I was up in The Apartment this afternoon doing some transcription when I got an email from the new manager that said, grosso modo, a tenant has a broken tap and it’s spewing water everywhere and I can’t get a hold of maintenance. Did I any chance know where the shut off valve was?

Nope. So I raced downstairs to the other building, turned off a couple of taps in the boiler room until I got the water turned off for the building, and then pretty much waded into the tenants’ apartment. What. A. Mess. A bathtub tap had come right off; I’ve never seen anything like it and I have more than a casual acquaintance with plumbing issues. I used the tenants’ phone to call the office to find out that maintenance still wasn’t picking up. Thankfully, now that there wasn’t water pouring out of the tap and filling the tub faster than it could drain, I could turn the tap off manually.

So I handed the tenants a wet-dry shop vac and went back to the office to get a screw driver. When I came back with the tool, the apartment was a lot drier and I had no trouble turning the tap off. I can’t remember if all house-style plumbing has this, but all our taps have a metal cover below them, behind which is a pipe with a screw that can be used to turn the water on and off if the tap fails. That done, I was able to turn the water back on to the building.

Back at the office, I told the new manager to add to her to-do list, “Ask head office what to do in case there’s another plumbing emergency, maintenance won’t pick up, and Rae is gone!!!”

Such fun. 😀

I have made the switch in my brain and consider myself to be in a supporting role now. I’m putting in some face time at the office, but it’s a better use of my time to be upstairs doing transcription or other work for myself. I am in the pay period that will produce a mid-April pay cheque and will Friday fall into the first of May pay cheque period, so I am motivated to work my fingers to the bone in these last few weeks in Lethbridge. It would bring me peace of mind to know that I have income coming in during my trip east.

That said, my rig is nowhere near ready to go mode and my toad needs a new battery, so I need to start drilling down my list of priorities!