Rain, And Rain, And -- Would You Believe? -- Rain

      That's what it did yesterday.  It rained.  Then it would stop awhile and ponder, all overcast and cold, and having given the matter due consideration, it would rain some more.

     By evening it had tapered off, but overnight storms boomed through and gave me the most peculiar nightmares, mostly about waiting in line for the washroom and then discovering there was an even longer line for the human-specific facilities once you got past the door.*  I blame the varying rain, from drizzle to downpour -- it never entirely let up until about alarm-clock time.

      But let's back up: midmorning Sunday, fresh from a bath, I went to the basement in a warm robe and sandals, bearing an armload of laundry, only to discover there was a bit over an inch of water at the lowest point of the floor.  Yes, the backflow valve in the floor drain, iffy at best, had once again closed up during heavy rain.  I wielded the plunger with hope, and went back upstairs to finish drying off, put on clothes and boots, and set up the portable sump pump.

      At the jeans-and-top point, one of the widgets up at the North Campus conked out, sent me a text, and I had to get on my computer to take a look.  Or try to -- the super-secret looking-at server was coughing up hairballs and it took a long time to get to the machine I needed and actually see some readings.  Which were...not normal.  Not shut-down awful, but messed up.  Commercial power had failed and the site was on generator-- Until it wasn't, and the machinery went into a another worrying power-up recycle.

      By the time I got that sorted out and returned to the basement, nearly an hour later, my plunger work must have taken effect: the water had drained away and the floor was drying.  I went around outside and checked the downspout extensions, just in case.  Sure enough, two of them had been knocked askew by our neighbor's lawn service.  They don't mean to, they just don't notice, but I don't always catch it before the next rain.

      Some excitement!  I did finally get a few loads of laundry done.
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* Places like Deep Space Nine and Babylon Five must have the most confusing constellations of little silhouettes marking the public washrooms --  "Let's see, there's a Vogon, a Vulcan, Mimbari, Hani, Elvish, Eddorians, Ents, Kzin, Rull, and is that supposed to be a human woman or a poorly drawn Lovecraftian Old One...?"