When it Rains, It Pours, Literally

I've been in Denver for several days chaperoning a journalism conference, so I came home yesterday evening totally exhausted. I was ready for bed at 8pm, but just as I was heading to bed, an unplanned disaster prevented me. Our water heater had gone out, in a big way, pouring gallons upon gallons of water onto the basement floor. This wouldn't have been so bad to clean up--at the least the floor there is concrete--except that we had boxed up all our books in anticipation of moving the furniture for new carpet, and they were stacked in there. So, we have a lot of books with water damage now, which upsets me. We spread those out to dry and spent about an hour mopping up the flood. We are determined to go camping still, so it won't get fixed until we get home on Tuesday. We had to shut the water off to the whole house as a result; we went to a neighbor's house to clean up last night after getting all grimy mopping up the muddy water. It's tough to get ready this morning with no water...no showers, no watering the plants before we leave, no filling water bottles for camping, and most important to Mike's mind, no coffee...Oh well...We are off to the mountains for two days where we will be happily ignoring the problem. Until Tuesday, which won't be fun.