Disaster averted!
Taking a closer look at the plumbing greatness:
1) Glasses. Because I'm a disgrace to real scientists worldwide, I don't own safety goggles anymore. Instead, this is a grungy pair of fake Gucci sunglasses found on a beach in Miami. Safety first.
2) Scrubs and a white coat. Full skin coverage, and free laundry service at the hospital. Perfect for dealing with caustic chemicals and mystery sink-stink.
3) Plungers. I didn't own a plunger, so I went to the store (where everyone else was buying late night last-minute cranberry sauce). The store had plenty of cranberry sauce. It had zero plungers. There must have been some sort of clogged drain epidemic, because they were completely sold out. For good measure, I bought two plungers at the next store.
4) Ski gloves. It's all fun and games until the drain cleaner dissolves your fingers off.
5) Ye olde sink. It turned out to be clogged with a huge bogey of latex paint, which the apartment maintenance dudes must have washed down it when they prepped the apartment before I moved in this summer. If you've ever washed paint down a drain, fie on you.
6) Draino, which didn't work. Instead, we ended up using industrial strength, self-heating, foaming green crystals that psuedo explode when they touch water. Hence all of the above safety gear. It was like the 4th of July fireworks, right in my kitchen.
Wednesday: I went to St. Louis for another interview, and another day of that same bizarre misty rain. I guess the upside of the gross weather was that I was absolutely the only person at the St. Louis Arch park, so I was free to dorkily balance the camera on a wet trash can lid and try to impersonate the arch to my heart's content.
Friday:
Salt Lake City for yet another interview. Long day, hard questions, and no time to explore. Barely summoned the energy to take a random lame picture from the sidewalk before stumbling to hotel room.
Boston, home of Harvard's Massachusetts Eye & Ear Infirmary, was slick with rain when I got here on Saturday night. It was that weird type of misty rain that feels like it's just condensing onto you in teensy pinpoints out of the air instead of actually falling from the sky. The mist/fog/rain was still going on Sunday morning. I didn't want to waste the chance to explore the city, though, so I went out for a drizzly stroll through the Boston Commons, which is sort of like their version of Central Park.
The plot thickens:
I wanted to snap a picture at a gorgeous oak with its branches draped over the walkway, but I didn't want my camera to get soaked in the process. Success with my camera's self-timer has made me brave. I started the timer's countdown, planning to hover over the camera to shelter it with my umbrella until the last second then step into the shot. Instead, the slick sidewalk won.
Iron Lung ward: No.
Howdy from Cleveland! I'm here for a residency interview at the Cleveland Clinic Cole Eye Institute. It's a beautiful place, and the program is astounding. I think the lobby was designed to hypnotize the people standing on the third floor, though. 
