the day I became a man

What a wacky couple of days. Luckily, our apartment never lost power, so we woke up Friday morning as wide-eyed as kids hoping for snow days. And we got one! Julie and I then proceeded to spend most of the day watching TV and occasionally taking phone calls from our moms, both of whom lost power.

I think I wandered outside to clean off my car late in the afternoon, and it was my first chance to get a feel for how nasty it was for myself. Our complex has a lot of trees, and all of them were destroyed, or at least damaged. Thankfully, I used a bit of rare foresight for myself on Thursday when I decided it was not a good idea to park underneath a tree.

We got more phone calls from our moms, and something about removing water from their sump pumps. Hey, I don't our my mom's basement flooded, I got my comics down there! Finally, my mom broke down on Friday night and said I have to come over, because she's been at this sump pump thing all day and she's exhausted.

Taking buckets of water out of a hole in the ground occasionally doesn't sound that bad. Yeah, it is.

Bailing water out every 15 minutes sucks. The water never stops coming! I would be dumping five five-gallons worth of water out of the ground at a time and it looks like I barely made a dent. If anybody fell asleep for more than 30 minutes, the basement floods! It feels like being one of the button-pushers on "Lost," with the added gift of sore arms and backs.

Julie's mother was going through the same thing. Thankfully, she lives in a duplex with her friend on the other side, so they were taking shifts through the night. I was at my mom's in Lancaster until late Friday night ... yeah, that's right, fuck you driving ban! ... and then drove back to Buffalo. I'd be up by 5:30 a.m. to head back to Lancaster for another shift.

How does one occupy yourself inbetween bouts of water dumping? My laptop has a battery life of about 3.5 hours, which meant I was able to get through six episodes of Arrested Development S3 with the DVD player. After the laptop was done, I listed to WBEN for a while, and two thoughts occurred to me ... One, why does every weather related event have to have a catchy media nickname? Yeah, kiss my ass, "October Surprise!" Two, and this happened when hearing a commercial about external batteries for sump pumps, I figured out such a device could be useful to me right about now. Especially when the radio reports that it could be a week before power is restored.

My mother woke up later Saturday morning, and then mentioned to me that my father actually has a gas-engine generator sitting in the garage. Um, what?

First, I'd like to explain something about myself. My dad was always good with the mechanics, while I was the book guy. I was an English major. I've lived in apartments for most of my adult life, which means I have a Mitch Hedberg philosophy to maintenance: I don't have to do shit.

But the revelation that there's a generator sitting upstairs baffled me. See, you have to run the generator outside because of the carbon monoxide (Hey, I worked that out myself!) However, the plug on the sump pump is telling me that I can't connect to an extension cord if it isn't a grounded circuit, which might have well be written in French for all the good it does me. I'm really, really out of my element when it comes to this stuff. Fuck the trains leaving at 1 and 3 bullshit they put on the SATs, why don't they have questions like how to use a generator outside to power the essential things downstairs using a grounded circuit?

While my mom attempts to track down the instruction manual for this generator, I shove off for a few hours to acquire a pair of sump pump batteries (yeah, nice try Mark) and check in with Julie's mother. They have now enlisted a third party to help with the bailing of their pump. She also managed to have somebody deliver a generator later that day. So while the bailing is handled over there, I grab a shovel to clear out the driveway of snow. Fortunately, it was actually very nice on Saturday afternoon, so much of the snow was beginning to melt. Unfortunately, plows left a good five foot pile of the cold stuff at the foot of the driveway. Between shoveling and the bailing, I was enduring Dickins-like backbreaking labor here.

My mom calls me and she's found the generator manual. Hurray! But while I take that break, my mother-in-law decides to clear the afore-mentioned five-foot pile of snow by driving over it with her Landrover. Didn't really work. You'll have to excuse her, this is her first winter dealing with this snow stuff by herself. Anyway, I have my handy excuse to bail out of there and back to my mom's place.

So remember that bit about the grounding circuit? According to the manual, the generator's already grounded! How exciting. After a few more trial-and-error moments (mainly, I put too much oil into the damn thing), we got the generator fired up. A few extension cords later, we connected it to the sump pump, which immediately began draining the water, and there was much rejoicing. I think I even heard angels sing. Lo, today was the day an English major got a gas engine to work.

After I jumped in the car, guess what was playing on the radio? Big Pimping. Awww yeah.

By the time I got back over to my mother-in-law's, several people have come over to help with the driveway and the bailing. A few minutes later, the generator came. Three guys were around to put it together, and considering that even I was able to figure this whole thing out, I felt my work here is done. My Catholic brain needed beer.

Remind me to buy two sump pump batteries (whenever they become available again) for future needs. And a home guide to electrical systems and appliances, because unless audio/video cables are needed, I'm a total idiot.