After unloading my last trip of the day with roommate Mike, and checking out a brand-new Italian restaurant in my new neighborhood (and it's cute, Russian-accented waitress), I came back to the old house to rest and watch a movie, planning to take tomorrow off of moving, and just finish next weekend as I'd originally planned. After Mario and I went to the store for beverages, he went to the bathroom, and I sat down to watch "The Queen". After sitting through a MILLION previews and advertisements, the movie finally was about to begin. As the opening credits began, there was a quiet bit and I heard the sound of trickling water coming from somewhere in the house. I thought "Oh, the toilet is stuck again" because it always keeps running and just flushes over and over. So I paused the movie and got up to go jiggle the handle so the stopper would do it's job. Only I didn't get very far. I went from the living room, briefly through the kitchen around the corner to the hallway and was confronted with a vision of sheer horror and disgust. The trickling sound was instantly transformed from a minor nuisance into a major crisis. The hallway was filled with water. Fortunately, I still had my shoes on. I had no desire to look into the bathroom and confront the genesis of this horror, so I leapt the raging river to the garage door, and stormed into the garage, also known as Mario's computer room. "Mario!", I gasped. He leapt up out of his chair, seeing the urgency of my facial expression. "Did you flush the toilet?!", I blubbered. "OH SHIT!", he said. Or maybe he just thought it loud enough for me to hear. He ran into the bath room and shut off the water supply to the toilet, which had been overflowing for the past 20-30 minutes. While he dragged his shop-vac into the bathroom to suck up the amazing amount of water that had over-flown, I went into my room and got all of my electronics off the floor. Then I went into Mike's room, which has been mostly emptied as well, and moved everything away from the deluge. Shortly after this, roommate Bethany, Mario's wife, came rushing out of the bedroom where she'd been sleeping, ready to rip Mario a new one for waking her up with a shop-vac in the middle of the night. She didn't make it to the bathroom, however, plunging headlong into the raging torrent that blocked her path. To her credit, she seemed more amused than angry at this point, which is the appropriate reaction in my estimation. She asked if there were anything she could do to help, and Mario assured her there wasn't. We quickly abandoned the shop-vac strategy as grossly inadequate, and feebly employed the All-The-Towels-in-the-House maneuver, at which this flood of biblical proportions guffawed with contempt. Resigning ourselves to seeking professional help, we trekked across the street to the miraculously still open grocery store to rent a "Rug-Doctor". Rug-Doc had rescued our carpets after many a wild party. While Mario toiled to, in effect, squeegee the Atlantic ocean away, I inspected the extent of our damage. Some already packed boxes suffered from soggy bottoms, and a pile of yet-to-be-filled boxes in the garage were now useless, but since most of my stuff, and nearly all of Mike's stuff had already been moved, nothing of value had been damaged. I continued to follow the downhill flow of the water until, to my amazement, I made it all the way to the street. Yes, the street. It was then that I noticed a puddle in the front lawn had also formed. Think about that for a minute. Enough water had spilled out of the toilet to make it to the street and even to partially water the front lawn. Needless to say, I've re-considered waiting until Friday to finish moving...
Why yes, of course I took pictures!
This gives an idea of what I first saw upon coming around the corner.
Here, the deluge slowed to an ominous ooze, threatening my room with soggy doom.
Mario is not amused. Neither is the fellow in the picture to his right, who is just waiting for Mario to get within chair-strike range.
Here, the raging river made it's way through the garage. Shop-vac futilely attempts to bar its passage.
Toilet water gets a taste of sweet, sweet freedom, exiting from the garage door.
In this badly taken photo, where the shadow of my car, the lawn, and the sidewalk meet is where the puddle formed in the front lawn.
Although it had mostly dried by this point, here is where the flow found it's way to the street. Notice a bit of accumulation in the gutter.
The grisly aftermath of the All-The-Towels-in-the-House maneuver. (All the towels, incidentally, were freshly washed and were grabbed from the dryer).
