Our house was built 99 years ago and, like the old man that he is, he is a bit prone to leaking. When my roommate took a shower yesterday, our kitchen and basement flooded and out toilet overflowed. Disaster. I spent all day on the situation, bailing the kitchen out with a broom, the way a shipmate does on a fishing boat. I was also ordered to run up and down the stairs several times by the pipe snaker Bob (or at least that's what his shirt said), who seemed to be suffering from a high blood alcohol level and, of course, gout. By 8pm, Bob was long gone, there was no running water in the house, and the place was packed. While the roommates and I sat back with our martinis and laughed at the ridiculous party convened in our kitchen, four people attempted to solve the problem. They were: My landlord, a UCLA professor who is everything you want a professor to be, his young daughter, who looked like she could have been anywhere from 9 to 69, the plumber, a master at the temporary fix, and the plumber's assistant, a small man who is, I'm quite sure, mute. Eventually a hole was punched in the damp ceiling and the tiny man, standing at the top of the ladder, used a blowtorch on a pipe, as molten metal splashed dangerously close to his unprotected face. (Also, I took a photo of the girl blowing a bubble that seemed cute at the time, but I now realize looks like an ad for Operation Smile.)
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