I awoke this morning to the doorbell. Then some knocking. I wasn’t dressed, so I didn’t answer, but then the phone rang. It was our landlord informing me that our downstairs neighbor was complaining about our water heater leaking. He was out of town, so I had to wait around for the plumber to call.

Indeed, the water heater was running (it’s a very loud monster), which it doesn’t do unless someone’s just taken a shower, and Berck had been gone for hours. I figured out how to turn the water to it off, but I couldn’t figure out how to turn the gas off, so it just kept heating what water was left in there, putting it under greater pressure and causing it to leak some more. I put a bunch of bowls underneath to try to catch the drips. Then every so often I opened the release valve at the bottom of the tank and emptied some of the contents into a pitcher. For a 40 gallon tank, I wasn’t about to make 40 trips to the toilet, but I kept it from leaking more until the plumber came.

The plumber turned off the gas, so the thing finally stopped leaking. But he had to go buy a hose to empty the old water heater and get a new one to replace it. He’s back now installing the new one.

In the meantime, I’ve been applying for some jobs. I’ll go to work as soon as the plumber is gone. He’s currently soldering some copper pipe with a blowtorch.

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