why i have new carpet, and interview update

about a month ago there was a night of rain, freezing rain, then rain again, resulting in massive amounts of slush, which acted as dams for the rain... my bedroom is on "garden" level, meaning it is half-basement, so windows are AT ground level. my bedroom is also in the back corner of the apartment building: i have a wall with a window that looks directly onto the alley and the wall adjoining that is the outside wall that has the gate into the back"yard" area. (so i can hear quite clearly whenever anyone comes in or out through the back gate.)

now, the water drainage at that back gate corner and out through the alley has always been HORRIBLE. but usually the water at least gets into the alley and pools in the middle of the alley- which makes getting to the dumpsters interesting, but at least there's not 6 inches of standing water at the back corner of the building by the gate. Until that night i just described... the slushy snowy dams kept water from going anywhere- well, anywhere except for into the cracks that were present (apparently) in the concrete flashing along the foundation and within the foundation, and water started listening to gravity and permeating into those little cracks which the cold apparently made worse and some of the concrete had broken up, and well, i ended up with lots of water in my room. but i'm getting ahead of myself.

in my bedroom, in that back outside corner, i have this little "closet". it's not part of my real closet, not even on the same wall, just this little build-out from the wall with a folding closet door. and when you open it you see the unfinished rock foundation on the bottom half, and unfinished brick wall on the upper half. and affixed on the brick wall is a big gray metal box, with a huge pull-lever inside, labeled "ON" and "OFF" and "Emergency Electric Shut-off" handwritten on the gray metal. yes, i have the master power switch to the entire building in my bedroom.

so this particular sunday morning after that slushy night i've already described, half my carpet squishes when i walk on it. and it's the half of my room radiating out from that back corner, the unfinished corner. meaning that the water is seeping in from that corner. cindy and i spend more than an hour moving everything on that half of the room. we call the landlord; the leaking appears to stop while landlord is there (he also shovels the snow/slush/water). but later that night, it's dripping again- well, more like oozing, water seeping in through the rock foundation. we borrow a wet-vac, and pull about 18 gallons of water out of the carpet in about 5 hours. and i examine the leaking corner and realize that if i could just get the water to drip OUT away from the rock face and INTO something, instead of just flowing down the rock face and into the carpet, maybe i wouldn't have to move everything out of my room. (we did anyway, including taking my bed apart around 1:00 a.m.) so, i remember my physics and go find some Bronco Blue pipe cleaners i have and push the ends of the pipe cleaners into the cracks where it looks like the most water is flowing. Capillary action and gravity do their job, and the water follows the pipe cleaners out away from the rock face, and drips off the ends of the pipe cleaners into the 9x13 pan i've set up below. as you see in the pic, i rigged up quite a few pipe cleaners. and that 9x13 pan filled up every 20-25 minutes for several hours. This picture was actually taken more than a week afterwards, so some of the pipe cleaners have fallen out, and everything is dry. but, there is supposed to be carpet on that floor. The building handyman came immediately Monday morning and ripped up all the carpet and padding to prevent molding.

and so for 3 weeks my room looked like this, except emptier. this pic was taken when my parents were in town, and we put an air mattress down on the concrete floor for my dad and the chair was left there. The power shut off leaking corner closet is in the middle of the picture. (some of you might be saying, "i thought she said the corner closet wasn't even on the same wall as her clothes closet, but i see clothes hanging right beside it..." Yes, you do, because i'm strange and moved my closet rod to the opposite wall and used my real closet as a little nook for my bed. yeah, i'm weird.) so anyway, nearly a month of cold concrete in my room with nothing else, including my bed. i slept on my mattress in either cindy's room or in the middle of the family room. but, on March 23 I got new carpet! I was out of town that weekend, so when i came home, i was greeted with the unmistakeable scent of Eau de Carpet Nouveau and my wonderful sister Cindy had moved some of my furniture back in and put up this cute little Indian-style purple canopy thing around the real closet and placed that orange chair and a table in the closet and it was such a cute little reading nook! i don't have pics yet of my new room and carpet- when i'm all moved back in, i'll post a few.

no, i'm not all moved in yet- i had one week of being home with the new smelly carpet (couldn't really sleep in the room yet cuz it was so bad) and then cndy and i went to Indiana for a week last week. (see cindy's blog at www.zeeblebop.com for info on that.) and we got home yesterday and now i'm spending most of my time taking anti-cold/allergy meds (man, i haven't had this much runny snot in YEARS) and preparing for my interiew at Shedd Aquarium.

Yes, my Shedd interview is still pending. I never received an email i was suppsed to get regarding preparing for the interview (Shedd's server was having issues) and so Samantha (the woman in charge of the department i'm interviewing with) called and gave the info verbally but rescheduled the interview from last tuesday to today because i didn't have enough time to prepare. (i have to prepare a 10-15 minute presentation on any aquatic theme with at least one hands-on activity.) well, it was then supposed today, but i realized last week there was NO WAY i'd ahve enough time to prep a good demo when i was doing painting and childcare for that time, and not getting home until the day before the interview. that didn't give me nearly enough time to see if vinegar dissolves my coral pieces and to find lime (chemical) to combine with water to make limewater to make limestone... anyway... so, i called Samantha and left a message explaining my lack of actual usable time and wondering if she had something open a few days later... if not, i would be there on tuesday, for sure, but no harm in asking.

so, long story short, Samantha was on vacation last week too and called me back from her home yesterday to let me know that postponing my intervew for a day or two is JUST FINE and totally not a problem. she's calling me this afternoon to tell me what her schedule looks like, and i will be doing my interview hopefully on Thursday or Friday.

This was an answer to prayer, and i praise God for it, cuz the "lime" we found yesterday and tried to make limewater did NOT work AT ALL. the lime we got today is upstairs all mixed in water and looks to be separating out just like it's supposed to. AND vinegar (even at only 5% acidity) DOES dissolve coral! this is good for my demo, but really not so good for the oceans... but i won't get into that now.

Please pray that my demo will come together well in the next 24 hours as i actually script it out and practice it with the hands on stuff just described, and pray for my actual interview of course. Also please continue to pray for me to have peace and follow God's prompting in my job search and in His provision for my financial needs. This is very hard for me to do. without completely panicking. sigh. also, i have another connection that gave me the name of a temp agency that her friend runs, and i'll be calling them this afternoon as well.

I love you ALL! (especially since you actually read all the 'schtuff' i write!)