Well, things aren’t really looking any better in Japan, are they. More aftershocks, more explosions, more lost reactor cooling capacity, more dead people. Not much happy fun time. Not a lot of happy fun time in my basement, either. I went out and bought a spare submersible sump pump yesterday, along with 24 feet of flexible hose. In a pinch, I figure I can stick the hose out a window and pump things down. That won’t help me much if I’m not home, of course (or if the power goes out), but a battery backup and/or generator just aren’t in the budget right now.

And of course I awoke to find a pipe that came apart, so I have a pretty good flood down there this morning. Naturally, the decent shop vac is over at the other house (was gonna buy one yesterday, too, but cheaped out). Spent a fair amount of time trying to squeegee uphill (everything runs away from the sump, of course), but finally gave up. I guess I’ll have to buy another shop vac at lunchtime today, and hope nothing else comes apart during the day (way back when I cobbled together an alternate line to avoid dumping all this water into my septic tank, I was in a hurry and didn’t bother to glue together a bunch of the joints along the floor, because I wanted to redo all this when things dry out, and figured they weren’t really under pressure. I guess I misunderestimated there.

And of course the joints won’t come apart on command now, so I’m kind of gluing things as they blow apart. Still a couple to go, I’m afraid. Oh well, only my workshop is really in danger, and everything’s up high enough. I hope.

It’s shaping up to be another great week.