Deluge and a North Side Vacation

On Tuesday night the guy my mom once referred to as "the groundskeeper" asked me, "Did your basement flood?"

"No," I said, surprised. I hadn't been down there, but if it had, surely I would know, right??

"Everybody else's did," he informed me. Makes sense, given the Biblical deluge we experienced here in Chicago Monday night. This is why I should not be a homeowner.

I extricated myself gracefully from this conversation and walked calmly into my house, then bolted for the basement stairs to make sure I didn't have standing water down there unawares. Fortunately, it didn't look like Katrina had hit, but the floor was damp and capillary action had drawn wet up into some of the cardboard boxes down there. Ouch.

There's some cardboard on the floor that got soaked and it will be thrown out tonight. The boxes will have to wait a bit longer though; I'm taking a well-deserved North Side vacation tomorrow night, after a few days of hiding out at a client's office and avoiding the small fry. Since Chavez went back to school on Monday, Camp Marshfield is done for the summer and the Marshfield Avenue after-school program probably won't start until sometime after Labor Day. Shoot, SES providers don't start until October, so by that standard I'll be early.

However, I did have a conversation with one of my soon-to-start-high-school pals last night. As a result, I may be setting up some plywood boards out in the backyard for the two or three graffiti aficionados I know on the block to play with. I'd rather they do that than see them get busted with spray cans. My buddy last night told me he'd been caught once by the cops already but they let him off with a warning. I told him that Peter Pan had already been hauled into court, which stopped him in his tracks a bit. We'll see if he can keep himself out of trouble.