First World Problems

The title of this blog comes from a hilarious website by the same name that chronicles the inane and ridiculous things "privileged citizens of a developed nation complain about".

SEWAGE EXPLOSION

When I walked through the front door last Friday night, I heard Becca yell from the bathroom,
"JEN!! Did you shower at the gym? Cause if you didn't, you're gonna want to!"
"Oh crap," I said.
"Crap is right!" she responded.

I walked into the bathroom to find Becca up on the ledge of the tub, straddling a bathtub full of sewage. While she was showering, brown water spurted up from the drain and filled the tub with multi-colored floaties.  Between laughing sobs, she was still able to rinse the conditioner out of her hair.

In the mean time, the toilet had also filled up with back-washed sewage. Our landlord sent over his plumber the next morning, but not before I had already left for the day, which meant that I may have had to use some of my camping skills in the yard when I woke up.

Featured here is a picture of our cleaned, scoured, and bleached bathroom, post sewage explosion. Funny that this is the second time I have posted a picture of a bathroom on my blog.

ELECTRICITY: FAIL 

Our electricity went out Sunday afternoon with the first onset of snow. Unsure of how long it would last, my roommates, Becca and Marissa, and I conglomerated all our available light sources: bike lights, flashlights from 72-hour kits, head lamps, candles and matches. Becca used our gas-burning stove to make us delicious soup, then we layered up, turned off our phones to preserve battery power, and took naps. When we woke up, light and heat were back on. The outage lasted for about four hours, but we were raring to go for much longer.

SNOWPOCALYPSE 2012

Three out of my four winters in Seattle have involved a major snow storm, and each year, it is called The Snowpocalypse. Snowpocalypse 2012 has been decidedly less dramatic than Snowpocalypse 2011 because last year it hit during rush hour. I was one of the many who got caught in the snow coming home from work and had to park my car at the top of a hill a few miles from my house. I was just wearing some little ballet flats, but fortunately I had an old pair of Doc Martens in the DI bag in my trunk. Those babies saved my feet all the way home, and I still haven't donated them yet.

There was car carnage up and down the Seattle streets last year, and my parked car did not escape unscathed: someone foolishly tried to go up the hill and slid back into it. But they did leave a note and paid for the damage.

This year, our biggest trauma came at 4:30 in the morning when a horrible, horrible noise woke us all up. My first thought was that Becca's bunk bed had collapsed and that she was dead in a pile of cheap Ikea metal. We went outside to investigate and found that our neighbor's tree had fallen over and slid down our roof. Miraculously, it did not cause any damage ... that we know of. (See top photo.)

Our local postman, however, did not fare as well in his encounter with a tree. Don't worry: he popped out of his car and delivered the rest of the mail by foot.

Today is my third snow day in a row; I worked a total of 4 hours this week - on Tuesday - when they told us to come in late and leave early. I am proud to say that I have gotten dressed and out of the house every day - walking miles to meet friends for lunch or dinner, walking over to the gym for some lap swimming, and mingling with the sledders on the hill in front of our house. I have also cleaned out my sock drawer, shredded a bunch of old papers, put away the Christmas decorations and cleaned out the inside of the microwave. I will never complain about a Snowpocalypse.