fenchurch | The sort of fun that's not

What a way to spend the evening... We've been getting slammed with rain all day. The real stuff, not our normal everyday drizzle. And then it was like the skies opened up and someone dumped a cosmic bucket of water over us.

To give you an idea, it had just started really coming down when

rackham got home early from work... he immediately went out with a rake and cleared the drain out at the end of our driveway (we're at the bottom of a cul-de-sac, so all the water runs down the gutters to the drainage there) then came inside. Around that point the power went out for the first time, so we went around shutting off computers and Rackham started working to rearrange some of the UPS systems we have set up for our servers... and I decided to brave the deluge and run to my car to get something. It had been, maybe, twenty minutes at that point since Rackham had cleared the drain. The water at the bottom of our front stairs? Was about three inches deep. It happened THAT FAST.

I ran downstairs and told him we had a problem... then proceeded to grab everything I could find on the garage floor and toss it onto any available higher level surface. The water was already about an inch deep and extending three feet or so into the garage. Rackham finished what he was doing with the server and grabbed the rake again to try to get the drain flowing... by this point, the water at the end of the driveway was up over his knees.

The good news is, that took care of the problem and the water receded. We spent the next two hours pulling up everything that could have possible gotten wet (the water ended up about halfway back in our garage). Thankfully, we had quite a bit of stuff already in Rubbermaid tubs and/or sitting off the ground on Ikea garage shelving. We also, in two hours, managed to get the garage cleaned up, the water vacuumed up (I am now SO glad we invested in that wet/dry shop-vac), and the water-logged cardboard all torn down and tossed in the recycle bin. The other good news is that I was hefting boxes of books and videotapes with nary a twinge in my shoulders. I did manage to give myself an asthma attack though... exertion+stress+dust=no breathing for me. Rescue inhalers are our friends.

We're both utterly exhausted now, but we shouldn't have to worry about mildew.

On the good news front, although the electricity has been flickering all evening and we've had a few brownout moments, we haven't lost power completely since around 5:00pm. However, due to the conditions, we've powered down our desktops and switched off the television and accompanying equipment so they hopefully won't be damaged in any surges. Since the real edge of the storm isn't supposed to hit for another hour or so, we're pretty sure we won't have power for long.

I also have to say that

wildrider and

rahirah are goddesses of baked goods. All the tumult of the day has been balanced out a bit by sinfully scrumptious Christmas goodies! Thank you for the treats!! And I *will* be badgering you for recipes.

I'm really glad, too, that I happened to stop by PCC Market earlier today to see if they had any organic marshmallows (they were completely out) and picked up a roasted chicken instead... this meant we pretty much had our dinner entirely ready-made! I ran to Safeway about an hour or so ago to pick up a few last minute things... and it looks like Juanita Creek ran over the road just up from us (the only road in or out of our neighborhood, actually), judging from the debris. And when I got to the bottom of the hill on NE 108th, Juanita Creek was still flowing over the road. Yikes!!

It's bad all over the northwestern coast, from what I understand... and I saw on the news that a woman over in the Capitol Hill area of Seattle got trapped in her basement apartment as it filled with water during the deluge that flooded our garage. According to the news report I saw, it completely filled her apartment and the rescuers had to cut a hole in the floor of the apartment above hers and send in divers to pull her out... she'd been underwater for about 8 minutes at that point, ~~but from the reports I just heard, it sounds like they were able to resuscitate her, thank heavens.~~ ETA: Apparently, the early were reports were wrong and she could not be revived. :-( It makes me shudder just to think about it though... it's the stuff of nightmares.