Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"Great massacres may be commanded by tyrants, but they are imposed by peoples.... Afterwards, when the mood has changed, or when the social pressure, thanks to the blood-letting, no longer exists, the anonymous people slinks away, leaving public responsibility to the preachers, the theorists, and the rulers who demanded, justified, and ordered the act." -- H.R. Trevor-Roper, on the European witch hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. (From the Quotation Of The Day mailing list 2003-10-18, submitted there by Terry Labach.)

While trying to decide which plumber to call and wondering when my neighbours would get home so I could ask whether the problem originated in their basement, I decided to procrastiobserve and gather additional clues so I'd know what to tell the plumber when I called. And I noticed that the water was ever so slowly receeding. Since it wasn't getting worse, I thought maybe I could wait until this morning. I did try washing a whole lot of soap down the kitchen sink to see whether suds appeared in the basement. None did.

This morning there's still a lake around the toilet in the basement and a puddle near the washer, but everything else is merely damp, a darker grey on the concrete instead of standing water. So I got braver, and flushed the upstairs toilet a few times and ran more water in the kitchen sink. The pool around the toilet has not grown as a result of these actions, and sprinkling dust on the surface shows no motion (it was slowly flowing west-to-east last night). So I'm thinking that the "pipe burst next door" guess is most likely at this point. I'm enough of a worrywart to still be nervous. Not sure how much to trust the house ... or really, not sure how much to trust my own observations and reasoning. (Are there Great Plumbing Mysteries pertaining to this that I know not of? Am I simply overlooking something that anyone who knows water flows downhill could interpret if only I noticed it in the first place?) But I'm thinking I might go ahead and risk a shower and see what that does. After I de-yuck the bathtub.

Wish me luck.

De-yucking the basement floor (making that lake around the toilet go away is going to be a pain) and unstacking boxes to find out how bad the news is for the ones on the bottom ... those will have to wait until I'm actually feeling kindasorta energetic. Oh, and I'll have to post something nice about my house later, so that I'm not only talking about the problems. (Hey, have I mentioned how much I like those high ceilings on the first floor?)

( expletive )

Uh, if you've sent me something that I haven't gotten around to answering (or that I probably should've filed for reference other than in my in-box), you might want to send it again.

Can I just start this fucking week over, please?

[EDIT: "should've filed for reference" includes your email address if you'd written to me before and there's the slightest chance I hadn't gotten around to adding you to my .mailrc file yet. (Yeah, there are some folks I'd been looking for in my inbox to look up their addresses; procrastination just bit back.) So if I should have your email address but might not, a quick note to my usual address or my LJ address would be apreciated.]

What is it about truck accidents right now?

Yesterday or the day before (I lost track) there was a tractor-trailer that had crashed and spilled its load (of ... plastic drinking cups, was it?) in or not far from Baltimore, and a second tractor-trailer accident close enough that the helicopter cameraman was able to simply pan from one to the other to show both on the telly.

Last night(?) a propane tanker overturned.

This afternoon I retreated to my bed because I wasn't feeling great (didn't sleep enough last night), and saw helicopter coverage of an explosion. I thought it was the propane truck from before, and hoped that the other burning vehicles nearby had been part of the cleanup crew, and empty at the time. Then I caught the mention of the location: I95 and I195 ... just south of the city. Which meant it wasn't the propane truck north of town ...

It turns out a tanker truck (not sure yet whether it was a tractor-trailer or something smaller) fell off the I-195 ramp and landed on I-95, exploding and taking other trucks and some cars with it. And as there's been no medi-vac helicopters ferrying survivors from the scene ... ick. I'm not sure when it happened -- I think around 15:00 -- but some parts are still burning.

(Any of my readers needing to travel between Baltimore and Washington today, take note. 95 is closed in both directions and traffic on alternate routes is heavy. State highway officials are saying to stay put if you have a choice. I'm going to hope the Parkway isn't too much of a mess by the time I have to go to rehearsal. The television reporters are saying that I-95 will definitely be closed for hours and may be closed for days, between the cleanup and the investigation and the engineers making sure the roadway is still structurally sound. 895 is apparently affected as well, absorbing detour traffic.)

By the time I tuned in, the smoke plume had dissipated but was still discernable as a dark smudge between ground and clouds from my 3rd floor window.

Okay, four truck accidents in a couple of days, one of which was both tragic and huge. We started off the first few days of the new year with more than one house fire per day; now it's truck accidents. Please tell me the whole year isn't going to be like this.