Greetings from Egypt!

88_GT_5_oh said:

did you really move to north dakota? cause then you are probably within 2 hours of me lol. get used to flooding though.....

Click to expand...

Funny you should mention that....


Last Saturday I was talking with N8Miller on AIM when I notice a little trickle of water coming down the basement window over the top of my computer desk. I go to get a towel from the dirty clothes basket next to the washer but by the time I get back the little trickle has become a tiny stream. I push lightly on the window frame with the towel only to be greeted by a horizontal stream as it shoots a short distance in the air and lands atop of my keyboard. @#$%@#^$, says I. I tell N8 that I gotta go and immediately shut down and start unplugging thing while calling frantically upstairs to my wife.

By the time I get it all unhooked and the expensive stuff out of the way, I look up and see that the water level outside is 3/4s the way up what is roughly an 18 inch tall window. By now it's starting to sink in that this is getting kinda serious.

Keep in mind that we'd JUST moved into this dump and the computers have only been up and running for less than a day.

I run outside into the pouring rain to fetch the shop vac from the garage. I toss the thing into the back door and scream for a child to plug it in. I should mention that children are nearly worthless in a situation that requires them to perform a simple task under pressure. Incidentally, some gnomes had come in and removed all electrical outlets from the walls just moments before my telling a child to find one.

So I'm standing in the puring rain and waiting to hear this monster shop vac come to life and start sucking water from the 4 foot deep culvert that surrounds this particular basement window. To my surprise, the expected noise never comes. In the door I go to find a bewildered child standing near the center of the living room holding the electrical plug that I'd given her and displaying no brain activity whatsoever beyond that required to fix a look of terror upon her face.

I ****** the plug from her hands and immediately toss it into the receptacle behind the T.V. (I should mention that TVs also run on electricity and that this is often a good location to find an electrical receptacle... 10 year old children are not aware of this coincidence). The R2D2 sized unit howls to life! Eureka! We're saved! ...but no! It's not sucking water! Apparently a 5 HP electric motor is not enough to suck water through a 3 inch hose to an elevation of 5 feet or more. Again, I speak in tongues... "%((*&%^(*^(&*@".

I rush down the basement stairs shouting instructions to the wife and children while clearing the way behind the computer desk to position the shop vac and help minimize collateral damage. This, of course, is when the smallest child (3 years) decides that she is now independent and no longer needs to listen or follow the instruction of her older sisters, her mother, or myself... So all emergency procedures come to a screeching halt as I take time to paddle this small independent child to bring her back to reality and follow her sister upstairs where the chances of being electrocuted are greatly diminished.

The water level outside of the window is now gone. The entire window is now filled with water. The only thing missing is a goldfish. My wife runs up the stairs and out into the rain to a nearby empty house to procure a plastic guard that is used to cover these culverts while I vacuum frantically and empty the contents into the floor drain once it fills (this is a large shop vac) by taking off the plug and draining it into the floor drain.

In a very small amount of time, I begin to get very agitated that my wife is not helping me to control this situation but instead, is out screwing around in the rain trying to get these covers from the nearby house (turns out it was screwed into the wall). I look up into the window to check the water level only to find my soaked spouse outside with a bucket and bailing the water out of the culvert! (Now why the hell didn't I think of that????)

Anyway... she gets the water level down far enough that I can open the window and get the rest with the vac.

I sure hope I have enough Permatex left to seal my lower intake because I used the rest to seal that window well enough to survive a nuclear winter.


Welcome to North Dakota!!!