sprite writes
broodings from the burrow

June 27, 2006


wet books aren’t a good thing
posted by soe 1:21 pm

For people who love books, Rudi and I tend to leave them on the floor. Normally this is fine, but not when two of your rooms flood.

I bought a hair dryer this morning and have been blow-drying the wettest (and thickest) of the books for an hour or so while listening to podcasts. I think it will work out okay. (Yes, I have heard a rumor that some people use these machines on their heads. I have never been one of those people and gave away the one hair dryer that was ever given to me. But desperate times called for desperate measures and I am now the owner of a book blower.)

One of my knitting books may have bitten the dust, though. It has glossy pages that all seem to have melded together as they dried and my attempts to pry them apart have not been good for the paper. I’m going to try steaming them apart, but if that doesn’t work, we may have the first significant casualty of the floods. (Or it could become an off-roading instruction manual offering the beginnings of patterns but not the ends where the pages have ripped.)

P.S.: For those who are wondering, yes, we had a great time in California. The present woes have shifted those nice memories into the background, but they will rise again into the foreground soon and then I’ll be happy to bore you silly with tales of 70 degree temperatures, books, visiting loved ones, and hitting the beach.

Category: books,knitting. There is/are 3 Comments.


in the event of rain, please send towels
posted by soe 9:20 am

D.C. is suffering from torrential rains. And, located as were are at the confluence of two rivers, flooding.

I’m delighted to say that we did not return home late last night to feet and inches of water the way some people in D.C. had yesterday. And our landlord and handyman did check on the bedroom problem (on which they’re still working).

That’s where the good news ends.

Flooding in the living room — where we put all the extra stuff we rescued from the bedroom. Somehow the phrase “when it rains it pours” has a certain bitter irony to it today, particularly when you see they’re predicting the heaviest rains of the week this afternoon.

The large braided rug that covered half the floorspace in the living room is currently draped over the railing leading down to the Burrow. The washing machine is working overtime. I’m off to buy a hairdryer to take to the books that haven’t dried yet from last week. (I have to get them dry before I can start tackling the mildew that I see forming on some of them.)

But I do have terrific parents who, when they saw the tv footage of the area’s flooding, packed up their car with towels and a wet-dry vac and headed south so they could be already on the road to help us if we came home to find things floating. We intercepted them before they hit New York City, luckily, but their kind-heartedness did help to buoy our spirits as we toiled to remove the sodden, water-logged things into other parts of the apartment.

Hopefully the sun will come out tomorrow and we can finish drying out then.

In the meantime, please send us your mental towels…

Category: life -- uncategorized. There is/are 2 Comments.