Monday, February 11, 2008

How to Stop Time

You know how on most days time just seems to fly by? You look at your watch and say, wow, is it already 3, or 5 or 10? Well, today I have learned how to stop time.

Turn off all running water.

I have not had running water since 1:00 this afternoon, it is now 7:30 p.m. This has been the longest day of my life.

I can see the City crew up at the corner. I assume they are trying to fix a burst line, and aren't just sitting around drinking coffee and text-messaging their friends. Maybe I'm foolish to assume they've been working for the past 6 hours. What do I know?

When I was a kid, and the city needed to turn off the water, a truck with a loud-speaker on it would drive around the streets screaming: Attention Attention. And my mother would scream: Get some buckets! and we would fill up a few buckets with water so we could continue to use the toilet and be civilized people despite our lack of running water.

But now? You think we got a warning? Nope. Sometime after 1 p.m. I turned on the tap and nada. Nary a drip.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is it possible that no warning was possible? I hope its back on by now!

Nanuk of the North, older but no wiser said...

It came back on at 9:45. I've never been so happy to hear a gurgling toilet.

Since the temperature dropped pretty rapidly from the day before, I'm assuming this caused the pipe burst and there probably wasn't any warning time.

cityofmushrooms said...

didn't they park one of those water trucks on your block so you could at least fill up a pitcher and make coffee?