"The Great Flood of 2006," or "How Erin and her fiance almost lost everything because of some drunk guy"

Some days I wonder if I'll ever run out of things to talk about in my blog. I'm not out of ideas yet, but what's to say when I'm 37 I won't just wake up with nothing to say?

But, anyhow. I have something to say. Multiple things to say.

1. When you are drunk, it is an extremely bad idea to cook.
2. When you are drunk, it is an extremely bad idea to cook with grease.
3. When you are drunk, it is an extremely bad idea to cook with grease when you live in apartment 403, which is directly above my apartment, and it's incredibly idiotic to put the grease fire "out" with water. That's fire safety 101.
4. I am going to punch you in the face, 403.

Last night, the Fiance and I decided we were going to stay in, have a nice quiet night at home. We did. We watched "Alfie," or at least we tried. We were in our pajamas, I was ooh-ing and ahh-ing over Jude Law, when suddenly, the fire alarm went off. I'm not talking "smoke detector" alarm. I'm talking the big alarm. I didn't know what was going on, but it sounded like the tornado drill alarm my high school had. I decided a tornado in January was unlikely, so I put shoes and a sweatshirt on, grabbed my coat, a blanket I've had since birth and a tiny cedar box my mom and stepdad gave me, and we ran outside.

A good friend of mine in college lost everything in a fire. I kept thinking "what did Sarah say she missed the most? Grab that!"

And I'm not sure if people thought it was a joke, and thus no one called the fire department, or if the fire department was just taking its good ol' time, but we stood outside for 20 minutes, freezing, waiting to see if our building was going to burn to the ground, or what, before they showed up.

I guess you could say it was a good way to meet the neighbors. We met the guy next door, the girls down the hall, the old lady below us, and a guy from Michigan (he seems nice, but I didn't tell him about my hatred of that state). We even hung out in our next door neighbor's apartment for a little bit, hours later. (I didn't just give away the ending, the best is yet to come.)

The fire department came, and the landlord hadn't left a key for the fire department to get in the building. Illegal. Or at least a really bad idea. No one was inside, we were all in the rear of the building, so the building manager ran inside to open the door for them. It was another 45 minutes before the alarm turned off and we were allowed back inside (and I thought I'd escaped fire drills, having not lived in a dormitory in college). The landlord never left a key for them to turn the alarm off. (They also did up all the fire escape routes backwards, rendering them useless, and didn't have any plans for fire watch, etc. All in all, the building manager saved the day, and the landlord ... uh, is not around.)

Then the worst part: I had face cream, white face cream, all over my face and no one told me. Ha. True, but no, it gets worse.

Yes, it gets worse: our apartment was flooded. The (insert your favorite explicit word) upstairs' sprinkler system had come on, and flooded his apartment, which leaked to ours, which pretty much ensured we weren't going to sleep much that night.

Our carpet, our nice, new carpet, is soaked. Our precious aparment -- water poured down from light fixtures, air conditioning ducts and covered hole thingys in our ceiling. Our couch is saturated on one side. Our washer and dryer are in standing water. Our bathrooms were flooded. We have buckets all over, but it's no use. It smells so bad in here.

And the whole time, through the running outside, the standing in the cold, the coming back inside, the watching of eight firemen barge into my apartment with squeegies (and then declaring it a lost cause, and walking out), I just kept thinking of the column I'd written for The Northwestern today. I mean it so much more now.

I want my own place. That way, if it burns down or gets flooded, I won't have to punch anyone in the face but myself.

And, if you're wondering, none of our major stuff was ruined, though we're out of towels, and our ceiling is bubbling. The building manager and his wife offered us an air mattress and more towels. We're doing laundry in the empty apartment across the hallway. Service Master is coming to clean our apartment (though the ceiling is still dripping ...). Insurance guys have already been here.

This is ridiculous. Wisconsin, I expected so much more from you. This is Michigan-type stuff.

What have we learned? Getting a new house will be AWESOME. And grease fires are best put out WITHOUT WATER.