The Night is Beautiful at 3:30am

So.... I woke up in the middle of the night (probably like an hour ago) to the sound of gushing water in my bathroom. Kinda sounded like a waterfall. I thought maybe I had left the window open and a freak torrential downpour had begun right opposite the window and was pouring rain against my window and my window alone.

Oh, I was wrong!

It seems that as if by magic a piece of my toilet just broke off in the middle of the night. And this was a very special piece of toilet. It controls the water flow into the tank. And shuts the water off when the tank is full. Without it, the water keeps going and going and going and going....


So I walk into my bathroom and find like an inch of water. And a waterfall spilling out of the toilet tank. I tried to shut the water off, but the knob was like rusted tight.

Then I hear knocking on my bedroom door. The girl from beneath me has a small waterfall dripping down her walls due to the overflow of water on my floor. We run to the basement to get the super. The wonderful super who I feel so bad for waking up at 3 o'clock in the morning.

He comes upstairs, shuts off the water, plays around for a bit, determines the problem, runs and finds parts, comes back and puts everything back together, and helps mop up the floor.

Total time elapse: probably like 30 minutes. But now I'm wired and I don't know if I'll fall back asleep.

Oy, what is it with me and toilets and running water? (Last apartment our toilet broke twice, couldn't be used for two days on one occasion because the ceiling collapsed onto it, and running water from the apartment ABOVE US created giant puddles in OUR bathroom which drifted down to the apartment beneath us....)

My dad will be so proud to hear I can break things in my sleep.

I just finished the left overs from my first batch of miso soup! It was sooo good!! My journey began on Thursday with a trek to Super 88 to find all the necessary ingredients- my secret miso recipe includes the typical miso, tofu, seaweed, and my special ingredient - udon noodles!

I also bought some asian soup spoons (with these pretty flowers on them- and they were like 39 cents!) and a new bowl (with purple, pink and silver landscapes along the rim- very pretty, and like $3!!)

It took me almost an hour at 88 to find everything I wanted. The miso ingredients werent tough to find because my friend Annie had already showed me where I could find everything, but I also needed ingredients to bake Chinese Red Bean Cake with Annie- which involved finding glutinous rice flour and red bean paste - a slightly more difficult task, but I successfully learned the characters for red bean paste (红豆沙）so that made it easier. The rice flour was hard to find. And I also had to buy some rice balls with sesame and peanut filling for Annie which took a few minutes to locate as well (汤圆）。

The miso soup was for Kim, becase it's one of our favorite meals to prepare together. We just typically buy instant miso- i.e. add water and microwave, but I thought it might be nice to make it fresh. Yesterday we got up early to take a ballet class in Cambridge, then went to Harvard to visit one of Kim's friends, then took the T to Shaw's to buy cupcake ingredients (to bake tonight- YUM)... then walked back from 88 to my apartment (not a short walk!!) Needless to say, we were exhausted!!! While Kim showered I prepared the miso - wasn't entirely sure how much of everything to put in or how long to cook, especially the udon noodles because Annie doesn't use them.

I guess I guessed right though because it was very delicious! And we each ate like three bowls of it in the last two days, and I have more ingredients still so we'll probably make some more tonight. Whoever wants miso soup, let me know and I'll cook for you! :)

After miso we took a 20 minute nap, then had to get up to buy tickets for Giselle. After we bought our tickets we went to Coldstone for ice cream, then saw Giselle (beautiful, as always! And we recognized a lot of the music and a fair amount of the steps from our own Giselle Peasant Corps experience).

Came home, watched the Mole and fell asleep - now cleaning my apartment a bit, doing some dishes etc because Kim is at the Graduate School preparing for graduation. In a little bit I'll get ready for Angie's graduation too.

What a weekend!