Christmas Flood

So I managed to go home for Christmas. Since I work with individuals, it's not easy to take a vacation, as I have to cancel on seven people instead of one. However, all my Direct Support Contracts canceled on me, and the assignment from my temp agency started a week later, so I wound up with extra time.

I show up in Guelph Thursday evening. Wake up Friday morning, get up to go to the bathroom and step into standing water, which is covering the kitchen floor. It doesn't take long before me, my mother and brother are filling buckets of water and tossing them out. But the water is flowing in almost as fast as we're getting rid of it.

We contact our Landlord, and he calls a plumber and another guy. The three of them show up, there's a theory that it's a burst pipe because of all the freezing and thawing that's been happening due to fluctuating temperatures, but the plumber rules it out, as his evaluation concludes the plumbing in the house is fine.

Next theory is that it's a crack in the foundation of the house, and the water coming in is melt, although this would require a pretty large and pretty recent crack. They shovel away all the snow and ice from around the house and put up the metal plates against the roof to funnel away falling water. Doesn't slow the river any.

We find where the water's getting in. It's coming in through a wall on one side of the kitchen. It looks like the interior of the house is sweating. The landlord leaves his wet vac for us and his push broom and says he'll be back the next day. Gotta give him credit, the next day is Christmas Eve.

Since there is a drain in the laundry room, so long as the water was kept somewhat shallow, we were able to use the broom to sweep water into the drain as it pooled into the centre of the kitchen. We put up wads of towel to stop it from being swept into my brother's room during this process. Regardless, water is beginning to seep through the foundation inside both my mother and my brother's rooms. The only fully dry room is the living room.

Landlord gives us a $100 prepaid Visa and an Italian Christmas cake. He's really apologetic and I get why, but he's hustling and nobody gets what's happening so I really can't cast blame.

We cut the water in the house and nothing happens. We get a representative of the city to cut off the city water and that also doesn't help.

So me, my mother, and my brother exchanged stations, making sure the river was manned consistently, bailing water out of the apartment for a solid five days.

Know what it was? There's an abandoned house next door and uphill from us. A pipe burst, no one was there to report it, and before anyone thought to check, it was waist-high in water. Water from that house flowed underground and seeped into our apartment. Explains how our plumbing and foundation were unchanged, and why cutting the water in our house didn't work.

So we finally get that under control. Day that I'm about to return to Kitchener, I get a call from my roommate. He's says "Our unit is flooded."

I don't think my good luck charm is working.

So I get back, and yeah, flowing water, and standing water about as bad as the Guelph situation. It doesn't persist as long, though. It's coming from beneath the sink, so I turn the knob beneath the sink and that cuts the water. Our landlord gets a plumber night-of, he does some work and all is good. But it is the story of how I came from one flood to another, and how I was up until 3 AM the night I got back, vacuuming up water and mopping when I had work the following morning.

Before this Christmas, I'd never used a wet vac. Now I feel like an old hand at it.

Just had New Years. This isn't just the beginning of a new year for me, it's also my first year anniversary living in this unit. I remember last New Year, me and my roommates didn't realize that our heat was working (It was, we just didn't turn it on) so we spent a night without heat. This year, I found out the heater in my room is broken. So I guess like, not having heat in the New Year is like a tradition now.

Last year's New Year Resolutions were to get my G2, progress my romantic life in some way, and to find full-time employment in my field. I didn't get my G2. I did some Driver's Training, but I did half of the sessions on one end of the Summer Program, then found I had no time during the summer because I had two jobs and was working seven days a week, and then I did the other half of the sessions on the other side of Summer Program, which was mostly refresher. Wound up not touching some stuff and didn't wind up taking the test.

Closest I came to progressing my romantic life, I landed a date but she wound up standing me up. Wouldn't respond to any of my messages after that.

And as for employment, I had a few good job leads but nothing came of them. I managed to grow my Direct Support Contracts from three to seven, but ultimately found I couldn't survive on Direct Support alone and went back to being a factory temp, eliminating all my new contracts except the three I started with.

I did score that Safe Management Instructor gig, which I'll be training for late February. Unfortunately, I can't take on ongoing industrial contracts until I finish this training.

So 2016 was a big ol' washup and I'm restating my resolutions this year.

Today I was supposed to have a week-long assignment starting 7 AM, but when I showed up, they were like "The guy you're supposed to report to isn't here until 7:30, please wait in the lunchroom" So I waited until 7:30 and they were like "He won't be here until 8:00, please wait in the lunchroom." At 8:00 the guy I reported to showed up, and he was like "Turns out the guys in the warehouse you were supposed to be in are on vacation, please come back tomorrow".

Bah.