coming back from a grocery run on another 71° day, i received a call from my sister. the oil company came by my parents' house this morning and unnecessarily filled the storage tank (for about $600 worth of heating oil; my parents forgot to cancel the auto-refill service before they left). to add insult to injury, the careless delivery man spilled some oil, enough so that my sister said she could smell it from inside the house and the dog managed to step in it when she went to the backyard.

by the time i made it to belmont around 1:30, most of the oil had evaporated, but the area below the backyard steps (where the heating oil valve was located) smelled like gasoline. my sister called the oil company already and they said they'd send someone over right away to clean up the mess, but the guy didn't show up until 2 hours later, after both my sister and i repeatedly called them to complain.

my sister had already left for nanny duty when the cleaner finally arrived. hailey was inside the house but was barking when she heard a stranger's voice in the backyard. the cleaner didn't know what to expect when he heard "oil spill" so was relieved to find out it was nowhere as bad as he thought. he used some sort of white oil spill clean up powder that smelled like artificial cherries. he sprinkled then mopped up the mess with a rag twice.

when the cleaner finished, that's when i saw a black dog head poking out from the backyard door. i freaked out, but hailey quietly came down the stairs and sat next to me. only when the cleaner began to move did hailey suddenly began barking again and snapped her jaws a few times. the scared cleaner quickly slipped away while i grabbed onto hailey's collar.

this isn't the first time my parents went on vacation and some sort of spill happened in their absence: 2 years ago there was a big soy sauce spill in the cafe basement which i had to clean up.

later in the afternoon i let hailey have some fun with the bubble machine. i'd never used it before and couldn't figure out where the bubble solution went, and accidentally poured some into the wrong hole (the blow hole). the machine then made some horrible sound and smelled like burning plastic, which at the time i thought was normal until my sister came home and told me otherwise.

i had some leftover beef stew for a late lunch, then some sichuan-style spicy instant noodle for dinner. i returned to cambridge around 8:00. after i took out the trash, my roommate finally paid me for this month's rent by check.