...they run and hide their heads
At least, that's what I wanted to do this morning, briefly.
See, every morning for the last several months now, with some exceptions, I've been getting up a bit early to do some reading (usually in the more technology or theory related works (so this week and last it's been Programming Perl). This morning, when I got up, I heard the sound of a heavy rain. When I got up, it had that steady tone that means I'd heard the rain through the night in my sleep, where it'd worked its way into my consciousness ever so slightly.
Every heavy rain now, I feel a bit nervous. See, when the developers built out the condos we reside in, they skimped on a few things. Fixtures weren't the most expensive. It sems like one of our drains in the basement doesn't have a trap. And, notable for this case, the drainage in our back "yard" (read, cement pad - I think Anne has discussed this as we've worked to beautify the place) leaves a lot to be desired. The drain is something like 3 inches in diameter with a cheesy grate on it that gets clogged up with leaves and junk (but no longer pigeon waste, since our resident bird feeder has moved on). And so the back pad floods. Easily. Just about every time. The only solution is to clear out this drain as best you can, and open up the storm drain (a heavy steel lid preventing you from doing so easily, of course).
So there I was, freshly showered, out there in my bathrobe trying to get this open in the rain. But this wasn't just a nice rain-shower. While I was out there, it was a real cloudburst. The kinds of rain that I associate with flooded streets in Bloomington where the storm sewers back up and Indiana Avenue becomes a wading pool for students, faculty and (in my case) faculty brats.
And this time, not only the drain on the pad needed opening, A secondary drain, which is down by the basement doors, needed to be opened up to let the several inches of floodwater go down so our basements wouldn't get flooded.
Naturally, I got totally soaked in the 5am darkness doing all this. Soaked THROUGH, but nicely hydrated for the rest of the day....
That task done, the rain added insult to injury by rediscovering a leak from what we think is our upstairs neighbor's window sill into our window frame, dripping slightly into our house. No real damage that I could see, but we'll have to see what happens.
And, naturally, 20 minutes later, after having dried off and started getting the coffee made, the rain had reduced to a quieter shower.
Posted by esinclai at August 22, 2002 05:47 AM |