I was out and about in the mountains all day today, celebrating Lin Zinser’s birthday with almost a dozen local Objectivists. (Happy Birthday Lin!) It was a fantastic time, despite rain, hail, and lightening while riding on an open car of the Georgetown Loop train.

In the morning, before I left home, I emptied the rain gauge. When I returned at about 7pm, it was filled up to 9/10th of an inch. It has continued to rain, although we do seem to be in a bit of a lull at present. (Update: I just realized that my rain guage has a crack in it, such that it leaks. From what I heard on the news, our area got over 2 inches of rain.)

Unfortunately, our basement sprung a leak during the course of the day. Water apparently has been seeping in along the south wall at floor level, although there’s no puddle on the outside of the house or any drainspout malfunction. That water quickly spread to thoroughly soak the carpet of our “exercise room,” a back room in our lovely finished basement. It then spread to the linoleum-floored laundry room. When I saw that it was headed into the rest of the basement, i.e. our carpeted home office and library, I decided that my only task for the evening must be to prevent that. Such would be a major disaster requiring major repair work. And the only place to make a stand against the water was on the non-carpeted laundry room between the flooded and non-flooded areas.

Clearing the laundry room of water took some doing. I initially used a dustbin and bucket for the deeper water, then switched to our steam cleaner, which filled up way too quickly. (Unfortunately, I don’t have a wet-dry vac.) After clearing out the water, I realized that water was seeping in via the doorway, under the cabinets, and through the closet. And it was seeping rather rapidly, such that puddles would form in a minute or two. Oy!

All of that took about two hours of work — and rendered me very much in need of food and rest. So I laid a few towels down to stem the influx of water. And here I am in the blessedly dry upstairs. I expect that I will have to periodically remove the water from the laundry room all night — which is a most unwelcome thought. At least the water damage folks will be calling at 8am tomorrow morning.

Really, although I’m grateful that all the rain precludes forest fires, I do hope that we have a few days of sunshine. Unfortunately, it looks like more rain is on the way. Ugh.

Oh wait, I almost forgot to mention the part of the story relevant to the blog, namely that blogging will likely be light for a few days.