wet, wet, wet

Got back home from work today to find the kitchen covered in water – on the shelves, on the counter, all over the floor. Rushing upstairs to find out what had happened, I found out that the person living in the unit above had his toilet overflow and caused a big flood on the second floor as well. There was a cleaning crew here to clean the mess on the second floor, so I asked them to bring their wet-vac down and clean up downstairs as well. They're still mopping up, but I've asked them to leave a fan for me so that I can make sure the floorboards dry out and hopefully don't get mouldy or mildewy from being soaked.

From what I've been able to determine, plumbers were here earlier to fix the pipes, but there's still a few drips, and the water leakage has also extended to the windows in the living area. My credenza is all wet, but luckily, the water hasn't touched any of the electronic equipment sitting on top (at least not that I've noticed so far).

I've had to throw away a lot of food that was on my shelves and on the counter (having an overflowing toilet spill over your kitchen doesn't exactly make you want to consume any food that's been soaked by it), and am still in the process of cleaning up. Luckily, one of my neighbours across the hall had a key and was able to let the cleaners into my unit before I arrived
home from work, otherwise, i'm sure there would have been a significant amount more damage to the unit and my stuff.

hoppiness...

When we were younger, my sister and I used to repeat a rhyme around this time of year...

Happy Easter, Happy Spring,
Happy, Happy Everything!

There's really no point to me posting this, except for the fact that it always seems to resonate in my head around Easter. I attended Easter morning services at St. James's Church in Cambridge this morning. The last time I was there was probably Christmas of 2005. It's been a long time. The sun was shining through the stained glass through most of the service, casting a multicolored glow over the entire congregation as the choir sang traditional African hymns with drums pounding at the front of the chapel, making for a festive celebration. The final peals of Handel's Hallelujah Chorus reminded me of Easter celebrations at home. However, I didn't spend too much time feeling homesick, since I was graciously 'adopted' by the Beers family again, as I have been for most of the major holidays since I moved to Boston.

Jo and I brought some desserts and appies for Easter dinner at her parent's place in Wakefield, but had to put them in the fridge at the church so that they wouldn't get spoiled in the car while we sat through the service. In order to avoid mixing our things up with the rest of the contents of the fridge (the majority of which were intended to be served during the after-service coffee hour) we marked the bags "BEERS - DO NOT SERVE," much to the delight of people who opened the refrigerator door to prepare the coffee hour snacks.

Tulips at Bloemenmarkt (the flower market) in Amsterdam, photographed in February 2007.

sunday river on a snowy saturday

Woke up at the ungodly hour of 3am to get ready for a day trip to Bethel, ME. Earlier this week, Raf had sent out and e-mail to see if anybody wanted to join him for the last ski trip of the season. Tempting us with photos from that day's snowfall, Jo and I immediately hopped on board. The agreement was that Raf would drive there and back, and Jo and I would sleep in the car the entire way there, and most likely, the entire drive back.


Conditions were wonderful, and we got a good six hours of skiing in before our tired, aching bodies begged us to stop. And when we finally got back into the car, sleep was all we could think of.