It's Andy Fish!

Actually I woke Saturday before 7ish to find we had NO water. My intial thought was the pipes had frozen even though I monitor the temperature in the basement and it was at a balmy 64 degrees– still, I reasoned, outside could certainly be an issue and we have been under the deluge of the Polar Vortex ™ — I took the usual precautions, I turned on all the faucets, I put a heater next to the most outdoor ish pipe in the basement and I managed to make a pot of coffee using our filtered water which was standing by.

About 90 minutes into it and waiting for some sign of water returning I opened my email to discover 13 messages from the 311 Service, all of which were my neighbors reporting no water.

Could a rash of pipe freezes be happening?

311 in case you don’t know is a free reporting service that connects to your local government where you can report things like a large branch being down, a bit of road kill nearby, basically anything from branches blocking the view at in intersection to your neighbor not shoveling (don’t be a Karen). It’s a good service.

Turns out a water main broke about ¾ of a mile from me and had knocked out the water. A few seconds later the water started trickling from the open faucets and then it was back on– only thing was it was BLACK.

Yes BLACK Water.

Now the question was to shower or not to shower in black water. I had an event I had to be at over at the Worcester Art Museum and I couldn’t manage it unshowered, the coffee had done what it could but a shower is what makes me join the living.

I’ve bathed in a lake before, and if you think lakes are natural springs you need to rethink– a lake is nothing more than a giant puddle– only with 1,000,000,000 x more bacteria.

So I opted since the water was hot to go for it, using extra soap and extra rinsing, and good news, the water went from BLACK to GRAY — a step in the right direction (Yes I am as nauseated as you are by the thought), I made it through the WAM event and when I got back home the water remained gray. Totally safe said the city– the same city that told me we could stop a plague more deadly than Smallpox simply by standing 6 feet apart and wearing a paper mask which was designed for surgeons to prevent them from spitting or sneezing into an open cavity not to prevent them from breathing in toxins and we all nodded our heads, clicked our boots together and drank from the punch bowl– and lo be who dared to question it.

But I digress.

The water eventually ran clear and the world returned to normal, at least until the pipes freeze because that Polar Vortex ™ isn’t going anywhere soon.