Today was an adventure. I had my First Big Problem.

It seems that a law office on the third floor of one of our buildings had a leaky toilet tank in their Mens room. The night janitors saw it and decided that putting a note on the stall door was a great way to get the leak fixed.("The toilet has leak at the back. Can you please call BLDG Manage. They fix for you.")

At seven AM this morning, one of the attorneys found the leak and turned off the water shutoff.

Water had essentially been running into the top of the tank to fill it while running out of the bottom. For hours.

Water had run all over the floor in the bathroom, out the door and down the hall. It had pooled in the bathroom around the exit hole in the floor for what I believe is an old heating pipe. The seal around that pipe had gapped eons ago. The water had run through the gap into the phone closet of the tenant below, shorting out their phone system and killing their DSL connection. I've never seen connections in a telco punchdown block spark before.

Water had dripped on two runs of electrical conduit in that closet and streamed along them to wet the ceiling of two spaces outside of the closet.

And then the elevator broke down in another part of the building. This elevator serves one of the swankiest restaurants in town. It was thirty minutes before lunch time.

I ate breakfast at 12:30. I had my morning coffee at 2PM.

Right now, I need a cold shower and a hot beer.

But I love my co-engineer Kym. She came and helped with EVERYthing. From knowing who to call to running interference with the crabby office staff (in this instance, I don't blame them for being crabby but they're crabby all of the time anyway) to explaining how this and why that and giving me "I remembers...", she was an immeasurable help and is just a damn fine person.

And then the office manager in the lawyer's office where the leak occurred gave me a big plastic container of choco-chip cookies because it was her last day and she was giving out appreciation gifts.

On the container she had glued a heart with a note on it thanking me and Chief Engineer for always being professional and for always responding to her every request. She thanked us for "making a difference" in her "little corner of the world".

Today sucked and was really good.

Happy Valentine's Day.