It was an early Thursday morning. 6 am. I was awakened by the sound of a grumbling telephone. It was on vibrate, leaning on a book. Making a rumbling that was like an electric sandpaper machine. I picked up, it was Josh. I was late for basketball. I threw my clothes on, ran down to the garage. I realized that everyone had bailed on the game of 2 on 2, and that it would be me and Josh.So we went out shot hoops till about 7. The church bells ring at 7, and when the bell tolls its time to head back.
We were both hungry, Josh said he had some eggs and we would meet in the big kitchen. I disarmed the buildings alarm and walked through the 2nd floor in my sweats, hungry, tired, sleepy, when I saw the water. At first I thought it was a dream. I mean this much water in the Assembly hall? But this was no dream.
One of the urinals upstairs had been running all night, and the 2nd floor was soaked. I sprinted upstairs, tip toed through the lake, and gave the urinal a wack, like the Fonz. The water stopped.Some of the ceiling tiles on then 2nd floor fell in. So the day started out quite nicely.
Having stopped the water, I went to the kitchen anyway to eat breakfast. It was about 7:30, tours would be coming in at 8, but I knew if I didn't eat now, I wouldn't eat at all. For the next few hours I vacuumed, wet-vac'ed, put out fans, and cleaned up the flood. The tours went by, most of them not even noticing the catastrophe. They just figured I was working on the ceiling tiles.
So the rest of the day I worked, till about 3:30 when I had to put on dress clothes for our meeting with the District Overseer. Once a year we have a meeting with him, which is really an encouraging meeting and a time to talk to him about some of the problems that we have had here. Overall it was a nice meeting.
Because all of the assembly hall staff was in the meeting, we had a local brother whose about 23, watch the building, close up and he was suppose to set the alarm. When I got out of the meeting, I paged him to find out what was going on, why the building wasn't alarmed. He had people still walking around. So I go find him, on the first floor with a group visiting from California. They had food and everything. So of course I had food with them, they came over to my room, showed them around till about 7 pm. It was fun. I mean they came for a tour at 2pm and ended up hanging around till 7, and getting dinner out of the deal. Pretty sweet if you ask me!
My roommate got home about 8 pm. At 8:30 he got a call that a sister in his hall just had to take her daughter to the hospital. My roommate is an elder and worked with liaison back home, but he didn't have a car. So he got all dressed up in meeting clothes, I put on sweats and we went to the hospital.
We were there from 9 till about 11:15. Most of the time we spent waiting in the emergency room. I tried to make the time go by faster by telling jokes about the room, and how it feels good when you give yourself a head massage, ... but I ran out of material around 10.
Got home about 12, and had a cannoli. My goodness that was a good cannoli. Then went to bed. A few hours later it was 8 am, my alarm was ringing. Another day.
Theme Music For The Day the Flood Came:
No comments:
Post a Comment