whiter than a KKK meeting.  Not a rust stain in sight.  I stood back in all my sweaty wonder and admired my finally white toilet.  Screw the environment, Lysol black, I bow before your power!

I'm kidding.  I love the environment.  Maybe that stuff would work on Justin Bieber?  It's worth a try I say.

I did just write a post about toilet cleaning, you feel free to call me some professional medical help.

Well Isn't This Unusual?

Well hey there!  Don't I suck at this "I'm now going to update regularly" thing? Yes, I do, even I'll admit it.  It's not that I don't want to come here and write something sparkling and fun, I do! I really do.  I like you all and I miss the interaction.  It's that, god damn, I have nothing much to say of late. I'm boring as can be.  It's summer, I'm out trying to enjoy the sun before it effs off again for the year.  And nothing exciting is happening.  Had a nice vacation in late June, which was fabulous, and now....normalcy.  That is all.

I mean it's nice, I'm relaxed, driving around on the weekend, eating pizza on Fridays, drinking wine (tonight actually, can you tell?) doing DIY projects like rewiring my old childhood globe lamp and adding an on/off switch, because I'm handy like that, and sanding, revamping some old furniture for the apartment, and planning some crafty stuff I need to make and oh yeah....looking for a new job. Who enjoys that chore?  Not me. Busy, busy, busy my friends.

Should there be an Oxford comma in that last sentence?  Do I really care?

I'm sorry this isn't funny but I'm full of wine and it's mid-week so that's either extravagant of me, or really, really sad.  I prefer the former.  I did clean the fridge today and it is sparkling. So white you need sunglasses to open it. I also bought little baskets and things to house various veggies and the like to stop them shedding skins (I'm talking to YOU, onions) and the like, and lined all my half empty condiment bottles up in the door (how come everyone can be almost out of groceries but always manages to have several thousand condiments?) Anyway, I'm so organized it's frightening.  This might be the most boring thing I've ever written.

I hope you are all enjoying summer?

I Made This!

I've been crocheting a blanket!  Yes, really!  Because if summer's about anything it's about making things that can make you even warmer.  This beast was started a few years ago when I was trying to get through a great northern winter with my sanity intact, then I stopped when it got so large it was starting to create a shadow observable from space (and possibly speed up global warming), and now I've started it up again, on a quest to actually finish it this time.  Did I mention it's huge?  Like super-California-king sized huge?  Because it is. The photo's a little misleading, the colours are a little darker and brighter than they appear here.  Burnt orange, a yellowy-leaf green and a more orangey egg yolk yellow.  It looks like the seventies came along when I was asleep and threw up on it. It is THAT awesome.

How's your summer been so far? For me summer so far's been puzzling.  Lots of rain, thunderclouds and perplexing lack of real summer weather.  The few fantastically sunny days have been spent in the outdoors grinning like an idiot (I love summer) and the others have been spent scooping my bottom lip up off the floor at the disappointment of yet more rain.  I hope this stops soon.  I don't survive winter for this nonsense in the summer.  Please let someone in charge know.

As you were.

Land of Ice and Sea

Last week I had the dubious pleasure of sleeping in four different countries, on four consecutive nights, one of which wasn't even a blip on my itinerary. This wasn't really something on my "to do" list exactly, it just worked out that way in a sort of unprecedented clusterfuck of travel plans gone awry. Sometimes these things provide interesting diversions, when everything's just so out of your control you can sit back and attempt some level of enjoyment, knowing there's nothing else you can do.

The view from my hotel room. It was light like this till 1am.

The second, and most interesting, of those nights I slept in Iceland, a consequence of flight delays leaving me not a chance in hell of making my connecting flight and instead being bussed to a very nice little hotel in the town of Keflavic, where I had 24 hours to wander around aimlessly with no currency, no clue where I was going and a dwindling phone charge due to charger incompatibility. Despite all this is was fun and interesting.

Who expects to be in Iceland?  Not I, at least not for more than an hour while I drag my tired self to my next flight. If I'd known I might have been more prepared. Too bad I didn't have enough time to troll around Reykjavic or check out the famous Blue Lagoon hot springs.

Yeah there's no fake sleeping going on in here!

"Do you have any rather uninteresting photos you could show us, Veg?" I hear you not say? Why yes I do.  I also have some rather fun aerial shots of Greenland and a story about the day I ended up in Denver drinking a margarita at 10:30am, but that's for some other time.

Barren and volcanic

Icelandic coastline

Creepy...built into the hillside

A monument for sailors lost at sea? I couldn't understand the plaque.

I don't know either, but I kind of like them

Blue flower by the monument

Starting to look a little stormy... Iceland's weather looks just like Scotland