Re: Hate Thread
This happened several days ago, but I'm still dealing with it. Thankfully, it's mostly over, but, just...gah!
The events were as follows: I have to be to work at 1 PM and I go on break roughly at about 345 (which is another rant altogether, but anyway...) My mother is at work, too, but when I come home, I hear water running and I'm like "Huh? Is mom home?" *start toward bathroom* "OMG, did I leave the shower running?!" *hurries* I walk in to a *deluge* in the bathroom. One of the pipes that brings the water up to the toilet busted and it's spraying water EVERYWHERE.
First order of business, try and stop it, which isn't happening, since I can't see where the water is coming from, nor am I willing to drop down to the soaked floor to do so. Then the thought crosses my mind "OMG THE BASEMENT!" (which is where my ROOM and all my STUFF is.)
I grab the phone and am calling my mother to come home and help, bounding down the steps to find water STREAMING along the pipes and drenching everything beneath them. After nearly killing myself on a wet mat between the stairs and the light, I take stock of the damage, which includes a pair of my work pants, various assorted boxes and totes and...SHRIEK! MY BOOKS!
LTD Commodities sells these almost awesome products for storing magazines, CDs, and DVDs (which are also the perfect size for manga.) I say "almost" because the sides are plastic, which is great for seeing in, but the tops and bottoms are only cloth, which is not so great for keeping water out. One such case is practically right underneath the spray of water and for those of you who remember my story about the 16.5 pounds of gay porn, well, it wasn't that, but I'm willing to bet it's another 16.5 pounds of books. On the plus side, there was a reason this stuff was stashed away and not on mys shelves, but at the same time, "my books, dammitalltohell!" (Including my first edition translated copy of Finder, which I took off because I have the reprint, that cost me about $50. Didn't get hit as bad, but still got damp). Another casualty was one of the magazine holders, which contained everything from Empire sci-fi mags to Stargate issues to Playstation Magazines (including my Dragon Age 2 cover one). There were also several totes of books and plushies that I'd been moving out of my room, ironically, to make room for the stuff on my floor, should our hot water tank bust again or the washer drain puke like it did before and so that stuff wouldn't get wet. And I also found that I had another container of magazines that was getting 'gravity damage' due to the way I had them stacked in there (the top mags were pulling at the spines of the lower ones, causing them to fray and bust apart.)
So now my kitchen table looks like it holds a demented cake, layered with manga, newspaper, and paper towels, as I have them stacked to be dried. Fairly sure at least two of the magazines are a lost cause (they're fused together), and the piping has been replaced. Could have been a lot worse, but at the same time, what did get damaged is enough to make me rail, wring my hands, and gnash my teeth.
tl;dr - Busted pipes suck. (Or perhaps, more aptly, blow, in this instance.)