which_chick | (no subject)

So, I'm sleeping the sleep of the just, here. The phone rings. I hear it ring and the machine pick up. Now, the phone only rarely rings for the forces of good at this hour. The machine gets it because I'm the fuck asleep, yo, and because I don't keep a handset in the bedroom. (Having to drag my ass to the living room to get the phone increases the odds that I will be verbal when I get to the phone.) On the machine is the voice of significant distress. It's a tenant and it sounds kind of panicky. From what I can tell of the message, the building at 219 has got some kind of issue, a feature which penetrates my sleep-fogged skull before the dude hangs up the phone from leaving the message so I roll out of bed with a heartfelt fuck and get the phone.

The basement apartment at 219 is flooding. Further details (I do not wake up quickly very well so it takes me a while to formulate rational questions) suggest that it is flooding in a localized area, to wit, the back (closet) of the bigger bedroom. (It is not raining or melting in a way that could cause flooding from Bloody Run.) On the other side of that wall are three water heaters and a really gross toilet. Hrm. Okay.

I direct tenant to wake up Gregory (tenant who has access to the basement), the which he does. I explain how to find the shutoff valve. Tenant finds shutoff valve on the second try. (Plumbing is difficult for normal people. Given two valves "near" the water meter, normal people will invariably pick the one with a spigot first. Shutoff valves do not usually have spigots.) The water stops flooding out. I explain how to get about in the basement to go find where the issue is. The tenant says the water heaters look fine but that the water is "coming out of the pipe that is supposed to connect to the toilet." Hell, I didn't think that toilet worked. This is all news to me. The tenant claims that it looks like the pipe "just came apart."

I have no idea what the fuck he's talking about. None. Plumbing doesn't just fucking turn loose for no apparent reason. That is not how plumbing works. It doesn't freeze in that basement, or at least it hasn't ever yet. It's not that cold out, either... cold, but not super duper cold. I have no clue, here. There are a couple of compression fittings there, but none of them go to the toilet.

I make the executive decision that I will look at it in the morning.

Tenant wants to know what I am doing.

I am going the fuck back to bed. (I do not tell the tenant this in so many words. I lead up to it gently.)

I allowed that I was going to play with the plumbing at 219 tomorrow, first thing, in the AM.

Tenant is like "But there isn't any water."

I explain that it's 1:30 AM when all good children are the fuck in bed.

I explain that further, the water is not currently leaking, a feature which significantly lessens the urgency of the situation in my eyes.

I explain finally that the Wonderful Local Purveyor of Plumbing Parts inconveniently and thoughtlessly does not have dead-of-night hours so the whole fucking mess can wait until daylight because my best finger in the dike (not "finger in the dyke", mind) efforts cannot stop the pipe leaking without the means to effect a proper repair.

I didn't really want to spend my Saturday working on plumbing. I did that *last* Saturday, for fuck's sake.