Frozen Pipes

I woke up on Sunday morning to discover that the pipes in my house were frozen.

Guh.

Fortunately, not all of the pipes were frozen. Only the pipes that lead to the upstairs bathroom (home of sink, toilet and shower) were. Since I'm accustomed to brushing my teeth, going to the bathroom and bathing, this presented somewhat of a problem.

The teeth brushing and bathroom goings were taken care of by the fact that the toilet in the basement still flushed and the kitchen sink still worked, but not necessarily in that order. My main problem was that I needed a shower since I didn't feel like looking like (or smelling like) a hobo all day. So, after I went out to brunch where I dined with my other bed-head afflicted brethren, I called up Stu to see if I could use his shower. I even bribed him with bringing him lunch and since it was minus 20 with the windchill yesterday, he agreed.

I get to Stu's and we're watching the Cavs/Pistons game when my landlord calls. She and I had been in contact earlier that morning as far as what to do in order to unfreeze the pipes so that they didn't burst and flood the house. She mentioned something about a main water valve shut off or something, but I wasn't paying that much attention since I had no idea what she was talking about. I think the gist of her call was, "if you notice water leaking, call an adult to come over to the house to show you how to shut off the water."

Desperately in need of a shower, I used Stu's to bathe myself. However, when I pulled the shower knob, the water transfered from the faucet to a little wand thingy that I had to hold the entire time so that I wasn't standing there naked with the water shooting up from the bathtub floor onto my undercarriage. This wouldn't have been so bad if I didn't have to wash my hair.

I finish up, dry off, get dressed and get ready to head back home to the impending bursting of pipes when I ask Stu how they normally shower using only that wand. He told me that there was some other lever I had to pull to get the water to come out of the top showerhead. Lovely.

Fast-forward to this morning where I still don't have any water, so I get up extra early to go to the gym to work out and then shower there. Since I don't shave on the weekends, this also meant I had to shave at the gym, which is very weird experience. First of all, I normally shave in the shower since I can kill two birds with one stone and the steam softens the skin a little bit. Secondly, the fact that I wasn't shaving in the shower meant that my shaving experience was less than pleasant this morning. Thirdly, shaving in front of other people is weird.

At this point, I'm preparing myself to having to shower and shave at the gym all week since the temperature isn't going to get above 20 degrees all week. But then around 3:00 today, my landlord calls and tells me that a plumber has successfully unfrozen my pipes. Awesome.

So tonight, when I get home from kickball (yes, kickball) and grocery shopping, I'm going to take the longest, hottest shower that I can and maybe bring a beer in there with me just to relive those good old college days.

(This post was written to kill some time between 5:00 and 5:30. My kickball game [yes, kickball] is at 6:00 and I didn't want to stop home first. That is why this post sucked balls.)