News Flash: Flood -or- News: Flash Flood

I was sooo on track this week. As of last night my Finn and Charlie comic was written and drawn and merely needed inking, scanning, and touching up. As of right now, nothing's changed.

Why?

RAIN. Frankly, it wasn't that bad (and it hardly rained in Skokie, where I work). However, it was enough to get maybe an inch of water over half the basement. The problem is, our basement is (was) once again covered in boxes (the previous stach of boxes having been thrown out during the last flood), and the flooding reached the carpet where it spread via the magic of capillary action. Really, it wasn't that much water. It was just enough to be annoying, and more to the point, to cancel our plans for the evening. (My plans were just the cartoon, plus I'm pretty sure we had something fancy in mind for dinner. We ordered in Thai food instead.)

(The flood did not reach the corner of the basement by the stairs, where we have just set up a new home for our cats. Somebody has taken to pooping willy-nilly around the house, and we can't have that, so it's basement living for them now. Actually, it's enormously sad. In any event, the trauma of their first day in the basement was not augmented by wet paws. It's entirely likely they didn't even know what was happening when it happened.)

Eric was exhausted when he came home, because he had to deal with flooding at the studio, too. It was much worse there. (The studio, I've recently learned, is in a part of our neighborhood that used to be a small lake, so probably there are some drainage issues.) Eric tells me that water was fairly boiling out of the drains at Lillstreet. It was much worse than here.

Still, we had to dispose of all the wet boxes (a blessing in disguise) and wet-vac the floor (and thank god we have one, even if it doesn't work real well). The boxes of books are sitting on a pallet, so there was very little real damage. The cleaning was a couple hours' work for two people. Two people who are now tired and gross-feeling.

So, while I could stay up late in ink and scan Finn and Charlie for you all, I confess I'm just not going to. I plan to shower and pass out.

Labels: journal, personal

posted by Tony at 11:13 PM