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there are at least 201 more days before my roommate's girlfriend goes back to spain. she's been here 3 days and it already feels like forever. i still don't know what went wrong. should i have said no when victor first broached the subject? maybe he crossed a line for even suggesting it. could i have said no? he put me in a difficult spot. i'm not against his girlfriend visiting. what i am against is her being in my house everyday for more than 3 weeks. i feel like i'm under siege, like i can't even have any privacy in my own place. she might very well spent all her time here in the bedroom; but still, knowing somebody else is in the house makes me feel stressed.

when i woke up this morning, victor had already left for work, but his girlfriend was still at home, in his bedroom. there was no sound so i assumed she was still sleeping i so tried to keep it quiet. i had some cereal and prepared to leave. how come victor never asked me for a second set of keys? without a key, you can't leave the house since the front door has a dead bolt. was he just expecting his girlfriend to stay at home until he comes back? so i found my spare key and left her a note on the kitchen counter.

i went to the cafe first to drop off an extra flan for my great uncle. my californian aunt was there, waiting for my mother and sister to show up to take her shopping at the wrentham outlet mall. i arrived in belmont right when my mother and sister were about to leave. i spent the rest of the day at my parents' place, dogsitting hailey who mostly slept.

i left the house just once to take the car to home depot to return a few things and to look for rain barrel parts. we're all set about the spigot attachment but we still have questions about the overflow. originally we though we'd just clamp a 3/4" hose connector. it works but the problem is the exit hole is small enough that should there be a torrential downpour the rainwater won't leave the overflow fast enough and will just pour out from the top of the rain barrel. the solution seems to be make a bigger hole. 1-1/2" is a pretty standardized size, the diameter of a sump pump hose.

so i was browsing home depot, which must've taken anywhere from 30-60 minutes, working the aisles, starting with the wiring department, where they carried things like conduit locknuts and watertight wire tubings. their pvc pipes are very similar to pvc water pipes except they're colored grey. next i went to the plumbing department, with various choices of materials like galvanized steel, copper, black steel, bronze, and white pvc plastic. i then visited the garden department, checking out the selection of attachments for sprinklers and hoses. finally, gutters and downspouts to see if they have anything i could use. i ended up pushing a shopping cart because all the small parts i picked up were hard to carry by hand.

even though it didn't seem like a lot, i paid $36 for about 14 pieces of piping of various diameter and threading and configuration. i put the receipt in a safe place since i'd probably return most of these things anyway after my father and i figure out the best option.

everything would be a lot easier if we could get bulkhead fittings, but those are too specialized a part for home depot to carry and all the ones i saw online were just too expensive. the purpose of the rain barrel is not to make it the most expensive and suped up water storage but rather the most inexpensive and practical rain catcher.

since i was in belmont and had all this free time, i finished oiling the last of the wooden planks. it was originally a 12' board from the cafe basement, but my father cut it into an 8' and a 4' piece. the wood is old so it feels lighter because it's drier. today felt like summer, with temperature supposing to reach the 80's but the high for today was 72°F, the warmest it's been since last october. maybe it was the heat, but the linseed oil already dried up on some spots before i had a chance to rub it off with a rag. it could also be due to the dry wood, which might absorb more of the oil, which is a good thing. with the last of the boards finished, we now have all the pieces (including additional deck screws which i bought today) to assemble the other 2 raised beds. i really want to get at least one of them up and running by the end of this weekend; with the weather warming up, there are certain seeds that need to be planted immediately (like lettuce and sweet peas). for the dirt, we might pull from the corners of the backyard, add some homemade compost, and maybe buy some topsoil.

i was hungry and thought i'd have to resort to another bowl of ramen when i remembered there was still plenty of leftover barbecue from yesterday, enough to eat for the rest of the week. i heated up a burger in the toaster oven for lunch while scarfing down a plate of sweet potato fries.

hailey woke up at exactly 6:00 for her dinner. after eating, i let her out in the backyard where she did her business before coming back inside and going to sleep on the couch.

my sister was already home by around 8:00, and my father came home briefly as well, to grab the gps for my californian uncle because his broke and he couldn't make it back to their hotel without it. after one more burger for dinner, i biked back to cambridge.

victor and gise have basically taken over the kitchen/dining area. victor was at the table surfing the web in his tank top, while gise was perched on the bar stool in her pajamas by the oven waiting for their homemade pizza to finish cooking. i retreated to my half of the house, the living room, and i didn't see them again until victor came out to say good night. 20 more days!


1 that's not entirely true; 22nd-25th they're going down to new york city, so just 16 days, a bit more than 2 weeks. it's not that bad.