Too Much Toilet Paper?!

This picture sums up our weekend...flooding, avalanches, and children without Christmas presents...."Trouble Emergency" is right! I wish Duane would've helped write this...probably would be more amusing than simple facts. Oh well. Here goes.

(The camera shutter doesn't always open all the way when the camera is turned on...this is what happens)

Let me tell you, this is not how we expected our already busy weekend to start! On Friday night Duane and I were relaxing in front of our TV, trying to finish a movie we had started a few days beforehand, when someone started pounding on our screen door. It wasn't knocking...it was pounding. Our neighbour put his arm around Duane's shoulders and said, "Hey, I think you've got a bit of a problem out here." Duane says(not seeing anything outside out of the ordinary), "Oh yeah, what's that?" Our neighbour, Mac, pointed to the corner of our front lawn and explained that he figured we had a water main burst. Brilliant. This is what we saw...sorry for the poor quality, it was pretty dark out. (This "bump" on our yard was a foot high and about 4 feet across!)
Our formerly snow-covered lawn was actually sopping wet underneath(which we discovered when we walked through it and soaked our feet!), and slowly but surely creeping towards our house! We thanked the neighbour and immediately called the City of Calgary 311 Information, and then called our landlord. He told us to make sure to check the water pressure in the house to make sure it wasn't our personal water, but the City's water...and doing that determined it was, in fact, the City's issue. Their crew was out to our place within the hour, and they also determined there was a City leak, but it was more than likely under the road, not under our lawn, and had nowhere to go except there(and the neighbour's driveway). The crew who came out informed us that they'd be turning the water off for the night, and they walked the street and told everyone elese the same thing. We caught a few neighbours ourselves and mentioned that it might be a good idea to fill water jugs and whatever they could find with water so we'd have enough to last until the water was back on. They all thanked us and went about filling stuff up while we continued shoveling our grass and the driveway...it was rather tedious, and Duane broke his shovel in the process. Duane also broke the bubble eventually. He wanted to see what it'd do if he poked it, having already concluded that it was fun to play with(it was rather like a grass-covered pile of Jello). This is what happened when he prodded it with the shovel! A small geyser erupted. We have yet to figure out how to add the video clip, so it'll be coming later hopefully...it is rather funny!We started out with the two of us shoveling, and in the end we had the two next door neighbours from the east of us, the one from next door to the west(who's driveway was filling up with water and he just happened to be at the neighbourhood pub!), and one from two doors west. We had never met one of them before...what interesting circumstances in which to meet a neighbour! Duane went over there with his big winter boots, his toque, his headlamp and his shovel...it was a rather silly sight! "Hi, sorry to meet you under such odd circumstances, my name is Duane, and we've had a water main burst...you should probably go fill up on water before the City turns it off." He looked like a crazy man! *LOL* (Here's the proud builder of a snow dam)
Apparently she wasn't too freaked out, because she was very thankful and came over afterwards to help shovel water. All we needed was some beer and pizza and we could've had quite the block party going on! Kidding. All I wanted to do was shower and go to bed...but the shower was out of the question. Gross.
Duane had already thought about filling stuff up even before the crew mentioned it, so I had filled up (most) everything I could, including the bathtub (so we had enough water to flush our toilet). Here are our water reserves...we had no idea how long we'd be without water.We were then told that the City leak crew would be out at 7 on Saturday morning to start their inspection...that sucked, though we had to be up early anyway. They brought in Hi Ho's and drill machines and dump trucks and trailers...our street was pretty full! They were able to locate the leak pretty quickly, and got to work digging up the street in front of our next door neighbour's driveway. Duane was already up when they arrived, and myself shortly after, since Duane was heading out early to do his first day of the Avalanche course he signed up for with Kevan and Matt, and I was going to Samaritan's Purse to help inspect the Operation Christmas Child boxes with a group from church. Duane had a full pot of coffee ready when the guys got here, but they already all had coffee...so we had a lot of coffee to drink ourselves! In reality, most of it was poured down the drain, but Kevan was thankful for a cup when he arrived.
We were rather intrigued and hung around outside taking pictures and watching what the machines were doing. Shortly after, all of us were gone and the guys could work in peace :)Later on in the day I noticed our neighbour, Lynn, outside hanging Christmas lights, and I went over to let her know she'd missed the community party the night before. She's always up for a party, and seemed rather down that she'd missed one. I told her I was kidding, and that it was nothing much, but we spent a good hour and a half shoveling water off our lawn after a water main break. She was shocked! Lynn also seemed to think we've been using too much toilet paper, and that might be the cause of the burst! She had been told by the city crew that the water would be shut off, but she didn't notice that two doors down we were all shoveling water! In the end, I think she was actually glad she didn't have to help and, in all reality, there were probably more than enough people with the 6 of us who were there!

And that was only the beginning of our weekend.

~K~