Who's Got The Hip Waders and Water Wings?

I got my first unpleasant surprise as a homeowner last night... Andrew was invited to an after-work party down in St. Hilaire and was gone until about half past midnight. While he was gone, I went to the kitchen to use the sink and found the water pressure wasn't quite where it should be nor was it normal in any of the bathrooms. I just shrugged it off and went back to work until Andrew came home. Andrew went downstairs as soon as he got home only to come running back upstairs to advise me his room in the basement was "afloat." Now for the multiple choice question. See if you can guess the cause of Andrew's newfound "waterbed."

a) We just had our first thunderstorm.
b) The water heater broke.
c) The boys with their buddies left the outside faucet on yesterday when having a water fight.

If you picked "c," you're right...

I had explicitly told both boys to turn the faucet off and not play with it after 3:00 yesterday as it was getting soggy on the lawn. I'm guessing the faucet was left on a good 9 hours or so before Andrew discovered it. He was the first to guess what was up, to his credit. The faucet is located just above Andrew's egress window that sits actually underground with a plastic leanto roof to "protect" it from snow in the winter. That was unfortunately the water's point of least resistance and it all flowed through his window into his room. Luckily I invested $250 in a Bissell carpet steam machine last Christmas that acts as a wet vac... We must have vacuumed up a good 60-75 gallons of water with that. We've got fans blowing down there now in hopes of drying it out before black mold or mildew sets in. There were a couple of bright sides to the whole crisis, though... The flood was confined to the area just at the bottom of the stairs and Andrew's bedroom and didn't extend to the other "laundry" half of the basement or sauna so the damage is pretty well contained. The other bright side is Andrew now has a good reason to keep his room clean!! It was a mixed blessing in that regard. As he had a lot of clothes and towels laying around on his floor, they probably stemmed the flow of the water somewhat, but on the other hand, he lost a nice set of collector cards. I don't think he was too pleased when I suggested the need for room cleaning in the future. :o) I think I'm going to unscrew the faucet handle at this point to prevent future surprises.

We actually had our first Minnesota rain this morning when we left for the school bus this morning. It's been overcast for the first time I can remember in recent memory. I think the sun is just now peeking through a little. We missed the thunder from further south near Fargo. It's kept the boys in today too for the first time in a long while. The nice thing is Duchess waits for her paws to dry off before she hops up on the couch.