An Adventurous Day! - Sunday, 19 June

I'll never say that I've encountered everything, but today's adventure sure goes into the "who woudda thunk" book!  And it did leave me feeling a bit "powerless."

At around 9:00 this morning I heard some guys going through the building, banging on each of the three or four doors on each floor (including mine).  This is a quite well-secured building, but I guess it's possible for someone to sneak in behind a resident while the door is open.  They didn't identify themselves, and it was kind of early, so I didn't answer the door.  I took a shower, got ready for church, threw a load of laundry in the machine, and - surprise - at about 10:00 the power went out in the whole building (including for the elevator).  Just a bit irritating.

So I felt my way down the fairly dark stairway.  I'm on the second floor (which would be the third in the U.S.), and when I got to the first floor water was slowly oozing out of one apartment and the carpet was all wet.  Aha.  That's probably why they had to turn off the power. 

I returned late in the afternoon to find the power still out and the outside doors propped open so that people could get in and out of the building (all the doors have power locks).  The wi-fi in the apartment was still working, so I sent an email to the owners asking what they knew.  They hadn't been informed of the incident but got on the phone with the caretaker right away and learned that the flooding problem has been fixed but the power won't be restored until tomorrow morning.  Yikes!

The owners did connect me with a restaurant down the street.  I'm sitting there now, recharging my laptop and mobile phone and using their wi-fi.  Happily it's light until very late (and again very early) in these northern climes, but I need to get back to the apartment soon and climb up those dark stairs once more.  This time I'll use the flashlight on my mobile!

The real big bummer is that by the time I understood what was happening it was too late to go to the "Paris by Mouth" picnic.  Oh, well.  Maybe they'll have a "second annual" next year!