7/10/2008

water in the basement......

took me a bit to find the time to write this.... lemme tell you about the probably wettest week of my life (excluding the time i flooded my kitchen almost every day because my washer broke, but thats a whole other story...)
sunday night, i put little stinker too bed. all was quiet and it started to rain outside so i thought to myself, better get the plug on that pipe that the water from the washer drains into... so i did that. i was getting ready for a nice evening of practicing my drawing, working on my basement and listening to (very) loud music. just burned a mixed CD with some old demos and B-saide tracks from LP, plus some of my favorite songs. got done carrying lots of stuff downstairs (like 4 trips up and down including my laptop) and on my final trip, the last step off the stairs, i step in (you guessed it) 1/2 inch of water. i can hear the water rushing out of the pipe in the other room over my music. FUCK. so i run and try to close the damn thing again, unfortunatly the plug got blown out of the pipe and was somewher behind the washer or dryer, which at this point were standing in almost a foot of water. FUCK. so what do i do...?i panic of course....lol
well, no actually i called my mom. she says, turn off the power in the basement. me: "i would love to, unfortunatly i dont know WHERE to turn it off. the only power switches i know of in this house are upstairs and those only work up there. she says, call 911 (german equivalent anyway, you get the point) me: why dont you do that while i try to find a way to close that fucking pipe. she says, whats the number 115, right? WHHHAAAATTT???? its 112 EVERYONE knows that. theres no such thing as 115. anyway, i go down and stuff a towel in the pipe (it helped, plus the rain was stopping so the water was slowing down anyway) 3 minutes later, she calls me back and says the firefighters are on their way. (this was around 7 or 8 pm btw) so a few minutes later they show up. at some point before this my brother came by to "help" but since he is absolutley no help whatsoever, his presence is hardly worth mentioning (he did fix my laptop, only took him 3 months) anyway, theres like 12 guys in my house, ranging from 15 to old. one was cute but i only saw him for a second. they pupmed the water out of the basement which took forever (i could have done it with a freaking bucket in the same amount of time, not to mention with 12 guys and a freaking fire engine....) so they are done, they leave and i have a huge mess to clean up. it sucked and i dont really feel like reliving it right now, i did make a video the next day, after i had already rescued alot of the stuff in there.


basement from bianca long on Vimeo.

i didnt speak on the video becuase i might need it for my insurance so i wasnt sure if i should speak english or german so i opted for neither. short explanation, the first room didnt get flooded too badly (1 1/2 inches maybe) and all the stuff on the bed is what i rescued from the other room. then in the next room, the stuff on the ironing board is stuff that got wet that im still hoping to be able to salvage when it dries. the stuff in the middle is all ruined. the stereo made a really funny bubbling noise before, cant hear it too well on the video tho. the stuff on the left i havent worked my way throu yet anmd at the end, that hose behind the washer, thats what caused the flooding. it rained so hard that the water dirty (nasty, stinky) water came back the other way. there was a lid on it, but the pressure was so high that it got blown off.

(the above description is what i posted when i posted the video on MM)
anyway,tuesday morning a frind of mine from my FRG (family readiness group) came by and helped me get the rest of the stuff out and put it in the garage for now (thank you Sean!). well, by helping i mean, he did it and i watched Lee and made coffee. there really wasnt that much left to get out anyway.
since then i cleaned it all up, repacked some of the stuff and its looking much better. unfortunatly i had to take the carpet out of "my" room, which means the music doesnt get "absorbed" as well but it was still wet and starting to smell, so i cut it in 2 halves and brought it upstairs. its currently drying in the driveway...lol (its 11 pm).i also have to keep the windows open to let the moisture escape, so no loud music for me. well until today that is. i NEEDED to "relax" (yes, i find singing alond to extremely loud music while playing POGO relaxing) so i shut the windows, so i shut the windows and doors, brought my laptop (aka my best friend) and a shit-ton of candles down here. im hoping that this will A) dry up the air so the walls can dry and B) warm up the place cuz im FREEZING...lol
tomorrow my landlord is coming by and we'll figure insurance issues and stuff.
and on a more positive note, i recieved some stuff in the mail today and yesterday. today i got stuff i ordered from EMP.de (its a metal thing) which included some LP and rolling stones buttons for my purse (reliveing teenage times lol) a cute shirt for my son that i will take a pic of later and post here.

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a shirt for myself (i might even post a pic of that, dunno yet)
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AND MY LINKIN PARK POSTER that i NEED for my basement. im thinking of getting a metallica one and maybe Disturbed too, and im DEFINETLY taking down that kitten poster i put up for my mom when she was supposed to use the room (but didnt, only to smoke in, which annoyed me so i claimed it back) anyway (i get sidetracked to easily...) i think that was all that was in this box... oh yeah and i re-added 2 single CDs to my collection. i had these back whe they first came out, but because i moved so much since then, i lost them. ("in the end" and "papercut") but whats MUCH more interesting is what i got in my box yesterday (MMers, see my post in FAD....) from my dear friend Maria, who for some reason thought my wedding anniversary was in june (its august 28) so she bought me something........
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and with this, i shall leave you. its late, im tired and FYI, no, i havent tried it out yet...lol


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1 comment:

Christina said...

Water creeps through the window, up the stairs....

sorry, I know it's not funny, I just keep singing that song every time I see the title of this post.

I hope you can get insurance to pay for the damaged stuff, and that the damage isn't too severe. I'm sorry B, wish I was there to help. We could blast LP and clean together.