Week 17 Summary: I'm not really sure what happened with the game this week but what I suspect is that everyone woke up and heard the rain pouring down, looked out the window, looked at color-weather radar and saw that there was this big blob of "yellow" sitting right on top of Austin and not moving and said to themselves "Fuck that" and went back to bed. At least that's what I'm hoping happened because I had an emergency and couldn't go to the game (which meant that the gear didn't go to the game either).

My apologies if enough people did show up and want to play (though I would guess the fields were a nightmare after all that rain). I really feel bad I couldn't make it but I was rather distracted.

I woke up around 6:00 listening to the rain and concerned that we were not going to get much turnout. So after a while I got up and sat down at the computer to see whether the rain was going to stop by 9:00 or shortly thereafter. While sitting at my computer studying the weather patterns, I noticed out of the corner that one of my cats behaving oddly. She was stalking a doormat from my back door that had started floating at her. "Oh, isn't that cute," I thought, "Kittens can be so much fun." At the same time I thought, "Why would a heavy, rubber doormat be floating in the house?" It was then that I realized that I more than half our media room was under nearly an inch of water.

I sprang up and ran to the flooded part of the room to grab the X-Box 360 that was in about 3/4" of water and plugged in. So standing barefoot in water on a tile floor, I'm trying to disconnect the X-Box to prevent it from getting damaged and then realizing that I really needed to unplug it to keep from getting electrocuted. Having accomplished that, I realized I was still about to die because I installed extra plugs in the floor of the room using conduit and the water had now reached one of them. I pulled the plug on the extensions and, as a precaution, began pulling all other plugs to prevent our audio/video equipment from blowing up.

I then sent a message to the Flag Football players and called my wife who had not gotten off her night shift yet and left her a message telling her that I needed her home at that point. Actually, I got voicemail and just said "I need you home now" and hung up. This, I later found out, was not the type of message that has enough detail for Amanda. Not knowing what the problem was and imagining that I was injured (which given the exposure to electricity while standing in water was a distinct possibility), she was about to turn the hospital pharmacy over to the house supervisor (who is not a pharmacist). Fortunately, she got a hold of me and I was able to explain that I wasn't injured but that I needed her to come home and bring pumps.

I then went outside and discovered that our primary drainage systems were clogged and there was about 6 inches of standing water that had risen far enough to drain into the house. So it was dark, cold, raining hard, and there was quite a bit of lightning and I, I had to get on a metal ladder to clean out the gutters to try to help water drain away from the part of the house where it was flooding in. This was after I was on my hands and knees in the water clearing out the ground drain and pouring bags of concrete all against the wall where the water was coming in.

Unfortunately, this actually made it worse because the water kept rising and ended flooding an exterior closet on with a common wall to the media room and that then drained into the room across a larger line. The entire yard was under about 4 inches of water and not really draining well. The high water mark in the media room was about 2 inches and 2/3rds of the floor under water (the room is 16x24 and slopes slightly).

Amanda and I then spent the rest of the day working with the water removal guys, I spent most of it outdoors digging a trench from one side of the property to the other which allows the water to drain while Amanda packed up everything in the media room to clean it out. Sunday, we figured out how the water got in that exterior closet and fixed that by cutting 4 inches off the bottom of the door and building up the retaining wall . The builders had put in a pretty good wall there but notched it lower for the door - idiots.

We think the property damage is limited to a couple bookshelves and an area rug. Not sure what the house damage is but we'll definitely be spending quite a bit on improving lot drainage and adding better retaining walls (perhaps disguised as planters). Still, its better than our original idea of tearing the back half of the house off, pouring a higher slab for the media room and rebuilding on top of that.

MVP: Dumb luck which had my back and kept me from getting electrocuted during the many, many opportunities I had.

Link of the week: http://varicore.com/Menu/french_drains.html

Week 18 Preview: Sadly, it looks like more rain but probably nothing like we had Saturday morning where we got 5 inches in about 3 hours.