New York City, Part One

Over the Mother's Day Weekend, Dorey and I went to New York City. We walked a lot during that weekend. Here is part one from my journal. You are in for a long haul if you read these entries, as this is only part one and we haven't left our home yet.

Before the summary, however, here are today's statistics:

Yesterday, I walked 10,097 steps. As of this moment, 7:40 p.m. on Thursday, June 11, 2009, I have walked 837,654 steps in 76 days.

Now Part One of what will be an endless travelogue:

We are back after a wonderful weekend in New York City. It was an escape weekend. We told no one where we were going or what we were doing. We just went.

The weekend did not start out that great. I left my office at about 3:00 on Friday afternoon. At about 4:00 I pulled into the driveway. There was water pulling down the driveway. I thought it was no big deal, though, perhaps Christian [our son] had washed his car. I opened the garage door, and water was in the garage. I still did not get it. Then I walked into the house. Then I got it. There was about an inch of water covering the wooden floor, and the water was seeping into the carpet in the living room.

I looked around for the source of the water, and heard the washing machine running. Apparently, the washing machine had failed to shut off once the machine was full with water, but it kept pumping water. It overflowed and was quickly spreading I ran in the laundry room, and shut the sucker off.

A second hit then came. Where was everyone? I yelled out for someone to come to down, but no one was home. Christian and Dorey were both supposed to be home, but only the dog barked. Interestingly, the dog, who is the most enthusiastic greeter, had not met me at the door, but had not been there this day. She hates water on her paws, and decided to wait out the deluge on the landing.

I was on my own in handling this crisis. How do you get an inch of water out of the house, and out of the house as soon as possible, because the wood floor and water is a bad combination for the floor. I went into the garage, and found a broom. I started pushing water out of the house with the broom into the garage and out the front door.

I stupidly forgot to pick up anything in the garage that might not handle the water well, so I had to interrupt by sweeping to move some stuff to higher ground. No long thereafter, Christian and Dorey came home.

Dorey immediately started apologizing. She and Christian had been gone for just a few minutes, taking some stuff back to Holly’s house. Frankly, at that moment, we did not need apologies; we needed work. I started instructing both Dorey and Christian, telling them to get some towels. Christian brought me two face towels, which, given the amount of water, was like trying to win World War II with a pea shooter. My thought was to get water out of one spot, and then put the towels down to act as a block for water running back into the area. We could also use the towels to wipe up once the water could no longer be moved by sweeping.

Dorey ran to get more towels, while Christian and I moved the furniture. It was actually sort of a good thing that the furniture was moved, as we found things--an old rice cake, tax documents--which we did not know existed beneath the couches. Christian and I were able to get most of the water out in about 45 minutes, and Dorey was able to follow behind to wipe up any remaining water. It appears that no long term damage was done to either the carpet or floor.

During the middle of this crisis du jour, Kate [our daughter] called. I think that she just wanted to say hi. Christian said that it wasn’t a good time, and could we call her later. After the crisis had passed, I called Kate. She said that she and Jacob [Kate's husband] would be going out to see the new Star Trek movie that night. I told Kate that she was a nice woman for going. I then talked to Jacob for a couple of minutes. He said that work was slow, so he was able to take the Friday afternoon off. Classes were going well, and that they did not suck. I said that was a good thing, because when classes sucked after only three weeks into the semester, it was going to be a long semester. End of part one. The picture is of dresses at a street fair we came across in the Union Square Area of Manhattan. So we will eventually get to New York City.