the big leak and other stories

Tonight we had a little adventure. I was sitting on the couch in the living room, eating a cranberry crumble bar, and I heard a dripping noise coming from the kitchen. When I went to investigate, I discovered water dripping from the ceiling, from a hole where our main heating pipes come down from the ceiling. I put a container under the leak and started to head out the door to check with our upstairs neighbor, when another (much quicker) dripping started in another part of the kitchen. I ran back to put a big pot under that second leak and then ran upstairs and started knocking insistently on the neighbor's door. It took her a little while to answer, and once she did, I discovered that her son (woh knows English) was not home. I was trying to act out water dripping down from the ceiling, but she had no idea what I was talking about. Finally, I told her I would show her, and we headed back towards the kitchen. When we arrived at the kitchen, we had to literally wade in, since there was at least an inch of water covering the floor. The source of the water was clear, as the washing machine hose was broken and actively spraying water on every surface in the kitchen. We both started muttering to ourselves (me in English and her in Spanish) while trying to turn the water off. She finally got it off, and we started to get all the water off the floor. This took a while (several towels, lots of wringing out, several buckets), and our efforts were partially impeded by Izzy, her small but active dog who was quite excited. Izzy loved to run through the water, attack the towels, and lick at the (really dirty) water pooled all over the floor. I stayed a while to help with the clean up, since our poor upstairs neighbor is quite elderly and was having trouble bending down to reach the floor (she explained to me with sign language--bad knees, bad back). When I got back down to our apartment, the ceiling was still leaking (in a few new places). I called the landlord, but he seemed unconcerned ("it will probably take a while to drain the floor"), so we just left containers out to catch the dripping water and left it. I found a few more small leaks, but overall, it seems like the worst of it is over. The biggest leak is now only an occasional drip.

In other news, I went to Columbia this weekend to read a few books in the library. The regular train was down for repairs (apparently, just for the weekend), so I ended up in the southern part of Harlem, which is northeast of Columbia. This was a bit problematic for me; I was hoping to stay and read for longer, but because of the several block walk through unknown terrain, I left before it got dark to be safe. Still, I got a little reading done.

On the southeast corner of campus is St. John the Divine cathedral, which I think is the largest gothic cathedral in the USA. It is quite a beautiful building. I took this snapshot of it's exterior as I passed it on Saturday (using my phone camera). I stopped by the cathedral many weeks ago to take a look inside and I got a few shots of the interior then. I put those interior shots in this post as well, even though they didn't turn out very well. My phone camera is much better with sunny shots than with building interiors, since there is no flash. Still, you can get the idea.