Call the Plumber

On Sunday evening, I went to put on my earrings. They're pretty nice silver and gold ones, not easily replaceable. Well, the drain in my bathroom doesn't have a cover. It's just a straight shot down. I've lost contacts before, so I should have learned my lesson. But I didn't. I tried to put the earring in over the sink and it fell down.
The other problem with my sink is that it's been draining very slowly lately. We really needed to use some Drain-O but we just hadn't done it yet. So I was thinking maybe if I attached some tape to a long dowel rod I might be able to get it. But there's standing water at the bottom that never drains. So I thought maybe I could tape some paper towels to the rod, soak up the water, and then try to get my earring.
That, of course, didn't work. The tape actually came undone and the paper towel sank to the bottom. So I needed to remove the drain pipe underneath the sink, which I was told many times was simple. We didn't have any wrenches that were large enough so I borrowed some from my uncle. I managed to get the top part of the drain off, but when I moved on the lower part, the drain, the entire unit, fell out of the wall. It soon became clear that it was never really in there well. It was kind of just sitting there, not really attached.
But at least I had the drain. So we emptied it out. Remember how I said it was slow running. There was a massive amount of hair inside of it. It was one of the most disgusting and smelliest things you could imagine. After we cleaned it all out, we found my earring!!! I soaked it in peroxide to clean it off. But there was no way to reattach the drain. So we had to have the landlord come out the next day. I took the morning off to wait for him, but I ended up getting the entire day off instead. Anyway, it turned out the entire drain was corroded and had to be completely replaced. That was definitely not my fault.
On the plus side, I called my aunt (she only works mornings) and we went out to ice cream, then went to her house to play Wii, and then we went out to dinner (with my uncle, too) to Hickory Park, a super yumm-o restuarant in Ames. It turned out to be a great day.