Alexandra and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Past Two Days

What a past two days it has been!  Like seriously.  It all started yesterday morning when I woke up to the Blue Screen of Death on my computer.  Because, you know, that's exactly what you want a week and a half before your first page of qualifying exams is due.

I took the computer to the BU IT place where hopefully they will fix it and nothing will be wrong with it and it'll last me at least until the statistical computing class I'm taking this semester ends.  But until probably one more business day is over, I am without a computer (I am currently writing this at the medical school library, because blogging is totally what medical school library computers are for).

I called the BU IT place this morning to see if it was ready yet, and it was not.  So since I didn't need to be on campus today until noon, I decided to take a leisurely morning off and read Harry Potter until it was time to go to school.  From my bedroom (which is right next to the bathroom--very convenient for middle-of-the-night potty breaks), I heard water running.  Strange, I thought, I didn't know my roommate was up and in the shower already.  I poked my head out, and nobody was in there.  What was in there, however, was a steady stream of water coming from the ceiling.  And that turned into an even steadier deluge of water pouring out of the light fixture.

It's happened to the best of us.

I am nothing if not a quick thinker in a crisis.  I ripped the garbage bag out of our garbage can and placed the can under where the majority of the water was flowing.  I tried to call the management office, but I can't make a phone call on my stupid-smartphone without getting the "Unfortunately Contacts has stopped" message at least three times.  No time for that!  I ran to the management office without even bothering to put on a coat (it wasn't actually that cold out) and told them what the problem was.  Then I ran upstairs and told upstairs neighbor to stop whatever the heck he was doing with water.  (Did I mention that upstairs neighbor is the cause of so much grief in the form of interrupted sleep in my life already?)  Turned out, his toilet was overflowing for no apparent reason.  He showed me a video he took of the overflowing toilet on his phone.  I'm sorry, but if water is pouring onto my floor and flowing through to the humans below, my first thought isn't going to be, I definitely think I should video this rather than getting some towels and trying to stop the mess from progressing.  Even more annoying than those moms who post pictures of the poop their babies smeared all over themselves and the wall.

Eventually the water stopped and the ceiling stream slowed to a mere trickle.  After a brief lamentation of why do these things always happen when I'm here?, I took off my socks, emptied the trash can (that had at least two gallons of water in it) opened the window, got out the spray bleach, and got to work.  I mopped the grossness off of the floor, dried the walls, and wrung out the bathmat (and left a note that will hopefully persuade my roommates to throw it in the washer since I've wasted at least $6 already washing the thing in the past).  Then a plumber came and helped me empty out the glass globe light fixture that was full of brownish (he assured me the color was from ceiling dirt and I really want to believe him) water.  A drain guy came and dealt with the upstairs toilet.  I then got out the spray bleach again and re-mopped the floor because the plumber didn't take his shoes off.  I think all is well in my bathroom once more.

Thinking about it later, though, I got this thought process that made me feel (a little) better about the whole ordeal.  If my computer hadn't Blue-Screened yesterday, I wouldn't have had to take it to the IT place, which means that I probably would have gone to school with it early this morning, which means that nobody (save a sleeping roommate on the other end of the apartment who also probably doesn't know where the spray bleach lives) would have been home when the Great Flood of 2015 happened and it would have been way worse (see above, re: "at least two gallons of water).  So...Providence?