when it rains, it pours...

or at least, it pours from the plumbing in the basement at 3am, oh just about 2.5 weeks after a tree totals your car.

but hold on, let me step back. [i know you can wait to hear the rest of the story, right?]

so, my dad flew up from Texas to help me make my first car purchase [i do have fantastic parents], since i had no idea what i was doing, and was not really in any mental state to handle this a week after the tree incident. 

i had been looking at cars (and then coming home and crying because salesmen are very pushy), so i had narrowed down the choice to 2 prior to my dad heading up (the Ford Fiesta and the Toyota Yaris--the Echo's replacement). except when i went to the dealerships by me to test drive, neither the Toyota dealership nor the Ford dealership had the model/trim that I was looking for to test drive.

my mom called around and found the two vehicles in another nearby town, at dealerships across the street from each other. I decided to try the Fiesta first at 9am when they opened. it was nice and small, and the seat pumps up so I can see over the steering wheel and it gets up to 40mpg. and i didn't even go to the toyota dealership (i feel like i'm cheating on the echo!). The Fiesta was in the color I was looking for, so here she is!

Okay, fast forward to today. [he rest has just been a blur of dealing with the insurance companies, trying to get my life back in order, and dealing with craziness at work, so not important]

Andy's away for work, so I'm on my own. It's 2:55 am, and my phone is ringing, and I see my landlord's name. [sleepy brain says: oh crap! a tree fell on my brand new car...] Landlord says: "Can you let me in, I think there's a huge leak in your basement." [PS: landlord lives on the property, so we share the same well pump]

Sure enough, I open the bedroom door, and hear GUSHING. I let Landlord in, and he runs down, shuts off the water, runs out, gets a small water pump, runs back, and is freaking out because part of the furnace is under water, e.g., the pilot light portion.

Anyway, so we deal with this for about an hour. And the pump is going, so not much we can do but wait. Except I can't sleep. It's now 4am, and my alarm normally goes off at 4:30. My body thinks its time to get up [except my brain knows that i get to sleep in and start work later today for field work!]. i'm up, the pump dries out the area its in, so i fix it and cart it around the basement until 5:50am. Now, there's really nothing I can do, so time for sleep, right?

WRONG. At 6am, I learned the hard way that it was moving day for the people living upstairs. And they are moving furniture and vacuuming at 6am.

Anyway, i went to work, and now its 7:30pm, and I've been up since 3, so I'm done. Oh, in case you were wondering, it so far doesn't appear that too much of our stuff got damaged (we have things on racks and in plastic boxes because the basement has flooded from rain in the past)... so it will still unfortunately come out of our pockets because it won't even be enough to reach our renter's insurance deductible.

Here are some more photos for your viewing pleasure.

the culprit (ps: this must have been going on for a while, because that's an awful lot of water at 6-8 inches deep to fill the basement coming out of that tiny hole)

there isn't supposed to be a hole there

Oh, and I burned my throat on pizza today at lunch, and now it hurts and is difficult to swallow. Hopefully that's it for me.