daverea.com

I recently received an e-mail from my aunt, who recently moved to Florida. She said they’d been without running water for several days, and had to take sponge baths to keep clean and non-stinky whilst without air conditioning…

I did not, however, think the same problem would affect me!

Let’s start at the beginning – last night. The overnight crew for the ambulance called in sick, so Jason and I ended up covering the shift. We started out the evening at my place, however, with a trip to Mark’s Texas Hots for dinner. Accordingly, Jason left his van there since he had school this morning anyway – why bother taking two vehicles?

We headed for the base, had a zero-call shift, and hauled back up to my place at 5:00 this morning. By 5:30 we had both crashed on some manner of horizontal surface (being exhausted and all) and at 7:00 my alarm went off. I forfeited the first shower to Jason, since he had to be at class at 8:00. But no shower occurred. In fact, no water usage of any kind occurred. Because when you turned the faucet on, nothing came out.

Yes, apparently all that construction work we drove by on the way to Mark’s Texas Hots was water-related. And after I finished using stove-heated Brita water to wash my face and brush my teeth, I headed to work and drove by at least one pump pulling large amounts of water out of a manhole on Clinton Ave.

Great. Just goes to show you how hopelessly dependent we are on our utilities. And how retarded we get when they’re suddenly absent.