When It Rains, It Pours

We've had a very rainy week here in Santa Barbara. A lot of rain around here is a whole 5" in a day. Wow. Although I've heard many people say that we 'needed' the rain, I am slow to believe them. The rain just drains back into the ocean, doesn't it? Apparently I was mistaken, for this city does not seem to have functioning storm drain. So what happens when water falls from the sky? The water level just goes up. After just a couple of days of rain, everything is flooded. Roads have been closed and sand bags are lining all the stores and homes to keep water from coming in. I find it kind of amusing and ridiculous that every has so much problem with water. We were amazed living in Georgia how ill equipped people were to handle winter weather-- i.e. snow, but having major problems with rain? If I'm not mistaken, I'm pretty sure it rains at least once a year. Come on people!

Our apartment only mildly flooded (the floor is damp against the outside wall) but that only pales to the flooding in the bathroom. Apparently when this building was constructed the decided that having the drainage pipe from the toilet go straight down, then take a 90' turn so that it runs sideways was a good idea. So it got clogged and started gushing sewage everywhere. We had a plumber come in who simply removed the toilet to discover the plumbing malady. So, we've been forbidden from flushing much of anything down the toilet (use only a few squares of paper!) and we should be fine. Our neighbors are having similar problems. One visited today to borrow our freshly fixed bathroom and we got to chat about how awful the plumbing is.

Charles gave me permission to buy a new camera since mine has been giving me so many issues. So I'm upgrading from 3.2 Megapixels to 7.1 (and in pink!!) I ordered it through best buy. That's where we got the TV, and ever since that purchase they have been sending lots of coupons, so I got a pretty sweet deal. Plus, I mean, it's pink. You don't get much better then that.

Last week was customer appreciation week at the bank. So each day we wore coordinating colors (all red, then blue, then white) and had free coffee and cookies. Since it was also rainy, we didn't really have that many customers come in, so the tellers drank most of the coffee and polished off the cookies. Oh well. They were yummy :-)