So, last night was rather exciting, if deeply annoying. Between nine and eleven, enough water leaked through the library ceiling to fill a few small trash cans (and to get the floor soaking wet besides). I felt like I was in Florence in 1966, except instead of moving priceless Italian manuscripts and incunabula to higher ground I was shifting Merriam-Webster's 10th Collegiate Dictionary and The Merck Index into empty study rooms. So, not much like Florence at all, really. But between me, student worker Jen, and a friend of Jen's who I guilted into helping us, we probably moved 300-400 books, which I think is reasonably impressive.

I think very few books were seriously damaged, and as long as the ones that got damp don't get all moldy we should be good to go. There was a Slovak-English dictionary that was already pretty puffy by the time I got to it, but other than that I only noticed a few books that looked like they were in really bad shape.

It's a very good thing this happened when it did -- if it had been a few hours later no one would have noticed it until it came through to the first floor, or maybe even until morning (I think under the reference section is a teaching lab which would have been unoccupied all night). Or course, if it had happened a five or six hours earlier there would have been other people there to help me deal with it, which would also have been nice.

Once I got home I was all adrenaliney and I couldn't sleep. I'm tired now. I've got to start on that assignment I meant to get to 13 hours ago.

So, that assignment I was going to do? Probably not going to happen tonight. I had just started working on it when one of the student workers came back and said, "Some guy says that there's water leaking on the books." And indeed there was. I have now (with the aid of the student worker) shifted several shelves worth of reference collection to the empty study rooms (good luck to whoever has to put those back), I have commandeered all the trash cans, and I am currently in negotiations with security to get some trash bags to block off the rest of the books for when the ceiling tile crashes in (as is, I fear, inevitable). Also, I am all wet. This sucks. And the security guy says that the leak is on the fifth floor. The library is on the second floor, which suggests to me that if this water has already made its way through three floors, it is not stopping any time soon.

Any new expletives you would like to teach me will be welcomed with open (though slightly damp) arms, as I have used all mine up (under my breath, of course, in proper library fashion).