smacky and bucky

Our basement leaks a little when we get heavy downpours. It's unfinished anyway, so no big deal.

When we get TEN AND A HALF INCHES of rain in four days?

Yeah, it doesn't leak, it floods.

We took the day off yesterday to go to Home Depot for supplies:

• Dehumidifier
• Quick-drying concrete
• Extra garden hose
• Two plastic tarps

We've had the dehumidifier running constantly since Monday morning. It says the humidity is 70% in the basement, most of which is likely caused by the expanding puddles of water on the floor. I have a garden hose attached to the dehumidifier, running into the sump pump pit. Water comes out of the air, into the pit, and is pumped out of the house (where it probably seeps back into the basement, but don't tell me that, even if it's true).

In a rare break in the rain yesterday afternoon, I patched several places in the walls where water had been gushing out the night before. (one of them was about two feet up the wall, and it was flowing like someone turned on a garden hose and left the room). We circled the leaks with sharpies to find them again the next day. I'm happy to say the places I patched held. Of course another crack I had missed (or that didn't exist the night before) began flowing water last night as a result. Damn. I was going down to the basement about every 30 minutes and using a push broom to move the water toward the sump pumps. The pumps probably purge 10 gallons each time one of them comes on, and Sunday night they were both coming on every 30-45 seconds. I won't do the math on that, but it's a lot of water.

I'm not terribly depressed about this, as, since I said, it's an unfinished basement, and a quick flip through the local news channels shows a lot of people in shelters, with their homes condemned as a result of flooding waters. Not that I mean that makes me feel better. It just makes us realize it could have been much worse.

We need about a week of dry, sunny skies with low humidity.

They are calling for more storms this afternoon, some possibly severe, with an inch or more an hour falling.

I'm at work now. I can't keep taking off to push water around with a broom. As long as we have electricity, the sump pumps will keep up with the water, and I'll grab the broom again when I get home and push some more around.

I finished book VI in the Gunslinger series. The final volume comes out in paperback at the end of August. If I can wait that long, I'll get it. I'll likely break down and order a cheap used copy from a seller on Amazon in the next few weeks.

I watched Conquest of, and Battle for, the Planet of the Apes also. The last one epecially has a neat germ of an idea there, but the budget for the final movie in the original Planet of the Apes series was obviously crap. I could imagine that movie with today's special effects technology, or just with a decent make-up budget.

Of course Claude Akins was the big bad gorilla, and, as Joel said in the MST3K version of Master Ninja, "Say what you want, but Claude Akins has a nice butt."