Technology has me by the (figurative) balls today. The satellite is sluggish in the extreme so earlier today I just gave up and moved to knitting and sewing. Far worse, however, is that fact that my beloved iPod has frozen and will do absolutely nothing. Connecting it to iTunes gets me nowhere-- the computer can't find the device. So I am stuck. And just today I had subscribed to "This American Life" and downloaded some past episodes. I can still listen to them on the computer, of course. I am going to try to figure it out tomorrow. In the meantime, on the plus, side, I started my new pair of socks. This time I am starting with the toe and the first one seems to be going well. I did a provisional cast on using "waste" yarn and it worked nicely. Also made my first pot holder of the season and have several others in the works. Still cool and rainy-- in fact John put the heat on this morning which horrified me. Heat on 9 July? Pretty amazing. I had planned to go to the drop-in yoga class but got muddled on the time and didn't figure it out until too late. Went instead to the Y and walked their track. Sold one book yesterday and two more today. We had thought about going up to MDI but the weather doesn't look encouraging. Wrote to Liz today and told her about the mini-crisis regarding Margaret's blood test and I will repeat the details here just to get them down. We went up to Waterville on the 28th and had a dreadful visit with the doc-- so bad that I can't even think about it. The next morning, having recovered slightly, we went up to Waldo County to have blood drawn. This is for a special enzyme test that turns out can only be done at Prometheus Labs in California or at Mayo. Amidon stipulated Prometheus. Then on Thursday we got a call from Prometheus saying that the blood had been "improperly handled" and that they had cancelled the test. I called the hospital where I talked to probably the first person who has been sullen since I moved to Maine-- very unhelpful. A flurry of calls ensued between the hospital, the doctor's office and Prometheus and by late in the day it was decided that there was no problem after all and they could retrieve the blood and do the test. Turns out that when they say they "discard" blood, they don't actually do so. A very good thing-- in part because it is such an ordeal for Margaret to have her blood drawn and also because the test is time consuming and our next visit is coming up and finally because she left on Sunday and we had only a narrow window of opportunity if the blood was to be drawn again. Let's hope that the results get back to Amidon in a timely manner-- she is going to have go get up at 4 am in order to be in Waterville by 10 and it would be useless if they blood test isn't completed. I will call them, of course.